The Golden Rock at Kyaiktiyo Pagoda

The lobby of the Golden Sunrise Hotel was dark and silent at 5:30 am, but as promised, our boxed breakfast was there waiting for us on the counter. So kind of them. Fried egg sandwiches and bananas. I whooped to Margaret, “They remembered us!” and accidentally woke the attendant who was sleeping in the […]

Bus to the Golden Rock

Our day was primarily travel. We are aimed for the Golden Rock, or Kyaikityo Pagoda, well outside of Yangon. We are planning a trip up the mountain to see the balanced rock at sunrise. In the meantime, our goal was simply to get here. From what I read prior to the trip, there is little […]

Chasing a train and kissing a camel

I like what I did with yesterday’s theme: boiled it down to two highlights. Today I’ll do the same. While the day was long and filled with adventure, the two things we will remember the most are running after a train (and the 30 minute stop at a tiny town) and camel affection at the […]

Shwedagon Pagoda & Chinatown

We walked a good portion of Yangon today, but the highlights were the Shwedagon Pagoda complex and the street vendors in Chinatown. This morning after a lovely breakfast at Ten Mile Hotel, we took a cab into the city from the area around the airport. It was a long drive and I was grateful that […]

Other side of the planet

I’ll try to keep this short.

Extended Birthday

I celebrated for five days in a row this year. I think I deserve it. 😉 My birthday was Tuesday, but I took a few days off work and began the reveling on the Saturday before. First up was an overdue visit to my friend Vladimir in St. Johns, a neighborhood of Portland. We went […]

Good Things Jar – 2015, 2016, 2017

A long time ago I wrote a post called Good Things Jar, in which I explained that I had heard about this project and had successfully completed my first year of recording good things in 2014. I never wrote about it again. The idea is easy to find in many versions on the Internet. And […]