Mandalay Hill

On the Mandalay Hill  we were admiring a great monastery and people working at its renewal. From the hill we could enjoy a beautiful panorama which confirmed the enormity of city with more than one million inhabitants.   We are leaving out the names of the monasteries, temples and stupas, because ...

Mandalay and its life

Mandalay on the Irrawaddy River is the second largest city in Burma. In the nineteenth century it was briefly the capital of the country. The city has about a hundred workshops making votive gold flakes. This job involves many hours of ponding a plate of gold, until it become a very thin flake. The...

Burma or Myanmar

The country has eight nationalities (called here the races), and in each there are varying ethnic groups which total up to 165! Hence permanent deep social and political separations, and in the past, for those reasons, the country had easily surrendered to the British colonization.   At present, B...

Asiatique

Asiatique is a large outdoors shopping centre in form of a theme park. Situated on the river Chao Phraya, in place of the old transhipment port of, formerly managed by the Chinese. This is a middle class shopping centre, but you have fun there at any time of the day, if the weather allows. We happ...

Bangkok first

We got to Bangkok via Helsinki with Finnair. Traditionally, here we begin our travel in Southeast Asia. We get organized here and get rid of the jet-lag. Today we are going to the ancient capital of the kingdom of Thailand - Ayuttaya. The Kingdom existed in the years 1330-1767 . The most interest...

Good-bye

It's time to say good-bye to Rio and come back to our gray and cold reality. We have managed to charge our sun batteries and get pleased with the beauty of Brazilians. The long-haul flight via Paris to Berlin is not the best part of the trip, but we will survive. We would like to send you our best...

Sunday Crafts Fair in Ipanema

Today is our last Sunday in Rio. In the evening we fly off to Europe. In the morning we have time to go to the Sunday crafts fair in Osório Square in Ipanema, a five-minute walk from our apartment. This market has a long history and is closely connected with the development of Ipanema as a place of...

A rainy day

Yes, it does happen. Suddenly there are clouds and the rain comes. It's raining non-stop for one and a half day. Just when we need to feel the warmth of the sunshine on the beach. But this is not the end of the world. We know how to make those moments enjoyable. Well, we did make them enjoyable. Si...