Myanmar

Hi. Ok, so the whole blogging effort wasn't really successful for me initially but I'm going to give it a fair shot this time. As you can see it's been some time since I first dipped my toes in the blogging waters and lots and lots has happened since then. Rather than try to fill in all the news from the many many months which have passed so far I'll start brand new today and any old news will tell itself. I've titled this post, Myanmar because that's where we are. Yangon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar

Don's job has taken us here and we are pretty excited about our new adventure. We're very lucky and the post has been adjusted to suit us. We're here only for 3 months initially. We're returning to Perth mid December as we've visitors arriving (the day after we return!) and I also need to give birth around the 5th of February. After that we'll take a little time to adjust to being 4 instead of 3 and then we'll head back out here. That's the plan for now at least.

We arrived last Thursday and took the day to catch up on sleep. The last few weeks have tired us out. We are staying in a serviced apartment at the moment. This means very little cleaning and not much washing. so so sad?! The apartment has two bedrooms and plenty of room. It's a little tired looking and could do with a few repairs and some new furniture but we really arrived expecting the worst so were pleasantly impressed. That said, I plan to head down for a chat with the manager at some stage today with my list! The link photos are possibly a few years old.

http://www.allmyanmar.com/espace%20avenier/espace_avenir_hotel_&_apartments.htm

We're heading out this morning to the Australian Embassy to get registered and pick up any useful info they might have for us. I do need a pregnancy related jab in a few weeks and I need to find out if i can get it here and where to do so. If not we have to do a visa run to Singapore in a couple months so I can arrange to have it there.

The local currency here is the kyat or the US dollar. No credit cards except in some of the hotels. the exchange rate is about 1200 kyat to one dollar. As you can imagine, when we changed some of our US dollars into kyat we ended up with quite the cash pile! Our first trip to the supermarket we were at the checkout for ages counting out 78,000 kyat in 1000 kyat notes. It took a few minutes. Here's a photo of Don with our stash!

Cushla seems to be settling in well. She was great on the flight over and doesn’t seem to have noticed that she’s had three different bedrooms in the last month. We moved house in Perth two weeks before we left. She seems to be the main attraction here when we go anywhere. A little celebrity! She’s such a performer though. No matter how grumpy she is for us she’ll always manage a big mega grin for a fan.

I mentioned we’ve been to a supermarket and really there’s not too much to complain about. Lots of recognisable brands and disposable nappies, even Heinz organic baby food so we should be ok i think. The problem won’t be the supermarket more our kitchen. We’ve no oven but two gas and two electric rings and I plan to use this as an excellent excuse to do less cooking.
We’re not allowed to drive here for several reasons. Firstly, it’s nuts! Secondly, although cars drive on the right side of the road the cars can be either right or left hand drive and should you hit somebody or something you are always at fault and are likely to be hauled off to jail. We have a driver. I can just about pronounce his name now but won’t attempt a spelling just yet. Everybody seems a little amused by Cushla’s car seat. The driver’s day off is Sunday and when we headed out yesterday in a taxi we had to hail three before we found one with a seatbelt to secure the seat. I’m sure they all think we’re bonkers!

More photos soon.

Gx