Burmese 'adventures'

Got a lot to cover here, so please excuse me if I just do a series of highlights and stuff.

• So everyone should already know about the government firewalls in place there. In fact, after I posted here and signed up to that new Email account (which is not in use I hasten to add.) they blocked both the sites, despite me deleting the history and stuff. I guess they're pretty on top when it comes to security.
• And this is because the government controlling Burma (or Myanmar) is a proper no holds barred military dictatorship that flexes it muscles controlling almost every aspect of Burmese people's lives.
• Of course being tourists we didn't see too much of it, cos that would ruing their already tarnished inmage, so we were only allowed to visit a handful of places (most charging a fee in dollars to get in) and some entire regions were out of bounds because the government wasn't entirely in control due to freedomfighters rebels and proper serious stuff like that.
• One very small example of the regime is the fact that children who have finished school (some only have 3 years of schooling) are put to work building roads bridges and public buildings, which is fucking dark. It reminded me (and I apologise for once again using an entertainment medium to describe something far from... ) of the second Indiana Jones movie with all the little kids put to work in the mines... truly nasty.
• We hired a car and driver to take us on a whistlestop tour of Burma, it was a little more expensive than taking public transport, but for one we weren't giving our money directly to the government and we didn't have that much time and the roads were pretty bad and the public transport system was more than a little antiquated.
• We saw a load of cool sites including:
• THE AMAZING GOLDEN ROCK! This is an important Buddhist site, apparently whilst visiting Burma, Buddha spotted this rock that was about to topple off the side of a mountain (it's a big rock) so he plucked a hair from his head and placed it on one side of the rock thus balancing it out. It's remained there ever since and is a really nice place, despite the ride in the back of a big flatbed with boards across and the walk up pretty steep roads.
• INLE LAKE! This is a big lake where the locals have decided rather than living next to the lake it's better to live on top of it. There's a largish town there which resembles a 'wild west' version of vencice, all the restaurants and bars face directly out into the water and all the buildings are on stilts. It was a brilliant place, they had giant tomato gardens on the water (hydroponics anyone?) and an amazing buddhist monastery where they had about twenty cats and the abbot has trained them to jump through a little hoop. It's pretty amazing seeing it and there are always loads of buddhist pilgrims who come to see it. My mum would've absolutley loved it. Also at Inle (because of the great tomatoes)they have fantastic Italian restaurants (I had Gnocchi) which has priobably directly led to me seeing more Italians in the crippled Junta that is Burma than in the whole rest of SE Asia so far.
• BIG BUDDHAS! All over the place lying down, sitting, standing up.... Everywhere, some were absolutley massive as well. We wentto a cave that contained something ridiculous like 9000 golden buddhas and were totally non fazed because by that point we had definitley reached Buddha saturation.
• STUPAS! And come to think of it, PAGODAS! All over Burma on every hill top and nestled in the woods and plains are these temple thingies, very pretty and exotic and definitley lends a proper exotic air to the place. (especially when everyone lights up their bonfires at dusk)
• KALAW! Little mountain town that has the greatest Napalise food and brilliant little hikes around the place. Was like a little version of Sapa in Vietnam but as it would have been in the fifties or something. It was quiet and picturesque (British colonial cottages and village greens lent the place a very idyllic English countryside feel.)
• BAGON! Burma's version of Angkor Wat... It was absolutley breathtaking. There are thousands of little temples and Stupas of a nine mile area, all in various different states of disrepair, unfortunatley I had broken one of my camera's memory cards, so couldn't take as many pictures as I wanted. It was absolutley brilliant though.

Some quick memories:

• Driving around the Burmese countryside listening to the pixies, Jay Z, The killers and Underworld on our driver's Jerry rigged but booming In Car Entertainment System.
• Sitting on top of a temple waiting for sunset when suddenly we hear DJ Shadow echoing out from somewhere. Look down and it's AR (the driver) who's opened all the doors and boot to rinse out his system like he's at MAX POWER or something.
• Playing 'two for flinching' for about 8 days straight.
• Beating everyone at Shithead almost constantly.
• The owner of one hotel telling us that we could stay with him for as long as we wanted for free if we got hold of some guns for him.
• scrambled egg for breakfast every single day.
• The torture that is Burmese massage.
• The Vegas in tents festival at the Golden rock. Dunno it's proper name but it was entirely based around weird medieval gambling games... Quick now... What are you going to bet on? Catfish or Crayfish?

I could go on and will probably think of some more things, but hope this gave you a little taste of my Burmese holiday?