Here we are in Myanmar after a brief stop in Bangkok - just long enough to see the flooding, have some great street food and enjoy a decadent massage.

Yangon is a city that must have once been grand, but has seen better days. The old colonial buildings are still standing, but most need a lot of help to bring them back to what they once were. Our hotel was once grand and the inside is still quite luxurious, but Ron winces when he looks at the needed maintenance outside.

The notable exception and the gem of the city as well as the most sacred Buddhist site in Myanmar is the Shwedagon pagoda - a mindbogling structure 326 feet high, made of 90 tons of gold topped by a 76 carat diamond and many precious stones. It is really incredible - especially considering that it is 2500 years old! All around it are other Buddha statues and temples- packed with people worshiping the statue for the day of the week they were born on. We were rather taken aback to see statues of Buddha with neon lights eminating from his head and tv cameras showing images of statues that you cannot enter to see. After the more subdued temples in Tibet and Bhutan, this is high tech over the top!

We are presently on the overnight train to Bagan. It's another experience as we are in the first class sleeper class - but it doesn't look like anything has been cleaned or washed since the train started running many years ago in British times. We have two windows in our compartment which are about 2 x 3 feet and open completely (we can lower a piece of plexiglass over them). This is a good thing as neither the air conditioning nor the fan work, and the lights work intermittantly. We appreciate the breeze and the view through the windows.

And the ride - it is hard to believe that the train can stay on the tracks the ride is so rough. We are constantly bounced around both side to side and up and down and can barely stand up. It feels as if there are both potholes and cattleguards on the tracks. Sleeping will be a challenge!

But.. what a great slice of rural life we are seeing. Very humble bamboo houses with thatched roofs, many on stilts in the wet rice fields are common, as are water buffalo wallowing in any little pond and oxen plowing the fields with wooden ploughs. Things have not changed much here in 100 years - it's a great view of another way of life and how people survive with very little.