Quick stop at our Thiripyitsaya Hotel (stunning cottages) before setting off for one monastery – (Mingalazedi Pagoda) where we climb to the top and see view
– then on to Bupaya for stunning river view and prayers for our folks – Janie dispensed hundreds of pens to charming children.
Dinner at Si Thu with puppet show and dancing. Pork balls, quite good and for once an edible beef curry. Not much else of note – deservedly early night.
A placeholder piece which shows the full itinerary and has links to the albums of all our photographs for this trip can be found by clicking here or the link below:
Rose ridiculously early (4 am) – I tried to persuade Ko Khaw to collect us with a trishaw while we were still sleeping, but he refused our request.
Instead we collected packed breakfast and set off at 4:45 for the river port. In almost pitch darkness, we crossed two local ferry boats already team with people, food and trade [see headline picture and those that follow] on to the “tourist vote” – more luxurious.
Much to photograph at sunrise on the first stretch, then little to see, apart from the occasional stops where vendors tried to sell us bananas and monounauk (palm sugar and rice cake). So we read, took some sun, caught up on sleep. Had a long, lingering, packed lunch – slept some more – read some more – take a little more sun and photographed our arrival at Pagan (Bagan).
A placeholder piece which shows the full itinerary and has links to the albums of all our photographs for this trip can be found by clicking here or the link below:
Relatively late start. Set off for Amarapura – looked at bronze costings and wood carving places along the way – examined one humble home in some detail, including a densely populated, young woman showing off her spread.
Then onto Mahagandhayon Monastery where we were able to witness the monks dining (circus style) while Daiso [Janie] decided that she wasn’t feeling very well. After sending out the search parties throughout the monastery, we were joyfully reunited and then looked around the masters quarters, senior students quarters and a dormitory (where Daiso’s pencils and glacier mints, went as fast as a rabbit down a hole).
A blind man in the Mahagandhayon grounds
Next – on to U Bein Bridge where we took pictures and bought a picture for Daiso – also bought a weird root vegetable (ice potato) which we ate for/with lunch. Then on to lunch at Emerald Green, good chicken soup, not much else.
Taungthaman Lake
I cannot find a modern reference to that restaurant nor to the root vegetable that Kyaw called “ice potato”. The restaurant long gone I expect, the vegetable no doubt known as something else. It reminded me of daikon, if I remember correctly.
Then on to Bagaya Monastery with 400 Buddha images – then to see silk weaving and did business on six longyis!
We didn’t take this bus to the silk weaving and longhyi factoryThis lady selling betel nut along the way
Then on to Aya Bridge across Irrawaddy (no photos directly, but scenes around the bridge). Then back to ferr yboat crossed river (can take photos of bridge now )– then into pony and trap for back-breaking ride around Ava [aka Innwa or Inwa] – 18th century, monasteries/temple/Paya. – Eventually (numb) get to the other Bagaya Monastery (stunning) where few monks live.
The Old Ava Bridge – subsequently replacedIt’s amazing that, in that contraption, we only took a pony and trap in one sense of the phraseWorth the bone-breaking ride
We took the bone breaking ride back to the ferry and wended our way home via the longyi shop (where they have sewn up how longyis for us). Dinner at Honey Garden restaurant where we continue to fail to get any duck, but we are compensated with excellent double cooked pork and shrimp rolls. Early night.
A placeholder piece which shows the full itinerary and has links to the albums of all our photographs for this trip can be found by clicking here or the link below:
Rose early, flew to Mandalay and checked in at Sedona. First day of touring – The Mahamuni Pagoda with its bazaars on all sides and gold leaf covering of the image. A generous local invited Ged Ladd [Me] to apply some of his gold leaf to the Buddha. (See headline image also shown below). We see monks and nuns in the grounds and touch, healing Khmer statues.
This couple wedding-feasting at Eternal Restaurant
Eat at Eternal Restaurant with pork bun and Tom Yum soup and fine Chinese broccoli and not much else of note. Then on to see a factory where the gold leaf hammering is done. Daisy [Janie] dispensed pens with reckless abandon. Then onto the grounds of the Old Palace, now containing a somewhat gaudy replica. (The British “did a Wurtzburg” on the original at the end of World War II).
