Saturday, September 12, 2009

Mandalay Odds and Ends

Here's a few odds and ends from Mandalay:

The menu screen for our television in our hotel room was set for Vietnamese. It was the only Vietnamese person/place/thing we saw in Myanmar.

My absolute favorite street food was in Mandalay. I happen to love Indian breads so what could be better than hot naan being made in front of you? We soaked up some delicious curries with the bread...more evidence that my stomach is becoming a rock in southeast Asia. Who can eat street curry without becoming sick (yeah, yeah, yeah...we'll all have a good laugh when I have a gigantic parasite extracted from me in a few months)?

Nearly every restaurant/hotel/building had a generator in it for the constant black outs. I don't know much about generators but perhaps the power would go out less in the country if there weren't millions of generators soaking up energy. But again, I know nothing about generators so perhaps that is an idiotic thing to say.

Here's a picture of my favorite road-side toilet. Trust me there is no irony in that statement. That said, I'm pretty sure the porcelain urinal serves no purpose and I could have just peed in the hole behind it.

One afternoon Huyen and I went to a market and bought a bunch of fruit. We bought a grapefruit from a lady who jokingly put the skin on her head. I took the skin from her and put it on Huyen's head which caused all the vendors to laugh hysterically. One of the vendors then called for her daughter to come outside to see the amazing joke I had done. The daughter -- six years old tops -- walked out and immediately started to cry when she saw me. She then took off her sandal and THREW IT AT ME. I think having a sandal thrown at me is officially the first thing that George Bush and I have in common besides our nationality.