New names, new world!

We are in the Motherland as Ted calls it! We arrived in Rangoon on Tuesday and were overwhelmed with the welcomes and generosity!

Our day books are very full with social engagements and therefore we haven't had much time to email! Let me give the run down!

First of all, Ted and I love the beautiful parks and the city of Rangoon...it was great to get out of the Backpacker world of Bangkok! Yangon (Rangoon) has a lot of the old British architecture and the parks are immaculately maintained. As is the Shwe Dagon Pagoda (the most famous Rangoon landmark)...We are just a short walk to the Pagoda!

The first day, Diana and Megan (Ted's second cousins) picked us up from the airport and helped us with some organizational things (ie., you can't change money at a bank , you must go to a Money Changer and they only deal in currency as high as 1000 kyats = $1 US....It was very interesting!). They took us on a brief tour and out for lunch! They are wonderful ladies and they were so excited to see Ted and meet more family! Diana works as a Travel Agent and Megan is a lawyer.

The next day we went to their house for lunch and met their older brother Robin. They spent the entire morning making us some of the best food ever! (Shrimp curry, mutton curry, pennywort salad and many others... before serving great banana pudding and congyabaung - a great glutinous rice dish). We had a great time sharing pictures and stories! The meal was typical Burmese (I think we were there for 4 hours!). That evening we went out with our friend, Kya Kya's sister and husband (Melody and Than Tun) and had more wonderful food!!

The following day was tonnes of fun as Diana took us on a tour of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda. We made offerings to the Buddha (there is a Buddha that you pray to for the day of the week you were born). We also laid gold leaf on a Buddha. We were really excited to go to the Astrologer that Diana has visited. She was amazingly accurate and gave Ted and me wonderful fortunes. Apparently, we are a very lucky couple (because we were born on Wednesday (Jen) and Monday (Ted)). She told us many interesting things! She also gave us new Burmese names that mean that we will grow and become famous!

That afternoon we located an old school friend of Ted's dad, Don. Percy and Don grew up together in Maymyo (Pyin Oo Lwin). We met him and he treated us to an afternoon of Kachin beer, great Dagon beer and many funny stories. We spent several hours becoming slightly tipsy in his living room! He and his son, Kim took us for lunch and by the end of the day we were exhausted!!

Friday, The full moon holiday, was low key as Ted and I went to a lake and had a picnic! We had another great walk and spent the evening with Melody, Than Tun and Daw Kyi Kyi. We had an amazing meal of many of our favourite foods!

We are so lucky to be in Burma. It does feel like you step back in time. Monks line the streets, everyone wears longyi and people first stare at us and then smile! We are definitely off the beaten track. We are really excited to go back to Diana and Melody's tomorrow for Mo Hinga (one of my favourite meals).

Signing off for now....Aye Chan Myint (Jen) and Hein Tet Zaw (Ted)!