Japan, VR, and Henn Na Hotel

After spending time in the relative warmth of SE Asia, we went to Japan to visit Aya's parents and spend some time in Aizu. It is always nice going back, like going home for many reasons. This time around the house was quite noisy as brother in-law plus family were staying there as well. Most of the day revolved around two energetic kids.
We did also have a new year's day meal with uncle and aunt. Mostly we just enjoyed chilling, eating, and for me, running in snowy Aizu. I spent a good deal of time with Sheri sleeping and getting in some good scratches. I also played a game where I had no idea what I was doing and I think that the rules where changing as Sota made them up. The last day we were there it snowed really hard as Aya's parents drove us to  Fukushima to catch the Shinkansen.

Arriving in Tokyo we had an unusual hotel experience. I had heard about these hotels that were run by robots and, knowing my excitement, Aya booked us at one that had just opened. The rooms themselves were pretty normal business hotel types except that they had a closet sort of thing that was supposed to clean clothing if you hung it inside. It was odd, but we tried it and our clothes did in fact seem to be a bit cleaner. The attraction at the hotel were the animated robots that checked us in and out. It was cool, but not exactly what I was expecting. I don't know quite what I thought would happen, but I guess I thought the robots would be more interactive. What happened was that we approached two dinosaur robots, yes dinosaurs, and then we interacted with a touch screen while the robots moved and spoke to us responding to what we chose on the touch screen. Other than the check in and out interaction the hotel was pretty normal, but still it was kind of fun to go.

We had an afternoon flight back to Beijing, so we decided to try a VR gaming place that Aya had read about. It was really cool. Basically it was two floors of games, all VR, ranging from normal nintendo games like Mario Kart and fishing games to haunted house type games. We tried two games, Mario Kart and Horror Hospital. Mario Kart was pretty neat and since the seat/kart we sat in also moved it added to the overall feeling. After playing the game and taking off the gear we felt kind of weird. Since the games were a bit expensive we decided on just one more and went for the horror one since there were warnings not to do it if you were especially sensitive. Standing in line waiting to play there were many screams coming from the people playing, so I was expecting some really scary stuff. It was scary. Basically you both sit (in the VR world in a wheelchair) and then use a joystick to guide yourself around a hospital trying to find the other player and get out. As you do so people come out at you, but the scariest bit was when blades or things got close or cut you. Based on the VR head gear it really did seem like the blades were plunging into you, an uneasy feeling. I'm sure if we get a chance to we will try more games again some day. 

After enjoying Japan, we chilled at the airport lounge at Haneda, watching the planes come and go and waiting for our turn to return to Beijing.

Yangon

We only stayed in Yangon for two nights and a day, so we didn't get to see as much of it as maybe we would have liked. However, we did make it to what is probably the main attraction, Shwedagon Pagoda. From our hotel, the first night, we went to the rooftop restaurant to eat dinner and enjoy the view (the power was off, until the generator kicked in). In the far distance you can see the tops of the pagoda, which we would visit the next day. The sunset, which we would come back for the follow night, was really pretty. Below us, birds and people were gathering for their nightly meal, so it got quite noisy, but still was worth a second visit. 

The next day we got up late and made our way to the pagoda by foot. As we got closer to the temple area it as unclear how to navigate the warrens of alleyways to get to the gates, but we saw 5-6 young monks moving in the direction of the temple, so we followed them and shortly arrived at the temple. There, we had to remove our shoes and cover our legs and shoulders. We then climbed a number of steps to get to the top, which was very busy with pilgrims. 

There were a few odd things about the temple grounds, first, there were stations for the days of the week that you were born on and you were supposed to pray to that day. I picked Sunday, which I am not sure if it was right, but I feel like a 'born on Sunday' type of guy.  Also, the pagoda is supposed to contain some of the Buddha's hair, but I couldn't find out where and Aya wasn't that interested, so we were split on it (huzah!)

The other unusual thing was that there was an inscription that was found on the temple grounds that verified how long the temple had been around. There is speculation as to how old the temple is, but not definitive proof earlier than this insciruption, so we went to check it out. For future reference, go to MONDAY, hang a left, go past the large bodhi tree and you'll find it under an open air canopy with a sleeping guard. There is the Dhamazedi inscription, made in 1485! Whenever I come across things like this, which are very old in human years, I try to think of what else was happening in the world at that time. In that year, the new world of the America's was just about to be cracked by europeans. A lot has changed in the world. 

