So I have said goodbye to everyone so back by myself which makes a change.i I have taken myself off to the Strand Hotel, a famous art deco colonial one for afternoon tea but I'm have Myanmar style rather than traditional so that includes ; Tea Leaf Salad, Vegetable Puff, Spring Roll, Sticky rice flour dumpling with sweet toddy tree 'jaggery', 'Shwe Kyi Sanwinmakin'Semolina Fruit Cake, Steamed Plantain Banana in Caramel with Citron leaf, Myanmar fresh churned ice...

Happy Birthday Mum! The beach is a long stretch of beautiful white sand, with a cool breeze, spectacular sunsets, fringed by coconut palms and the Bay of Bengal water is warm. There are about a dozen hotels along the beach - none are massive yet and many what appear to be identical local seafood restaurants along the road behind the beach, so spoilt for choice for delicious and cheap seafood. Today Anne and I took a local boat out all morning supposedly to an i...

After feeling not at all well on the boat, once in Bagan I slowly started to feel better after a couple of meals of plain rice and sprite - fortunately in plentiful supply. And I'm glad I did as Bagan is staggering. Just this vast plain of thousands of pagodas all thousands of years old. I only wish I had forked out the cash and book ahead to do the balloon ride. But two highlights were a horse and cart ride through the pagodas during the late afternoon and the...

Took a long 7 hour 160mile bus drive along 'The Road to Mandalay', but actually fascinating views so went reasonably quickly. Mandalay is Burma's cultural capital and the last royal capital of the Burmese kingdom. Lots of monastries, craftworkshops and temple topped Mandalay hill but also very noisy and bustling with scooters, bicycles, laden trucks everywhere. (Yangon had no scooters as they were banned apparently because one of the generals sons was killed by o...

Day 4 - got up and went for a 40 mins run at 6.45am. Lovely temperature, ran out into the countryside and ended up on an buffalo cart track, running through villages surrounded by sugar cane fields with buffalo pulling ploughs and the pulling carts full of cut cane. Beautiful with the sun coming up and the mist burning off. On the way back into town I passed a line of about 30 adult monks and young monks (who I have named monkettes), going off with their bowls to...