And so it begins...

Well, you all know our breathless adventure in getting visas to visit the lovely country of Myanmar (Burma). I feel a bit scattered, as it's always been Burma to me, then further as it is US Gov't policy to NOT/NOT recognize the name change initiated by Slorc (the State Law and Order Restoration Council) in 1988 (not/not being US governmentese just in case the first 'not' didn't get through to you).

Anyway, once in the country, it was Myanmar this and Myanmar that, not wanting to offend the Burmese, or whatever. As an aside, I always thought Slorc had a certain Bond-villainesque ring to it. Like SPECTRE, I can picture the head of Slorc serenely petting a cat while planning some nefarious plot, like maybe locking up all opposition and voiding a democratic election, all the while pressing rural minorities into forced labor as road construction workers or porters for the military that is constantly battling separatist movements. Oh, wait, they did that. I'm not sure about the cat-petting part, though. Anyway, after employing a US-based branding agency (or some such thing) they changed the name from Slorc to SPDC (State Peace and Development Council). There's definitely no cat-petting at the SPDC.

So, we arrived on the morning of Thursday, April 13, also known as the first day of the 5 day water festival. Of course, our cab into the city from the airport had a broken back window, so we got rather wet on the way in.

In Vientiane for Pii Mai (or the water festival, if you will), you may have a group of people on the side of the road with buckets and maybe a hose. Whoa, you yell as you drive by, why, I might have been wet had my window not been up. In Rangoon, there are business-sponsored stages set up along the road with dozens of hoses set up.

Upon seeing the first wall of water being sprayed on the road about 250 meters ahead of you, you crank frantically with the pliers the cab driver provided to try to coax the window up, but to no avail. In the end, you place your trusty backpack into the too-large space between you and the drunken Burmese with hoses, which just means that you and your backpack (and to a lesser extent your wife) are soaked through. You shake off the excess water just in time to see the next stage coming up in another 100 meters.

And so it continued into town, where we had a few hours to kill before our flight to Bagan.So we spent a few hours roaming around the Shwedegon Pagoda.