With only a week in Myanmar, we leave feeling it is a MUST to come back!!!  So much yet to see and explore. A week is a mere appetizer! As we exit Myanmar, headed back to Thailand, we assemble these observations:

1) AMAZING!!! our Hotel in Bagan was called “Amazing Bagan Hotel” which we thought was quite funny. But we realize that “amazing” is the right word to describe most everything in Bagan. The entire week we felt as if we were floating around a magical, make-believe land that doesn’t have anything to do with real life.  The whole place is quite surreal from the temples to the sunsets and sunrises, to the people who are so gracious.  It is AMAZING!

*****

2) WHEN PEOPLE TELL YOU GO TO VISIT SOMETHING NOW, THEY ARE RIGHT! How right was Etienne to urge us to go now.  We could see that things are changing fast with tourism ramping up quickly.  This destination may have to go on our “5 year travel plan” because 2025 is too far away

Major road to our hotel that was spectacular and never had anyone on it!

*****

3) PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER. Why didn’t we learn this trick sooner? Cliff wrote about our new strategy of touring each destination with a professional photographer. It added such a cool element to our experience.  I recommend that whether you are interested in taking pictures or not, taking a tour with a local photographer is a really cool way to explore a destination! You can be sure that we will continue this strategy for the remainder of our ATW itinerary

I took this with my iPhone under the tutelage of Maung Maung!

*****

4) IF YOU BECOME A BILLIONAIRE, BUY A HOT AIR BALLOON! Ballooning over the temples at sunrise was EPIC and will certainly be remembered as a highlight for us all…even Otto who was barfing for most of the time over the side of the balloon Wescott got so into it that he chatted with an Amazon Sales Rep online about buying one! Amazon doesn’t sell hot air balloons but the agent was so nice, she sourced it for him and sent him directly to someone who he could buy one from

*****

5) AMAZING! …See #1 …. Muang Muang, the professional photographer who we had the pleasure of hanging out with for the day in Bagan, also takes people on tours around the entire country!!! I can’t imagine how much fun that would be!! Sign me up in 2016 for my 50th bday!

It is like a fairytale! I was there and still can’t believe this photo is real!

If there’s one thing that I get enough of on this trip, I can assure you that it’s not water. When you have to buy bottled water way down at the supermarket, you find yourself constantly in a state of procrastination and dehydration. Nevertheless, my thirst is quenched by something else: inspiration. Yeah it’s cheesy, but incredibly true! I looked it up, there is such a thing as overhydrating and I feel like I’ve been “over inspired.” Every day it seems we meet another person living a completely alternative lifestyle and my dad will say, “Just another thing to do with your life,” in this sly tone he uses when he is hinting at something and trying to get us to think. “Just another thing to do with your life: become a world class chef and live in Florence!” “Just another thing to do with your life: become a mahout (elephant trainer) and live in Chiang Mai!” “Just another thing to do with your life: sell Buckets o’ Mojito and live in Koh Tao!”

Growing up on Mercer Island, it sometimes can feel like my future is one of the homework assignments that I used to get in Ms. Sayers’ 9^th grade English class: stringent, well-thought-out, and the same one my parents got. You know the drill: attend college, land a solid, respectable job, start a family, make a little bit of money, retire, and play some good old-fashioned golf. Now don’t get me wrong, that sounds like a pretty good life if you ask me, but it’s just one lifestyle out of an infinite amount of others. It might be a good idea to stop and consider the options every once in a while, and ask myself what I would want to do with my life if I could do anything?  If the answer happens to be scuba diving with whale sharks in the exotic Thai islands, then I’ll just book a flight to Koh Tao and apply for a job at Good Times.  Steve Jobs put it best as he neared his final years: “I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘no’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

Our second to last day in Bagan was the day I met Christophe, a man who risked everything and left his comforting home in Belgium, to move to Bagan, Myanmar. He was simply perusing an idea…a dream of becoming a balloonist for a living. Ever since eight years old, Christophe had been obsessed with hot air balloons, and there he was, soaring high over Myanmar, one of the most stunning places I have ever been to, simply living his dream. Meeting Christophe, someone who turned their dream into a reality, made me realize I too could become a hot air balloonist if I wanted to  Not something I would of ever considered back on Mercer, but in Bagan, starting every morning by peacefully flying over ancient Burmese temples lit up by a beautiful sunrise, and getting paid, sounded like a pretty sweet gig! “It’s just another thing to do with your life” as my dad would say.

