Author Archives: Varya

Imagine driving up a mountainside on a dirt road in an old Toyota minivan in a torrential downpour turning the roadway into a muddy slippery slope – and if you… Read more »

After the torrential rain of the previous night, the roads were quite muddy as we went shopping with Su, our cooking teacher, to the covered market in Nyaung Ou to… Read more »

What makes traveling in Asia so enjoyable is the surprise encounters that illuminate a different culture and way of daily life.  It makes you think:  What would my lifestyle look like… Read more »

We are now leaving Mandalay and crossing over a new 2008 bridge across which is splayed a scene of green rolling hills, each one crowned by a white stupa with… Read more »

Mandalay – the name with the ring of the exotic.  in reality, it does retain a sense of old Burmese culture but with an overlay of modern development.  The commercial… Read more »

Our tour truly begins today, although we have already been saturated with enough colors and smells to bring home more than a whiff of Myanmar.  Mary and Michael arrive as… Read more »

Sometime reading tour books and doing on-line research provides a sense of what lies ahead in an experience in a strange land.   And sometimes it creates a false preconception. … Read more »

There is a patchwork of rich greens and browns as we fly into Yangon, above the Irrawaddy Delta of Myanmar/Burma.  It is the end of the rainy season so the… Read more »

There are few places on earth that elicit more of the sense of the exotic than the country that was once called Burma, with its heart in Rangoon, ruled by… Read more »