Tag: Rainy Season

  • Here Be Dragons: Laser Cat Goes to Pudong to Renew Her Visa (Comic Book Edition)

    Here Be Dragons: Laser Cat Goes to Pudong to Renew Her Visa (Comic Book Edition)

  • Sunshine and Lollipops in Shanghai: I Do Believe It Is Springtime!

    We are now, improbably for March in Shanghai, on Day 5 in a wild streak of completely sunny, bright, warm days. Yesterday I went out in a light cotton Thai sun dress with a medium weight cardigan over my shoulders, not convinced that I could shed so many layers before the month was out. I…

  • Notes on my Supposed Unemployment: The September Edition

    Remember how I’ve been going on and on for months about being unemployed?  How it felt weird to be so suddenly unstructured and aimless after decades of chronic employment? Yeah, well, I lied. Kind of. I am unemployed, by the day-job definition of employment. At 6am most days, there is nowhere I need to be…

  • Kandy Esala Perahera: What the World Needs Now is More Dancing Elephants Lit Up Like Christmas Trees. Really.

    Kandy Esala Perahera: What the World Needs Now is More Dancing Elephants Lit Up Like Christmas Trees. Really.

      So we are back in rainy Kandy, smack dab in the middle of the Esala Perahera festival. I don’t have my guide book with me to remind me what exactly it’s about.  You can Google it then lambaste me for being a lazy traveler.  I’m tired. The nightly procession starts at the Temple of…

  • Kandy: Whoa, I Think I May Have Entered a Parallel Universe By Mistake

    Kandy: Whoa, I Think I May Have Entered a Parallel Universe By Mistake

    I was going to title this post Kandy Says, but I doubt anyone would get (or favourably appreciate) the Velvet Underground reference.  But you know what? I have no clue what Kandy is saying. Seriously. This town is a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a really awesome fresh chapati. It’s not just the…

  • Notes on Going Home Again

    One thing I’ve learned over the past seven years of blogging is to not post when you are sick, exhausted or pissed off. If you are sick or exhausted, it inevitably comes out in a strained, rather incoherent stream. If you are pissed off, the tone is all wrong and you’re likely to offend (even…

  • Further Adventures in Chinese Baking: Chocolate Coconut Cookies

    Further Adventures in Chinese Baking: Chocolate Coconut Cookies

      I think the Plum Rains have started. This has been the driest year so far since we arrived in Shanghai in early 2009, though the low lying grimness hasn’t eased up. When I first moved here, I lived in a 4-story lane house out in the wilds of Pudong. My laundry line was a…

  • Awesome Things We Ate in Myanmar

    Before we went to Myanmar, we really had no idea what to expect, food-wise.  It wasn’t a cuisine that was well represented in the South East Asian culinary repetoire internationally. We knew it was just across the water from all things Indian and Bangladeshi, and surrounded on the other side by Thailand and China, with…

  • Photos from Yangon

    Photos from Yangon

    I’ve been experimenting with ways to get my photos up on here without having to go through Facebook links each time. Below is my attempt at uploading my Yangon album into a WordPress gallery. If you weren’t able to get past the Great Firewall to access the photos I posted yesterday, here is my first…

  • Can I Show You a Bit of Myanmar?

    Can I Show You a Bit of Myanmar?

    And we’re back. And I’ve been floored with a tummy bug that whacked me over the head sometime last night, after we got back into Shanghai in a taxi that thought it had a jet engine. After 7 white-knuckle flights in a month (3 of them on Yangon Airways, whose motto is, unnervingly, “you’re safe…

  • On travelling and on staying put

    We’ve been in Myanmar about two weeks now, travelling close to the ground (usually about 6 inches from the pavement when facing backwards on a trishaw) and grinding our way from Yangon to Moulmein to Kyaiktiyo to Yangon to Mandalay to Hsipaw and I’m tired. For about two days I have been wanting to stay…

  • On the road to Mandalay, eventually

    You can actually fly to Mandalay from Yangon for about $75US, so the romance of the road is somewhat lessened.  After bouncing around the Mon State south east of Yangon for the past week, I’ve come to value the brevity of flights. I’ve learned a few other things here, which I’ll note briefly. I’m saving…