After spending some time at the pagoda, we headed downtown to visit the old post office and walk around a bit. You can clearly see a lot of the old buildings from the British days still intact, though that is now changing as Myanmar opens and develops. After walking around the streets for a bit, staring upward, we visited a large modern shopping mall, looking for socks for Aya. 

That night, we again sat and watched the sunset on a beautiful day on Yangon. The next day we were off for a couple of days in Thailand and then on to Japan for the new year. 

Bagan

Bagan was something else. We've been to a lot of places that are a bit similar in what they feel like or represent, like Cairo or maybe Siam Reap, with ancient architecture  that makes you say 'wow'. We've never experienced something quite like this though. Bagan's temples stretched out before us in every direction. Since the area was not too big, but would take time to travel by on foot, we decided to rent an e-scooter each day to get around, it was quite fun and not too dangerous. I could name temples, but there are just so many of them and let's say that we went to all the main  ones, plus a few more. 

On the first day we arrived in the afternoon so we just chilled and walked to the end of the road near our hotel. This is where the pineapple looking temple was located. We scoped it out as it was supposed to be a nice point to watch the sunset, but what we should have anticipated was that everyone else thought that too. We ended up going nearby to a river boat for dinner, an odd little place where we were the only customers and the owner, a foreigner, was kicking about on the shore trying to do landscaping or something. On the way there we walked through a small cluster of homes and a few kids ran out to try to sell us postcards. Some of them were just crayon drawing, I suppose the smallest kids saw the older kids making money off selling cards and wanted a  piece of the action. However, one girl was selling a set of 10 cards for about 1 dollar. I hadn't seen anywhere near that price at any of the tourist stands, so I went for it. I felt great that I got a great deal, about 75% of what the stands were selling, but I also felt kind of bad because I think the kid maybe just got excited and said the wrong price. Hot off my major deal, stomach full of fish and eyes full of river and mountain sunset, we turned in for the first night. 

Day two we rented the e-scooter and rode to our first temple then on to the local market. The first temple was beautiful, but we had a funny run in before we entered. As we were coming up to the temple on the side we couldn't exactly see where to park the scooter. While we were moving up a side lane some women came out of a doorway and said, "enter, enter" and sure enough, above the door was painted the word "Entrance". So we parked and went in. As soon as we did the women tried to sell us some things and one of them even managed to pin a little butterfly broach on me. I didn't really realize until we had managed to shake them off that the butterfly was a tag so that when I came back for my shoes the lady would have something to pin (like that one mom?) on me and of course she did, but I held my will and didn't buy anything. I've gotten stronger over the years of running into touts and I don't feel so bad anymore, but maybe a little. Maybe I was just hyped from my previous days good buy on the postcards. The temple grounds themselves were beautiful and since we were there somewhat early in the morning there weren't too many people and the air was cool. Right after we rode to the market in town, a crazy complex of a really big covered area. There were vendors of every kind and tourist stalls and local stalls were mixed. We then had lunch and headed back to the hotel for an afternoon rest.

Later that day we headed to the Nann Myint tower going the long way around to cruise a little bit. The tower was about 5 dollars a person, kind of expensive (relative to the service) we thought and for a few minutes we considered sending up just one of us. In the end we both went up because, what is 5 dollars each to spend on something we will do once? Once up to the top floor, I think it was the 13th floor, we had quite a good view of the landscape. However, I think the tower is actually too high. As you look out on the temples in the area they appear more like tiny dots without much detail. We spent a bit of time taking a rest on top and then headed our way down. On the map we were carrying there seemed to be a shortcut to the next place we were going and as we were bouncing down the sandy lanes we started signing 'born to be wild' (me, actually). Less than 5 minutes later our scooter was stuck in deep sand and it was obvious that we had taken a wrong turn. We pushed and cajoled our scooter out of the sand and up a ridge eventually, but by that point the headiness of riding around had faded. We took the long, and safe, way home. As we wound our way along the dusty tracks the sun was starting to set, so we saw a lot of people gathering at the temples for the sunset viewing. Today, we were going to skip that exercise because we had other plans, but the next day we would. 