Whenever I am suddenly inspired by some great purposefulness, some extraordinary idea that has so much potential it makes me smile by just imagining it.  My mind forgets the bounds that have restricted free, radical thoughts like “Why not?” My cognizance surpasses its deep-seated confines and ventures off into an entirely different, delightfully extraordinary world. One can never know what this kind of thinking can unearth, until they try. For example, I imagined a future as a balloonist in Bagan, and instantly dormant enthusiasm that I never knew existed in association to an occupation as quirky and awesome as ballooning erupted. Okay, so maybe I won’t become a balloonist, but it’s fun to expand my horizons by considering and envisioning the idea! What if we all asked ourselves “What if…” every now and then, and maybe by luck we would uncover what truly inspired us? Maybe we would discover the Bagan balloonist in us all, and maybe, just maybe, we too could muster up the courage to make a wild imagination’s fantasy a reality.

I greatly admire people who pursue their passion, and despite all the criticism they may receive, keep on striving. Those are the people I want to model my life after.  Not to copy what they did exactly, but to somehow figure out what it is that really inspires me and to chase it down as they do.

And on the topic of ballooning we are going to finish it out with yet another classic quote:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

-Mark Twain

PS: Sorry to keep writing such serious, meaning-of-life-mumbo-jumbo blog posts. Maybe I’ll just post a video of me eating some exotic asian food next time.

The obligatory champagne toast at the end of the balloon ride, as if it couldn’t get any better!

I started off the day hurling off the side of a balloon onto Bagan. Luckily, the mucus only extracted from my body when we were fairly close to the ground, and not onto the town where all the locals live. Next, were the devilish electronic pieces of metal AKA ebikes. We all cruised up to old Bagan to see all the temples. Wescott dropped and crashed his bike a couple of times, but other than that, we were safely cruising through the ancient city, until it happened. While heading over back to our hotel my bike had found itself in deep sand. My bike span out of control, and down went Otto. I landed on the sand ground, along with my bike. My foot wound up wedged under the bike, and my face planted in the sand. My family quickly lifted the bike up and helped me up. At the time I had no recognition that any serious damage had been done to my leg, so I hopped right back on my bike and twisted the accelerator and continued riding.

Mom and dad stopped ahead to take pictures, so I simply rolled up my pant leg to see what was going on with my knee, and that was when I knew something was wrong. I yelled over to my mom and dad to come over, but they rejected and continued to snap away. I yelled again, and finally mom came over to see what was happening. I showed her my leg and she called over my dad as well. My knee had swollen to the size of a grapefruit. Here is a photo of my horrendous knee, viewer discretion is advised.

Well there you have it, my mystical day ended with me watching sunset on the top of a temple thanks to Yve and Dad for practically carrying me up there.

We were on our way to Chaing Mai as I was wheeled through the airport by some guy who was probably thinking: this guy is probably faking. I mean just a minute ago he was riding on one of their pieces of luggage. 

Bangkok Airlines took really good care of me!

When we made it to Chaing Mai, I was supplied with some crutches. We consulted with PopPop on what our next battle phase would be, and he recommended that we go to the hospital. Dad, Jones and I went to a hospital that was recommended for people who don’t want to have the more adventurous international hospital experience.  I had an X-Ray done, and luckily no bones were broken. I got an MRI done as well that did have some results. There is a very small tear in my ACL, and the doctor said it would be back to normal in about a month. The doctor aspirated my knee as Jones shot out questions and comments to my dad as he watched.

