We left Toungoo for the Golden Rock temple with 250 k to drive. We elected to take the old road instead of the motorway as we had ample time to make the distance with the towns and rural atmosphere being better then the sterilely of the motorway.
As we travelled through towns in the past few days we’ve heard parties with lots of music and decorations and today was discovery day. Tin pulled up at this party and in no time we had all been invited to the wedding of this couple and a meal. So after a feed and photo shoot beside Penny we head on down the track wondering how it would go at home if we just rocked into some strangers wedding? Not good is my guess!
From the title of the post we saw some great inventions today with the first being the art of carrying about 50 chooks (chickens) on a motorbike. If you’ve ever been a kid on a farm you know that when you hold a chook up upside down by its legs it will go to sleep so you hang all your chooks upside down over sticks across your bike and off to market you go.
This area the rice harvest was nearly over but the mammoth job of getting it all dry enough to store was a busy time, with every available space that was clean enough and not clean enough tarps were used to spread rice out drying and then turned while maximising the heat of the day.
That brings another thing to mind, as we are heading further south it is getting hotter with today being 34C, so it always good to find shade when we stoped. A couple of stops were unplanned with no shade due to fuel filter problems. The filter was change at the end of today so those problems will be behind us tomorrow.
The last invention we witnessed was very ingenious but not the best ethically. When we stopped for lunch, a boy about 10 carrying a cage with about 12 Minor birds approached us. If we paid him the equivalent to $1.00 he would let one go, and for $8.00 he let them all go. Not the most ethical business model but it was making him money.
At the lunch stop Julie tried out the local’s bamboo bridge across the flood canal and as rickety as it looked it turned out to be very sturdy.
The last crazy thing was a truck pulled up beside us at the toll both and the works travelling in the back had hammocks set up between the side and travel in them, I guess a bit like fully reclining Business class seats. See the photo
The afternoon finished travelling through very large and new Rubber Tree plantation on the way to visit the Golden Rock; this is reputed to be the 3rd most significant Buddhist site in Myanmar.
Our days in Myanmar are running out very fast with our exit into Thailand on the 5th of December