Early (ish) the next day we hired a car to head to the nearby temple at Mt. Popa. The prior day at Nann Myint tower we had seen it far, far in the distance and from pictures it looked pretty neat, so we decided to get a driver to make the half day journey there and back. Our driver was pretty chill and the ride was fairly uneventful  except when we neared the mountain. Along the road were people in small groups and as we passed they would wave. At first I thought, surely, they are waving for a ride, but as we went on there were more and more people and they weren't gathered in one spot but spread about 50 meters apart. It was really odd. I would find out on the way back that they were waving to tourists and that sometimes people threw money out the windows at them. What a job, if you can call it that. 

Mt. Popa was pretty cool. Our driver dropped us about 1km from the start of the mountain as the road was jammed with buses and people. There were motor bike taxis, but we walked assuming it wouldn't be that far and it luckily turned out that it wasn't. The base of the hill was jam packed with pilgrims, cars, motorcycles, etc. It was a bizarre bazaar of people, animals, and machines. As we approached the staircase we were directed to take off our shoes. This was not unusual as every temple ground asked you to do this. From there forward we started climbing the stairs with the other pilgrims. The 770 stairs to the top were packed with people and the occasional monkey and we often had to stop to wait for people to clear out. Getting to the top was a beautiful view and we spent some time there enjoying the breeze before making the descent. At the bottom of the stairs, after retrieving our shoes, we tried to decide what to do next. Standing at the edge of the churning mass of people trying to figure out how to get to a look out point opposite Mt. Popa, we eventually decided that it would be too far/hard to walk it so we would need to get a taxi. We asked two motorbike driver who were chilling by the road, showed them the map, described the place, and then we each hoped on their bikes. It was a fun ride, but it ended too quickly and Aya and I both thought, what the hell? The bikes stopped on the main road to the town, not near where we were going. As it turns out they stopped right by our driver's car, but how did they know he was our driver? We never told them? It was odd, but we didn't ask what happened. We just kind of looked at each other and said, whatever, lets go back to town, because at that point we were getting pretty tired. Originally we did not have a plan for later in the day, but since we arrived back and had lunch around 2pm we thought we would rent an e-scooter again and just tool around to some temples aiming to watch the sunset. As we did we ran into our friends from Beijing and decided to go together to the sunset. Many of the temples in the area were off limits to people climbing them for pretty obvious reasons like instability of the temple and potential destruction from tourists. We did see some people breaking into areas they should not have been, but we avoided that and eventually we found a temple where people were clearly gathering  and watched from there, a very nice end to the day.

On the third day I got up early and had a run around the temples. It was nice and cool in the morning and the temples were beautiful in the morning light, but there was a lot of smoke from burning garbage and small cooking fires. Overall the air quality in Myanmar was pretty poor. We didn't know this for sure, as there are no official readings, but it was pretty clear by the thickness and smell of the air in Bagan, Inle, and Yangon. After my run we rented the scooter again and took the long route around to see some of the further temples that we hadn't before. It was a pretty leisurely day and we didn't get up to much. In the evening, Christmas Eve, we met up with our Beijing friends for dinner. It was quite a nice way to spend the holiday and our last night in Bagan. The next day, we were off to Yangon. 

Aung Traditional Puppetry

We had read about this place on trip advisor, or something, and figured that there wasn't much to do in the town of Nyaungshwe at night, so we should come early to guy tickets and secure our seats. Cost was about 5 dollars each, which I felt like it was a bit much as I looked around the small simple theater room, but probably worth it.

When we arrived back at 6:50 pm, ten minutes before the show start, we peeked inside and saw an empty room of about twenty chairs. At first we thought that maybe we got the time wrong, but we were asked inside and sat down with some tea and candies. We were given a book where people had written comments and then the madam disappeared behind a curtain. We thought for sure that more people would be coming, but as we paged through the visitor's book we saw that many of the entries were spaced far apart in date and some of them even said, "I was the only one here". So it was for us too, we got a private show!
The puppet master came at 6:55 and he and madam prepared the stage. They used a recording to introduce each of 20 different puppets and dances. I thought the recording was very cozy as it sounded like it was on a vinyl record and the accent of the woman speaking was kind of like an old English accent. Imagine the old recordings of the Jungle Book maybe and you can get an idea.

After we had watched the show we talked a bit with the puppet master and he told us he was from a family of puppeteers. He also tried to sell us some of the puppets they had on display. It worked! I bought one of the medium sized puppets for about 10 dollars. What a deal really! I would have gotten a larger one for about 35 dollars, but I was thinking about room in my bag so I didn't.
After the show we walked down the dark lanes of Inle, smiling a bit at the whimsical show we just witnessed.