Sadly a lot of pictures from this blog have vanished
The day hadn’t started according to plan and by midday we were exhausted.
Woolly says – Not according to plan! It had been a disaster. Travelling for us involves quite a lot of technology with laptops, camera’s, tablets and kindles (the kindle being especially important so that Jo can read me my bedtime story), all of them need wifi and electricity to run. Most of the time we achieve this but when a piece of the technology goes wrong its becomes a different matter, with Jo’s items we can usually find help at any shop that sells similar equipment but with Zoe’s we have to find one that sells her fruity product only. Unfortunately for us it was Zoe’s laptop that had decided not to charge, having asked our host for directions and followed them to the letter we found ourselves outside a shop that had the right signage but not a clue as to what we were talking about regardless of us waving the cables in front of the staff. It was hot, I was bothered, and the women were stressed. As we stood in the street I dreamed longingly of a cold drink and some where to rest my already weary paws, having glanced around I realised that a short way up the road was a shopping mall, they always have air con and seats, I announced my intentions and left the girls to it.
We followed him, the hunt for the cable was proving to much and we needed to consider what other options we might have.
Woolly says – The interior was cold as icicles and a relief, I staggered towards the mall’s floor plan looking for a food area, well we might as well have a snack at the same time! There in front of me was a map and on the second floor was the word we had been looking for. Twenty minutes later and we had our drink, I had a rather large piece of cake that I wasn’t prepared to share, my paws were enjoying the relief and the added bonus was that we also had the correct cable, Jo had flinched a little as her credit card gave out a small groan but Zoe’s equipment is insured so she will get the pennies back.
Feeling somewhat better we flagged down a taxi and headed to our first stop of actual tourist related places.
Woolly says – The Drug Elimination Museum was set up in 2001 to provide information on how the country has and continues to combat drugs, it might seem a strange choice as a tourist attraction but for Jo who has taught drug awareness and Zoe who studied it as part of her degree it was something they wanted to look at, for me it had nice shiny floors to slide around on. It was interesting in a strange way, detailing the years in which opium had been a major factor in Myanmar’s life, the ground floor had hundreds of photographs which showed the graphic scenes of arrests and fields covered in the lethal poppy’s that had been raised to the ground and gave the figures relating to the quantities of drugs seized and the death toll with those seizures. There were large displays of fields of poppies which looked slightly bizarre but if it helped get the message across then it was a good thing. The first and second floor told of how other drugs had started to creep into the country including heroin and cannabis, displays featured samples of each drug including one showing the different tablets of hallucinogenics which were huge and wold take years to eat! The best part was defiantly saved for the end where hundreds of photographs showed how the country now works to provide a substitution to the growing of the opium poppy and instead supports workers in growing coffee, wheat and other products as well as chicken and animal husbandry to provide the areas with income and hope for the future.
It was a lot to take in but as my small friend and I stood discussing the rehabilitation projects that are also run I felt it would be a useful place to visit for teachers to provide a good background knowledge.
Woolly says – I’d grown bored of sliding along especially as I kept having to avoid dead cockroaches and seeing that the girls had finished I asked what we planned to do next.
With our legs aching and the heat in the early 40’s none of us could face walking far and having checked on the map I realised that one of the water bus terminals wasn’t too far away.
Woolly says – That sounded like a good idea and having found a place for lunch which provided endless entertainment for staff as we all tried to manage our chop sticks and suck our noodles up when we couldn’t, we made our way to the jetty. The Yangon River was thick and brown and as we bobbed along on the boat I made very sure I wouldn’t fall in, small boats dashed across in front of us carrying passengers to the other side whilst fishermen caste their nets into the murkiness. It was the prettiest of views and the left side seemed to be made up of endless shipping containers and cranes, but it was enjoyable to rest and just enjoy the breeze. We had at least managed to do something with our day and Zoe was happy that she could continue to edit her vlogs, check them out on
if you haven’t already, your’s truly gets to star in some of them! With the ladies engrossed in the passing boats and ships, I got the map back out and stated to look at tomorrow’s agenda.