Day 9 - Mindat Mistake

OK, we get it. Mindat is not to be visited in January. At 5000 ft, the cloud forest weather is just too, well, cloud forest. One more hotel with no heat, clouds socked in so no views, almost steady rain, mud everywhere, with barely passable roads. Tourists are fleeing in droves, or not coming here. Other than that....

We hunkered down, had a lengthy 500 rummy session, did a little walk around the town...


used our quilts mummy style and our wool hats as night caps (D never got out of any of her clothes for the last three days) and joyfully left at earliest light. Of course, as we left the sun was breaking through...




but that was because it was clear in the lowlands to the east (Bagan plain), which is happily where we were headed, our only remaining concern being whether the road was passable...



which it was, although not without the skill of Thi Ha.

Only noteworthy thing on the way back was the number of goat herds on the highway. There hadn't been nearly that many on the way in - maybe a market day?



Semi-daily musing:

1. Tolls seem to be a primary source of funding for many things. On the highway each town has gates for tolls, same on the bridges, plus some others that have no clear identity. The workers who maintained the roads in various places also asked for money as folks drove by, as did the workers at Mt. Popa and other places who cleaned steps and walkways. Perhaps an outgrowth of the "Making Merit" tradition in Buddhism.

2. We've grown fond of a Myanmar custom of offering a tray of wrapped tamarind slices at the end of a meal.




Called Indian Date in places, it is from a pod-like fruit that grows on tamarind trees, and has a very pleasant taste that is unlike mint, but serves the same after-dining purpose of cooling the mouth and aiding digestion - or you can use it for polishing metal.





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