I am currently sitting in Yangshuo, China (three weeks later) and my knee isn’t horrendous any more. I am able to swim, walk a limited distance without crutches, but sadly, I cannot rock climb.

My knee hasn’t stopped me from partaking in all the great massages, including fish massage!

 P.S. PARENTS NOTE:  The doctors visit, x-ray, MRI, aspiration and crutches totaled $400 including all hospital expenses.  Perhaps we should all retire to Chiang Mai

It was fun to just climb to the top of temples and look out over the horizon!

Clearly there is an aura or primordial power that draws people and their spirituality here, as the entire landscape is almost exclusively dedicated to the pursuit of Buddhism and enlightenment. When I say there are over two thousand temples, stupas and pagodas, it seems to understate just how immense the horizon line is littered with seemingly nothing BUT these ancient structures that might as well have been constructed by an alien race for an unknown purpose. Luckily, however, the recorded history for this  part of the world goes back 1,000 years, so we actually know exactly why Bagan became the most dense collection of Buddhist temples in the world.

A paintings behind this buddha were over 1,000 years-old!

A long time ago, in a place far far away, there was a wealthy kingdom with a king who was a particularly fervent Buddhist. Spurred on by a rivalry and a passion for the new, the entire kingdom embraced this form of worship, which called for both large public and smaller private places to meditate, make offerings and follow well-worn paths of tradition. Like sunbirds spurring a track home housing boom in sunny Florida, Bagan’s citizens fueled a building frenzy over a 250 year period. Over 10,000 religious structures were built during this period, and Bagan was one of the world’s foremost religious, academic, art and literature centers. By the late 1200’s, the Mongols repeated attempts to conquer the Pagan Empire won out, and Bagan faded into oblivion, with only about 2,200 structures remaining today.

Temples got very large and elaborate. The temple in the background is the largest in Bagan. Built in 3 years, the work had to be perfect – a worker who left more than a pin-sized hole between his bricks his arm was severed.

Classic style “personal temple”

Amazingly, so many of the wonderful temples and buildings we wandered to had no one else in them. With such a multitude of temples, it was relatively easy to avoid any tour groups and experience the architecture, religious art and quiet spirituality in solitude. Well, maybe solitude is the wrong word given our 5 children, but you get the idea! This is a place where you can feel like an explorer and not get bored for a long time, with so many great sights and lots of wonderful people who make you feel very welcome.

Kids praying to Buddha, which was added after the earthquake in 1975.

Between a hellish set of decades of war, and a devastating earthquake in the 1970s, Bagan’s temples have endured the test of time in recent history. With peace giving way to an increasingly large floodgate of tourism, Bagan will have to work harder than ever to protect the legacy of the kingdom that created such a special place. While the unfettered access to these ancient treasures makes the travel to Bagan surreal, we know the window needs to close relatively fast to protect the wonders while retaining access for future generations. Our advice? Go NOW! Because while it feels like Myanmar is 50 years behind places like Thailand, it may only take 10 years to catch up to the developing world’s race to grow and modernize.

Balloon hovering over the dawn-lit landscape.

Sunsets here are some of the best in the world!

Thar was Fire Buddha thar was also Prittity Buddha that Ice Buddha froz becos Ice Buddha was so jellis becos of her prittitynis.  Thar was Infinite Buddha that lives in outer spase Infinite Buddha comes down from outer spase evry 20 years. Thar is also Gold Buddha that lived in gold world but Gold Buddha disidid to move to bang kok and gave gold world to Silver Buddha. Thar is also Wizzerd Buddha that lives in magic world Wizzerd Buddha wood mack all thes poshins some wer good some wer bad and Invozabal Buddha wood be checking on Wizzerd Buddha.

I wish we can see Buddhas again.

