Arrived in Yangon Nov 20/21 (i.e. 11/21 Yangon calendar, 11/20 San Francisco calendar)

 

Arrived in. Yàngon to the sun setting red-orange in the mist and a flock of birds loudly. taking flight.  It's dark out. Width trl

[Wrote the above last night on my Kindle. I can't figure out how to find the commas on it, nor am very dexterous at aligning the cursor for corrections. Now I'm using a company laptop at the BizLeap office:]

Had a most welcoming airport arrival, with a driver holding up a "Zoe Newman" sign for me as I came out of customs to whisk me into a vehicle to drive me into Yangon.  Of course, no seat belts and the driving is crazy, constant honks warning pedestrians, bicyclists, and cars competing nose to nose to merge, missing each other by inches; sometimes a few cars will even move into one of the facing lanes for a few hundred yards before merging back into our side. 

Though only an hour away and despite visible modernizing changes, like the cell phones now in the hands of most of the eight teenage boys crammed in the back of the little open-air pick-up "bus" in front of us, it's a world still so different from Bangkok. It was dark as we drove in, tropical tree lined, figures in traditional longhi and skirts walking in the darkness along the road; or seated under roadside awning-covered shelters lit by a small hanging neon light or kerosene lamp; or stopped by a food cart; or squatted, cooking by the light of a candle.

Once arrived, I was met by my host U Kyaw Lin Naing Oo,, the Senior Manager of KOL (the company run by the village school friend of Nyunt Than, my Albany Burmese neighbor), and we went to eat supper in a roadside restaurant a few hundred yards away, before returning to where I'm staying in an old apartment room, paint peeling, of the KOL owner (who left for

Singapore this morning so I'll have the place to myself). It's next door to the IT company Nyunt Than has started with his KOL friend/partner here, where I am helping a group of about 8-10 young trainees  ခသကစူ  [here I seem to have hit some key that started translating into Burmese but fortunately had someone to help me this time, unlike with the airport computer that started translating to Chinese]  practice their English conversation skills for a few days  before I go north to Mandalay and the monastic school where I'll be volunteering for the rest of the time.

Zoe