Daisy surveying the “Old” Palace
Then onto Shwenandaw Monastery (part of the old palace, which had been built and moved “MFI/IKEA style”) with fine, old wood, carvings…
Atumashi – stunning on the outside…...while the naffness of this game show Buddha has to be seen live for the full effect
…and then on to Kuthodaw Pagoda, with amazing tombstone-like slabs of Buddhist Scriptures. There the local girls told Janie how pretty I am (as usual). Across the way to the Sandamuni Pagoda, where the unfortunately named U-Khanti translated, Pali scriptures into Burmese.
Ian politely tells Khaw that we are “pagodad out” now
Home for a quick siesta before going up to the Mandalay Hill to watch the sunset
Sedona for siesta
Another short break before going across the road for a Burmese meal at Pyigyimon Restaurant – mostly notable for a superb lentil soup and “sandal leather” beef – the curry sauces were good.
A placeholder piece which shows the full itinerary and has links to the albums of all our photographs for this trip can be found by clicking here or the link below:
Monday 2 November 1998 – Left London in morning. Flew day/night to Kuala Lumpur, then transit on to Rangoon arriving mid morning 3 November.
Tuesday 3 November 1998 – Tired and travel weary. Met by Ko Kyaw, our guide. Slept afternoon – rose early evening. Looked around Hotel [Inya Lake] – dined in “Grill” restaurant. Tried varied Burmese menu, including chicken salad, tomato salad, mango pickle, shrimp condiment, chicken curry, snapper & shrimp, vegetable vermicelli, mixed vegetables, mung bean soup, and Burmese tea.
We must have been seriously travel weary when we arrived in Yangon, as we didn’t take a single, solitary photograph that day. In our defence, we knew that we would be returning to Yangon later in our trip.
A placeholder piece which shows the full itinerary and has links to the albums of all our photographs for this trip can be found by clicking here or the link below:
Let’s just say that we wouldn’t now (writing 25 years later) attempt quite such a full itinerary for a Friday through Monday long weekend jaunt. Three plays at Stratford, a motorised hike to the Welsh Borders for lunch at The Walnut Tree before going on to Hay-On-Wye for some overnight- second-hand-book-buying on my part before stopping off for a long lunch at Raymond Blanc’s place (Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons) in Oxfordshire and then home.
I think we stayed in the Shakespeare for this trip. Janie booked it but only wrote down “Twelfth Night Room £115 per night” which I suspect in those days was a suite or certainly a superior room.
The RSC does far less modern material at Stratford these days (he says 25 years later), which is one of the main reasons why we go there far less frequently now.
On the Sunday morning, we drove on to Abergavenny. One of Janie’s clients had recommended The Walnut Tree Inn, with very good reason – we had a magnificent Sunday lunch there. It seems that the place didn’t have a Michelin Star yet when we visited, but it was certainly star-standard food and service. It has had a chequered history in-between times, improving and then losing its reputation, but in more recent years it seems to be doing extremely well. We’re glad.
Then on to Hay-On-Wye, where we stayed at my favourite stop-over place there – The Old Black Lion. I recall buying rather a lot of second-hand books at relatively high speed – some late afternoon/early evening on the Sunday, and then more first thing in the morning Monday. I think this was the trip upon which I found a pristine copy of The Boundary Book in a most unlikely place, something I had been seeking for several years. These days such things are not so hard to find while simply sitting on your backside, although my copy with the original bat-shaped cardboard book mark on a piece of ribbon is possibly still a rare find.
We had allowed more than two hours to get from the Welsh Borders to Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons, but should have allowed far longer for a cross-country narrow road hike on a Monday – lots of slow-moving rural vehicles with no chance of overtaking for miles. Janie phoned in to say that we would be at leats half-an-hour late for our 13:30 booking and was told that technically they take last roders at 14:00 but they would be flexible on that as long as we arrived soon after two…which we did.
It was a beautiful day and Raymond Blanc himself came out to greet us soon after we arrived, telling us with great charm that he had heard that we had experienced a difficult journey but that we should be sure to relax and enjoy our lunch at leisure. Fabulous food. Possibly the first time I had spent quite so much money on a single meal (£260, when that amount was real money), despite the fact that we only had a glass of wine each. An absolutely wonderful and unforgettable experience.
We weren’t supposed to be spending a week in Mallorca. We were supposed to be spending two weeks in Burma and a week in Malaysia. But we deferred our planned trip until the autumn, due to Janie’s twin, Phillie’s indisposition. The compromise was to take this short break in early spring, between Phillie’s initial surgery and the start of her myriad of follow-up ops and treatments.