Jonsie and me looking at a riliy big buddha

Gold buddha

Fire buddha

Otto looking at Prittity buddha

In Hoi An, Vietnam, Bagan, Myanmar and Chiang Mai, Thailand, we found three awesome photographers and genuinely nice people to spend the day with. Each encounter shared the attribute of the unexpected, with the day unfolding organically, leading us to amazing sites, meeting with interesting people and connecting to local culture in a myriad of ways.

Étienne: Prince of Hoi An

Etienne Bossot, a French photographer living and shooting in Vietnam for over 5 years

Luckily, this young, bright guy is a good marketer, snagging us into this new activity with a well placed and designed sign out in front of his gallery down the lane from our hotel. Advertising a photo tour package to a local fishing village from dawn through lunch, we met Etienne and made plans to be picked up the next morning. His demeanor and graciousness as host to the 10 of us who accompanied him was evident from the moment he came to get us at our hotel gate. With a range of skill sets and cameras, he balanced his time perfectly with each of us, offering advice on equipment, lessons on some of the basics of manual photography, and personal guidance on getting “the shot.”

For me, the most fascinating part of the day revolved around how to take pictures of people, one of Etienne’s specialties. It never dawned on me how important the ability to make personal connection and exude an outgoing demeanor is to great photographers. In observing and listening to Etienne, I have a whole new respect for the broad range of interpersonal and technical skills that go into a memorable image.  Effortlessly navigating the docks and streets of this sleepy, tiny fishing village, his boy next door / comfortable-in-his-own-skin attitude won smiles, hugs and conversation with many of the locals. As we learned about the daily ritual of the fisherman coming home from the evening’s catch, navigated the impromptu market that sprung up around the docks, breathed in the pungent smells of a fish sauce producer, meandered through the back pathways between local houses, and rode bikes along the river back to Hoi An, we snapped to our hearts content and enjoyed the company of an interesting band of travelers.

Maung Maung: King of Bagan

Maung Maung is a local photographer who has achieved International acclaim

Credit for this whirl-wind day goes almost entirely to Etienne, having insisted that ProjectEquator would be incomplete without traveling to Myanmar. We had recently given up on obtaining visas, and had almost finalized new plane tickets to cut Myanmar from the itinerary; but after Etienne’s passionate plea, we realized our error and made a major overhaul to our plans to get us to Bagan via Bangkok and Mandalay.  After some research, we were connected with Maung Maung, a Myanmar citizen who has made an international name for himself for his outstanding images. It could not have been a more dissimilar experience and adventure than our day with Etienne, teaching Lisa and I about a completely different method of “getting the shot.”

Maung Maung is a master of light. He knows exactly where he needs to be at precisely the right time of day to create a moody, evocative image. Shooting in and around Bagan’s thousands of temples for decades, he has a network of friends and access to unreachable places that made us feel like we had a golden ticket for the day. Unlike almost any other photographer we’ve met, Maung Maung offers to recreate and teach you how to get some of the award winning images he’s taken over the years. In contrast to the documentary-style of Etienne’s photo essays of people, Maung Maung creates extremely deliberate shots that have been scouted, planned and rehearsed.

When in Bagan, surrounded by thousands of thousand year old temples, monks offer a wonderful subject to photograph. We had the opportunity to meet several as Maung Maung zoomed in and out of a few monasteries to pick up our own personal monk to accompany us to various locations. As bizarre as it sounds, these boys served as authentic models in elaborate, stunning locations. Maung Maung, like many people in Bagan, spent months in the monastery we kept returning to, so he knew everyone very well. Each monk barely spoke, and rarely smiled as Maung Maung would direct the scene for our awaiting lens. We zoomed precariously from place to place in his small car, tracking monks and nuns collecting daily offering of food from the locals, visiting a monastery at mealtime and entering many locked pagodas cracked open for our king, making the entire day action-packed and slightly overwhelming. He offers a private 15-day tour of Myanmar, and you can bet that Lisa and I are already scheming on when we return!

