Most guidebooks list their three must-see tourist attractions in Burma as the Shwedagon Pagoda, the temples of Bagan, and Inle Lake. The latter was the last stop on our whirlwind tour through the country. As we visited off-season, water levels in this freshwater lake were low. The views from the boat were nonetheless extremely pretty.
Nga Phe Chaung post office on stilts
The ancient temples of Bagan are another highlight on Myanmar’s tourist trail. While not as known internationally as say Angkor Wat, the 2,000-odd temples that litter this 26-mile plateau in central Burma are no less impressive. Most of them date back to the 11-13th centuries AD and frequent earthquakes and general decay left many of them in a state of disrepair. Until Burma’s junta embarked on its controversial beautification project. 
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Yangon has plenty of dilapidated but more or less intact colonial-era architecture. Decades of international isolation saved the city from masses of overzealous real estate developers. As Burma is opening up, people have begun to wonder whether this heritage can be kept alive.
The Shwedagon Pagoda was the first of the major sights on our list in Rangoon. Both its dimensions and the lavish use of gold create an amazing ambience that make this one of the most spectacular examples of Buddhist architecture.
We have arrived in Rangoon, capital of Burma/Myanmar, yesterday and already covered quite a bit of ground. Despite the torrid heat. I thought I’d put up a few iPhone shots that I took yesterday to mark the first of hopefully many posts to come while we’re in this fascinating country for the next four weeks.
I figure this blog has been turning into a bit of a travelog as of late: me and my wife are on the road, and after spending a bit more than a week with family in India, we’re now in Bangkok. It is great to be back. Fresh out of high school, my first backpacking trip across South East Asia started here in 2001.
Monk taking photo at Wat Arun, Bangkok
A photo of the Taj Mahal in Agra can’t really capture the magic of the place. Despite the myriad visitors I found the place to be serene. I was lucky in that the light on the day of our visit was not too bright, bringing to the fore the magic glow of the marble used to build the tomb.
My wife and I are on a short stopover in India, where we are meeting her family. We spent two nights in Varanasi, a holy city on the banks of the river Ganges. Two boat trips revealed the changing face of the Ghats – the stairs leading to the water – and the activity surrounding them. The views were most beautiful just after sunrise and I thought I’d share a few of them without too much of the regular commentary.
I just got back from a short trip to Dresden. My parents treated us to the hotel, so we had to go with their choice of location in the fringes of the renovated old town. It proved to be a decent place and took us past the very interesting Pirnaischer Platz each day. Here, two buildings stood out, necessitating some further research.
We flew to Okinawa over the new year to escape the (admittedly mild) winter here in Tokyo for a few days. The weather held up to its reputation (we even swam in the ocean!), the beaches were beautiful and the food tasty. Now back in Tokyo, it’s time for me to put up a few pictures of the trip and look back at the first three months of my blogging here.
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