Finally - some exercise - and what great exercise it was! We hiked into the hills around Kalaw to visit three Palaung tribal villages. It was gorgeous hiking through hills which used to grow opium but now grow mostly tea along with oranges and sesame seeds. The rutted and often muddy paths are only passable by motorbikes or ox carts, so the houses are very humble and the Palaung still live much in the way they have for centuries. We had tea in a traditional long ...

Today we travelled about three hundred kilometers south from Mandalay to another hill station called Kalaw. The first part of the journey was through a low-lying agricultural region where we continued our fascination with the ox carts which are used everywhere here for pulling loads and plowing fields. Mechanized tractors or other farm vehicles are virtually nonexistent. Almost as equally charming are the local "taxis" - the horsecarts - which are used in all the...