10-1 (Sunday) Yangon, Myanmar/Burm

May Thu, a girl whom I met through a friend in China, came over to the hotel at 7:30 this morning and gave us her proposal on a tour. Her price included our hotels. We told her we would think about it and let her know. We asked her about changing US dollars into Myanmar Kyats. She said she would send the “money broker” over to our room after we had breakfast.

Breakfast was nothing compared to what we had in Bangkok. Probably the best part was the toast and jelly if that tells you anything.

It was only about 5 minutes after we got back to the room that May Thu arrived with her sister and sister-in-law. They had a plastic bag FULL of money! I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw how much money was in their bag. There are no coins in Myanmar and the 1000 bills are huge. That’s what we mostly use. I changed $150 US into Kyats (pronounced Chats) and Joyce changed $200. I had 200 in 1000 bills plus a few small bills. It was a huge stack of money. You had to rubber band it in sections. I look like Sponge Bob Square Pants because I have so much money in my money belt. I can’t even begin to get the Myanmar money in my belt. Like everyone else I have to carry my loot in at grocery sack!

We decided to go with May Thu and her tour program. Her father was going to be our guide and we would have a driver. We planned to leave the next day at 6 a.m. for Began.

We took a taxi downtown to Scott’s Market just to have a look around. I didn’t have the right kind of current converter with me to recharge my camera battery so I bought a new converter. I also bought a small watercolor for less than $3 and a “pear” necklace for less than $3.

Joyce and I both bought prescription sunglasses for $50 each. That included the frames. The guy said he would have them ready for us by 5:00 that afternoon!

We hired a taxi to drive us by Aung San’s daughter’s house where she has been under house arrest for almost 15 years. The taxi driver almost went pale when I told him we wanted to drive by there. When he found out we wouldn’t stop he agreed to do it. There are police stationed outside her compound and a barricade that they can use to stop traffic if need be. You can’t really see anything but it was interesting. Then we drove to her father’s home where she grew up. It is now a museum. The original furniture was still in place. There was an old caretaker there who took great pleasure in showing us through the whole house and telling us all about it.

We went back to the hotel to rest for a little then we went back to Scott’s Market to pick up our sun glasses. They are wonderful. I can see and read better with them than I can the glasses I had made at home.

On our way home we had the driver drop us off at Shwedagon Pagoda. He dropped us off at the foreigner’s entrance where we had to pay the equivalent of $5 to go up on the lift and tour the pagoda. It started raining while we were up there. Some guy attached himself to us as our unofficial tour guide. Of course he was hoping for a tip for giving us all this information. He didn’t know who he was dealing with. At the end he asked for a tip as I knew he would. Oh well . . .

We took a cab back to the hotel since it was still raining. We went to the grocery store next door and bought juice for the morning. We packed and got ready for our 5 a.m. wake up call.