This blog
post tells you a little bit, how we both celebrated our birthdays here in
Myanmar.
On 22 June,
Flo turned 30 years old! This was a rather busy week full of dinners, beers and
weekend preparations.
His
birthday was on a Wednesday and this is when we organised a little “happening”
on a rooftop bar here in Yangon. We invited some of our friends from CDE work,
guesthouse and leisure time. It was a nice evening, drinking some cocktails,
beers, having crispy fried finger food and enjoying the very beautiful view of
the Shwedagon pagoda.
On Friday,
we invited our Myanmar friends from the other office, from EERi, to come to our
place. We tried to cook Myanmar curries. But from the laughter of the Myanmar
friends, we could tell that we failed tremendously! :-) Finally, Nwe Nwe, the
great project assistant, took over the kitchen and saved some dishes from being
tasteless. :-)
And then,
it was finally Saturday morning, when we left our house at 6:15 a.m., took a
taxi to the bus terminal and drove all the way down to Hpa-An. Lara organised a
surprise-weekend for Flo: first rock climbing experience in Myanmar!
Over
facebook, we found some very active climbers in Yangon, who started to bolt
routes for climbing in Hpa-An and Mandalay. Happy as little children before Christmas,
we hence drove to Hpa-An to join the climbers for a weekend. Without any gear,
we arrived there but could fortunately borrow all necessary equipment from them
so that Flo could make some tries on climbing the new routes.
Because we
are now in rainy season, we had to stop climbing every now and then. But this
was also not too bad, because there were also hot springs only a few meters
away… :-)
Oh man! It was freezing cold in the bus!! And it even rained inside a little bit (over our heads).
Flo watching and getting excited! :-)
Every now and then, a rain passed by. With the rainy season, many parts of the land get flooded. But this is normal.
And finally: It's Flo's first turn!
Happy face :-)
The second route... The rocks are sharp as knifes!
Enjoying the hot springs... Sitting in the rain in the hot water and discussing about the walls and routes over there.
On 2 July,
it was then Lara’s birthday. Lucky as she was, it turned out to be a Saturday.
We got up
very late, enjoyed a delicious breakfast in a coffee shop / bakery training
center. For the first time in Myanmar, we had a very tasty and nice looking
coffee. :-)
We
continued the day with some Myanmar business cloths shopping for Lara and ended
up in an incredibly beautiful and chic restaurant “Le Planteur” at the Inya lake.
There, we had a great time enjoying the garden, exploring the old house, eating
delicious dinner, being full as hell, still receiving birthday-surprise-cake
(fortunately we could take it home, we really couldn’t finish it anymore) and
feeling the wonderful taste of cocktails and brandy.
All in all:
it was not too bad! :-)
A special
thanks to all, who made these days very special days! Either through joining
our little gatherings, or through sending lovely messages or talking over
skype.
And now, it
is nearly time to finish up our duties here in Myanmar and come home to
Switzerland for a nice gap. We are very much looking forward to seeing many of
you again!! And don’t forget: Our next and bigger goodbye party volume II will
be taking place from 30 September to 2 October in Switzerland.
See you
soon!