Ryan: Documentarian and Environmental Crusader of Chiang Mai

Ryan Libre lives in Chiang Mai and spends lots of time nurturing young documentary film makers and photographers

Joined by our very own Ryan Jones from Mercer Island, we decided the kids should jump in on the fun as we connected with another Ryan (Libre) who owns and curates the Documentary Arts Asia in Chiang Mai. When he is not documenting life in Kachin State in northern Burma, or on some assignment elsewhere in the world, Ryan teaches photography at Chiang Mai University and takes people like us around the countryside to practice photography. Like the other expeditions, we had no idea what to expect, except of course, the unexpected!

The morning started on an organic farm about an hour or so north of Chiang Mai. Amidst idyllic rice paddies and rolling mountains, this permaculture / sustainable living commune is owned and run by Thai folks, and offers wonderful views and whimsical adobe architecture. Ryan owns land between this farm and the next organic farm called The Panya Project, which is a school that teaches people from all over the world the arts of adobe construction, permaculture, organic farming and community development. We hiked both farms and got a taste for how flexible, sustainable and malleable adobe architecture can be.

While chatting with some folks at Panya, we learned that all of the students were in the village building a 2-story adobe house for a local resident who needed a house. Off we went into a traditional, rural Thai village, where Wescott, Ryan and Yve were invited to join the work crew and get covered in mud. They laid a row of adobe bricks for one of the walls and learned the basic principles of how easy, fun and environmental this construction can be.

For lunch, we dropped in on the village chief who owns a sprawling homestay that would give any Marin County artsy / organic / zen compound a run for its money. Tasty vegetarian fare in a spectacular setting gave us renewed energy for our afternoon, which included a visit to an enormous, almost never-visited temple complex. It was a great location to contrast Thailand’s elaborate, palatial Buddhist Wats to the more primitive, ancient style of Bagan’s pagodas.

The last part of the day took an even more unexpected turn, as Ryan was invited to interview a famous Swiss photographer named Rene Burri at one of Chiang Mai’s most exclusive resorts, Dhara Dhevi. Sending the kids home, Lisa and I accompanied the press corp, consisting of an entourage of several photographers and handlers. The whole thing was a bit surreal as we were ushered into a magnificent suite, greeting Rene who sat on an expansive veranda with his son and wife. For the next two and a half hours, we sat riveted like disciples as Rene waxed on about his experiences being invited to shoot the Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che’ Guevara, his friendship with Pablo Picasso, his thoughts on photography and many pearls of wisdom about an 80 year (and counting) life that has taken him to over 200 countries and in the middle of countless world events.  For photography collectors and enthusiasts like us, it was a very special surprise and a wonderful end to an unexpected day.

Turned out flying to Myanmar from Bangkok was better too!  We were able to fly to Mandalay and drive directly to Bagan.  Unfortunately, we had to cut our days in Myanmar back because we wasted a few days on the Bangkok rerouting. But all in all, we feel so fortunate we were able to go, even if only for 6 days. We would **highly** recommend to anyone trying to visit Myanmar to simply plan to fly to Bangkok, get VISAs there and then go on to Myanmar from there.  The VISA process in Bangkok is awesome and easy!  They even have entrepreneurs who have set up copy machines in their cars and can help you put together your Myanmar VISA application right out front of the embassy

A couple guys who can do copies, passport photos, gluing, everything to help with your VISA application while you stand in line!

If you watch the a lot of world news, you may be saying to yourself that Bangkok sounds like a scary place to travel to right now.  Honestly, all we saw was daily life happening and a ton of sandbags piled up high.  It made us realize that if you watch too much news you would be scared to go anywhere…especially the USA!

This is all we saw that would suggest problems in Bangkok

Since we were only in Bangkok for 1 purpose, we opted for a bohemian hotel, Phra-Nakorn Norn-Len Hotel, off the beaten path with a direct water taxi route to the Myanmar Embassy.

It was actually really cool taking the water taxis and we would highly recommend it as the best (and cheapest!) way to travel around the city

The hotel was simply awesome so we had to do a tour….