The bedroom came with a guard bear named Julio, who you can just about see guarding from above in the next picture:
The bathroom had a rubber duck.
We respectfully left the bear and duck in situ at La Residencia, but subsequently have always had at least one duck in our main home. As for a bear, we had for some years had a bear, named Geddy The Teddy, but he went to stay with Phillie to keep her company when she was in hospital later that year and stayed with Phillie henceforward. Then Kim arranged for Hippity to join us and the rest is history:
…but I digress.
I didn’t keep a log on this holiday but we did shoot a roll of film each, 32 of which are labelled and set out in the Flickr album below:
While about half of those grace this article.
We played tennis pretty much every day (I think we were rained off one day), including, unusually for us, a couple of sessions with the wonderful coach there, George. Yes, really he was called George. We learned quite a lot from him in a short period of time. Gentle instruction and lots of encouragement.
We had hired a car for this trip, although we didn’t use it all that much, only going out for the day a couple of times plus one or two short trips in the vicinity of our village, Deià.
Stunning vistas near our hotel in the North-West of MallorcaVistas on the Sóller to Deià road
We chose to go out on the less-good weather days. Sensible in a way, but we nearly lost our lives on a long-and-winding hillside road between Deià and Palma, when, despite my low speed, I completely lost control of the car for a while on the slippery road surface. After our return, I raised this matter with a Mallorcan employee/colleague, Teresa Bestard, who was working with Z/Yen at that time.
Oh, yes, I know that treacherous patch of road. We locals call it “Dead Man’s Curve”.
Palma on a wet day but at least we were still in one piece
We also visited Cala Major, where we visited Joan Miró‘s place:
We also did a little bit of tourism around our locality, Deià. Not much to see, but Robert Graves settled and lived there for most of his life.
Existential nominative determinism: Robert Graves’s graveLa Residencia from the hills above
But mostly we hung out at La Residencia, playing tennis, eating a good breakfast, nibbling light at lunchtime (perhaps beer and nuts), enjoying the pool and eating in one of the fine restaurants at La Residencia – a place that people would visit from far and wide for one of the restaurants.
Poolside – blissDining in Béns d’Avall – blissFine dining in El Olivo – bliss
It was just a week-long break, taken in strained circumstances, but we both have very happy memories of this short holiday.
For enthusiasts of highly summarised words and pictures, the itinerary is shown below, followed by links to the photo albums, which contain over 200 items of eye candy, such as this one:
Below is a scan of the itinerary, which we arranged through Steppes East:
Below are the two photo albums (just over 100 photos each) on Flickr:
…[until] false start when Travel Link turned up a day early to take us home!
This is a favourite travel agent cock up story of mine. There we were, having been touring rigorously for best part of two weeks, enjoying a blissful relaxing morning on our last day of holiday – looking forward to a well posh dinner I had booked for us at La Mamounia for our end of tour celebration, when an agent turned up and cajoled us poolside, “you need to leave straight away for your flight or else you’ll miss it”.
This incident was only 18 months after my own genuine flight cock up, when returning from Germany after Michael’s wedding. But surely, so soon after such an error, I couldn’t have erred by a whole day. I rushed up to the room and got our travel documents out of the safe.
This must have been the agent’s error, not ours. Phew.
The young woman was extremely apologetic and reassured us several times (including leaving a message when she got back to the office) that the error was all theirs and that they would return the next morning to collect us, as arranged.
Reverting to Plan A – a very light lunch, poolside, at Le Tichka
Dinner at La Mamounia was well posh and great fun. I think the music got a bit tedious for us after a while, but still we ate extremely well and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. An excellent way to round off a wonderful holiday.
Rose quite late. Cloudy morning, so changed plans re touring.
As part of our changing plans we delicately asked the concierge to find us a gentler guide who might take us to shops with less pushy merchants. I think the geezer listened.
Got excellent guide Moulay – went to see Ben Youssef Madrasa…
Janie & Moulay at the Ben Youssef Madrasa
…and the Saadian Tombs [see headline photo & below]…
…then back into medina proper, where we got some nice clothes for Janie at last and admired expensive antique shops.
Lunch at hotel, then restful afternoon by pool.
Super evening at restaurant Yacout – palatial surroundings and so much food and wine! Moroccan salads, chicken with olives, lamb tajine (we rejected a couscous dish) and pastilla au lait and almonds.
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