Friday, March 14, 2008

Mount Popa

Up at 7:00, quick shower, breakfast and waited for mini-van to pick us up at 8:00. I took another Imodium today, after yesterdays episodes.

After picking us up, we picked up three Israeli's and started to Mount Popa.

Stopped at a "sugar factory", where they take palm tree oil and make liquid sugar out of it, and make candy and alcohol. It's just run by a family, and housed under some bamboo, not so much a factory, but a home brew system. They even have a distillery there. Also had a five section stove where they boil the palm oil, gradually heating it to a rapid boil to make candy or something. I didn't quite understand the whole flow of the operation, but it was very fascinating.

As we got closer to Mt. Popa, we climbed into the higher elevations and the air got cooler.

Mt. Popa looks cool from a distance, but hiking to the top is very uninteresting. Not really worth it, can't see much, and ther's no grand temple at the top. We left early, and met up with the Israeli's, who were quite disappointed too. As we were waiting for our taxi dude, dad and me stopped at a restaurant, and I ordered some tea. It came, and it was black, like tar. I filld it with sugar, and drank most of it, then I broke out in a sweat and started feeling nauseous. I ran to the toilet and the tea came back up. So much for that!

Incidentally, the Israeli guys had just come back from Laos. One of them was saying how expensive it is now, it cost them more to travel in Laos than Thailand. (Incidentally, more recently, I read in Lonely Planet that the US has lifted a trade embargo that it had for Laos since 1970, and Laos is now a "normal trading partner" with the US. This probably has something to do with why it suddenly got expensive.)

We got back to the guest house about 1:00 and went to an Italian place for lunch, I had ravioli and dad had lasagna. Very good.

Back to room, government power was out, so no A/C, and they haven't turned their generator on, so no fan. Dad slept and I did crossword puzzles, wrote in journal and read.

About 6:30, took a trishaw to Restaurant Row for $1, used internet, I paid for my Similan Islands diving trip, then we went to Aroma 2 restaurant for Indian food. It's voted as one of the best 5 restaurants in Myanmar. We ate traditional style, off of a banana leaf!

We walked back to the hotel, got their about 9:00, I wrote in my journal some more, read and went to bed after 10:00. Dad keeps crashing early, I think the heat gets to him, because it is frickin hot here in Myanmar.

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