In the morning while I was checking on our bookings (bus, hotel, boat to Mandalay and flight back to Yangon before we head to Vietnam next Friday), Betty got acquainted with a real character, Lindy Mc something - a Scottish name, from Houston, TX (she said she got a great education in Baptist schools there), but isn’t Baptist now. She taught English for a couple of years here in Yangon so is very familiar with the country, seems to know some of the language, and is very knowledgeable about the politics here. She has friends and is concerned about the Rahinji people in the north, Muslims who are currently being persecuted (murdered, raped, driven out of the country) by the military. There was a lawyer a couple of weeks ago who was murdered in the Yangon airport. He had been working with this ethnic group. He also had been lawyer for State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi - a heroine here. But Lindy seemed pretty critical of her; there was a memorial service going on and she wondered if Suu Kyi would appear. Apparently she did and made a nice speech. Suu Kyi hasn’t said much publicly about the military’s actions in the north where many of these people are “escaping” over the border as refugees into Bangladesh.
Lindy is currently teaching on an island outside of Shanghai. I hadn’t heard of where she is.
We took a taxi who had a hard time finding Sakura Residence. Our $15 got us a beach towel and a lounge chair by a beautiful pool in what looked like an apartment building, with most of the crowd there seemingly foreign. There was some kind of a makeup or women’s little market in the lobby set up for the day. Because of the hot sun, the pool was as coolly refreshing as I had thought it would be! Later in the day, as part of it shaded, it got cooler. But it was still a relaxing afternoon.
After looking at the map, it looked like it would be not too bad a walk back to Pickled Tea. It wasn’t! There was a short cut the taxi hadn’t taken and we probably made it back quicker than with a taxi. I think it was that night that we went down the street for a Japanese Medical Massage, it was called. by a blind masseuse. I think it was $5. It wasn’t the most relaxing, comfortable massage as it was a lot of pushing on pressure points. And not much on my feed and none on my head, which I really like. But my bak and neck got a workout.
We then headed to Pizza Center by the market and split a delicious Caesar salad, I had garlic bread and some spicy chicken wings. We topped it off with ice cream from Spencer’s next door. On the way back was a new stupa/pagoda that Lindy had talked about watching it be built the last time she was here. We also stopped in our neighborhood one (it had been closed the night before). There were some kids playing in there so it’s kind of a community thing. It’s a really nice little neighborhood where this hostel is, off the busy streets. Back to visiting with the interesting people at the hostel.
Met Sandy and John, friends from Seattle (actually I think Sandy said he graduated from Dartmouth - like 2004 or something). John works for a senator from Washington State. His is 1/2 Korean and 1/2 Irish descent. He had some interesting comments about how things are going in Washington. He was the one telling me, when I had just heard on Facebook about my brother Rod being invited by Senator Terry from Wisconsin to be her guest at the State of the Union address! He said each congressperson is allowed so many tickets and the guests usually sit in the gallery behind the President’s family, which is frequently scanned by tv coverage. I wrote to family members to see if someone could DVR it for Rod!! How exciting! Anyway, Rod and I are going to DC in April (it was to be his FIRST trip there!) for a week. John will help me find an airbnb in a safe neighborhood for us to stay while we’re there. I think he was just on a 3 week trip!
So that was Sunday!
President U Htin Kyaw
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