Shwedagon Pagaoda & Boyoke Lake, Yangon, Myanmar

First stop today was a trip to Shwedagon Padoga. This place is massive. Its the biggest shiny pagoda I've seen in South East Asia.

There are lots of steps to walk up to it and when you get to the top you can walk around it. I lots count of the number of buddha statues there were.

 It was nice to see a group of monks getting their pictures taken.

After this we went for a walk to a place called Boyoke Lake. This was just a nice small lake in the city centre and a nice end to the day.

So, tomorrow, were off to Bagan to see lots of temples.

Aroung Yangon, Myanmar

So, we've spent the first day and a bit looking around Yangon. I must say its not the prettiest city and has some really bad traffic.

However it was still nice to see the place and get a feel for it. In the downtown area there were some interesting old buildings.

Were off to see a very nice pagoda tomorrow. Its massive, you can see it from all over the city. After this we're off to Bagan for a few days.
 

Trip to Myanmar!

Tomorrow we will be flying to Myanmar. We've got 10 days and are planning to go to Yangon, the capital city, Bagan, a place famous for it's temples and Inle Lake, which has a very nice lake. 

 

The light is only a few hours from Saigon. I'm looking forward to seeing the place, trying the food and drinking the beer. We leave Saturday morning and arrive just after lunchtime.

Long weekend of Ben Tre, Vietnam

This past weekend we had a two day public holiday. I booked to stay in a nice place in a place called Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta. We'd decided to to a road trip on my motorbike. Just so we could get out of the city.

The journey was okay, although not the picturesque scenes I thought it might be. The hotel was in quiet place on the Mekong river. The hotel was called the Ben Tre Riverside Resort and had been recommended by a friend.

As you can see, it was quite nice. There wasn't much to do, just relax by the pool and read books. 

The hotel garden

View from the hotel

View from the hotel

The surrounding area was nice with a nice park and good views of the river.

View by the river

View by the river

View by the river

Park near the hotel

Park near the hotel

It was a very nice break and its good to know I can get out the city if I need to. Back to work now. Not too long until the next holiday in Myanmar!!!

 

Darts: Spring season update

Not posted for a while. The reason for this is I've not done anything particularly interesting that deserved to be blogged about. Since my last holiday in January, I've been working hard and not had a holiday. Fortunately, I've got a couple of holidays coming up so expect some more fascinating updates soon.

Apart from working I've been doing two things regularly, going to the quiz at the local pub on Wednesday and playing darts on Tuesday. 

So, this season my darts team are back into division 3. Last season was a disaster for me. I played rubbish. This is probably because I don't practise, so I got a dart board put up on the wall at home. Combining the practise board and being in division three together, I've been expecting a better run of form and I'm happy to say that so far its going well. Below is the current league table.

As you can see my team is top of the league. I'm happy to say that I've contributed to this success too. My record is below:

I've won 4 and lost 2. I've also got a healthy number of checks and tons.

So, looking forward to continuing this. The season will go on for a while yet. It doesn't finish until June.

Big King Kong at Vivo City

Its been a few weeks since my last post as I've not had anything to write about. That was until this morning.

Over the past week or so they have been building this enormous King Kong figure outside the shopping centre near my house. Its really big as the pictures will show. Its been built to advertise the launch of the new King Kong film this weekend.

I had planned to go along this weekend and picture it and blog about it but as it happens I didn't need to because it was all over the news this morning.

So, Thursday was launch night and they has some dancing and presenting on stage as the picture below shows.

As you can see there are men with fire sticks under Kong. When they were building this I noticed that the material look highly flammable... Highly flammable material and fire sticks... what could go wrong??

Yep, you guessed it, within a few minutes of the lady on stage talking the whole thing caught fire. The pictures below speak for themselves. 

Fortunately, no one died and it could have been worse since its only about 10 meters from the shopping centre.

I've been driving past it everyday and when I drove past this morning and noticed the charred remains, at the time I didn't know what happened but since then have seen the videos on youtube. Below are the picture my mate took this morning.

It is quite amazing living in a developing country, although they are trying to catch up with the west, they are behind in so many ways, at times like these, its hard not to laugh. Something like this would never have happened in the UK due to health and safety laws. But here, nothing like this really exists or if they do, they don't follow them. Fire-sticks under highly flammable structure!!?? At the same time its what makes living here an adventure.

Here is a link to the video of it burning down, not sure how long it will be up. It may get taken down and it will be claimed it never happened. The first 3 minutes are the best. Apparently, it all cost $50,000.

King Kong burning at Vivo City

 

Anyway, I'll be watching the film this weekend. Apparently it sucks but at least I won't have to take my own photos.

Impressive red sky across Phu My Hung

Not much to blog about and its back to work today after a nice, long TET break, so I thought I'd share this impressive red sky a while back.

We had an unexpected downpour of rain which when combined with the time of day and levels of air pollution, it created this impressive sky.

It's also pretty good when you consider I took this picture on a camera phone which didn't really do it justice.