simon43

Shoot 3 people dead and then kill yourself - that'll teach them ...... Weird Thai logic at play here.

I have somewhat delicate lungs, commencing about 25 years ago in the UK after working in a damp, unheated basement office that had been empty for several years. What started out as a mild cough developed into uncontrolleable coughing spasms and copious amounts of green/yellow phlegm collecting in my lungs. Several bouts of pneumonia followed.... The outcome of all this was that I moved to live in south-east Asia, where the air temperature and humidity seemed to suit my lungs better 🙂 I noticed over my 22+ years living in Thailand, Myanmar and Laos that my lungs were the happiest when living in the coastal south of Thailand, with salty sea air. However, my teaching usually took me to both Laos and Myanmar, where my bouts of bronchitis and buckets of phlegm would quickly return. I found that brisk walking each morning for say 4km would loosen up the phlegm, and so that's what I do. 2 years ago, I had a spell of teaching in Yangon. Unfortunately, my bronchitis came back with a vengeance and I had to resign from my post and return for treatment in Thailand. Recently, I have been living in Khao Lak, and my lungs have been very happy. But now I have returned to teach again in Myanmar, this time in Mandalay. You might (rightly) comment that this was a stupid move on my part, considering my lung history. But for personal reasons, I feel compelled to help the young students in Myanmar, even if it doesn't do my health much good lol So, within 2 weeks of moving to Mandalay, my bronchitis has returned. This time I am determined to 'beat' this highly-annoying problem, and not be forced to return to southern Thailand. The students really need their teacher, so I'm in no mood to abandon ship. I also wonder what exactly has caused the coughing/phlegm to flare up again. The temperature in Mandalay is still hot. The air pollution seems to be at a reasonably low level. What could it be that triggers my bronchitis? I know that bronchitis can be caused by a virus or bacteria or some kind of irritant. I doubt that the first 2 causes are responsible. I notice that I cough less if I keep my mouth closed and breath through my nose, or if I place a face-mask just over my mouth and breath through my mouth. So it seems that an irritant is most likely. But what?! Answers on a post-card please!

[quote] ... Learn at least one Myanmar phrase before going, mingalaba (sp?). It means hello or good day and it is really appreciated. A door opener. ... [/quote] Yes, always gets a friendly 'mingalaba shin' in return. I can read Burmese (slowly), and write it, although I have no need to do that. My spoken Burmese is still at conversational level (my Lao is much better and my Thai is eons better!). But I practice a little every day with the school local staff 🙂

I know Seb for many years. We ran into each other around 2017 when he visited Htet Eian monastery school, just outside Inle Lake region. I was donating school books etc at the time. Joko? Never heard of him... Sorry, that's a joke! I teach at the same school as Joko...

Well, I've been quoted rates anywhere between 2,000 - 5,000 kyat/1 dollar. I'm not actually exchanging USD into kyat anyway - I do a mental conversion just to get a feel for the cost 🙂 @Laccesit, beautiful car! Because of sanctions (now and previously), the Burmese people are able to fashion almost anything from almost nothing! I remember watching a man in Yangon take some old electrical motor with windings that had burnt out, completely remove the old wire and rewind with wire from another old electrical motor, and obtain a fully-working electrical motor again! Because of the difficulty in sourcing items in Myanmar, my trips to Bangkok between school terms saw me coming back with items for science lessons, such as fridge magnets, electrical switches and the like! My ham radio antennas were all DIY and made from earthing wire..... I also got interrupted with my previous post - I had to teach a couple of science lessons 'online' for students in Hong Kong and mainland China. On the subject of teaching, it's often commented on this forum that most teachers in Thailand/south-east Asia are a bunch of drunken TEFLers, earning a pittance to stay in the country so that they can either satisfy their alcohol or sexual needs! Now I'm not actually a teacher, in that I never studied for an education degree or post-graduate diploma. That situation should maybe relegate me to the TEFLer garbage can! However, I am a very well-qualified and hands-on scientist, and this knowledge, together with my impeccable Oxford accent (!), coupled with my British eccentricity has made me very popular with young students. I do have various pedagogical certificates (phonics, speech therapy etc). Anyway, one plus point about teaching science online is that it is better-paid than teaching general English. So my online classes and in-class teaching brings in about $4,000 a month, tax -free. In 7 months, add another $1,000 to that income when my UK state pension starts 🙂 I walked up Mandalay Hill again today and took a photo from near the top. The city of Mandalay stretches away to the Irrawaddy river that you can just see in front of the hills. Over those hills and you're into the region of violence in Sagaing 😞

^^ wonderful photos! Much more interesting than mine 🙂 Today (25th) is National Day in Myanmar, so it's a holiday. Not that it makes any difference to my daytime teaching job because I don't have to teach on Mondays! So I planned a few actions to fill my day. First I took a yellow tuk-tuk taxi to the printing shop where I previously ordered some sample prints of large-size alphabet flash cards. The cards were sort of OK, but the card that they are printed on is rather thin, but the shop doesn't have anything thicker. Hmmm... I also asked them about printing of some colour A3 vocabulary posters for schools. They can do this, but not on the thicker material that I want, and the price is really rather expensive (bear in mind that I hope to print maybe 6 different posters for perhaps 100 schools and you can imagine how the price adds up). It might actually be cheaper to buy a colour printer and a laminator and do the work myself. This is actually what I did some years ago when I lived in Naypyitaw. I need to get my calculator out! As I wandered around one of the temples, I spotted a printing machine that definitely would be rather slow to use. How old is this printing press? I remember my school in England had one of these in the basement for printing posters from metal alphabet printing 'dies'. Having exhausted what I can do as regards printing for today, my next task was to buy 2 small living plants. These are for my primary grade science students. They usually just sit and learn rote-style from the local teachers, but since I joined the school, I have got them involved in 'real' science projects. This week it's "what do plants need to stay alive?". So 2 identical plants, stop water for one plant for a few days and observe what happens, then repeat with no light and then repeat with no air (er... that last experiment might be a little difficult!). By driving around slowly in a tuk-tuk, my driver was able to find a garden shop and I purchased 2 very nice identical plants for 12,000 kyat, about $3.70. So a good price to educate my students 🙂

Marrying a Thai wife? I think it depends on whose wife you marry..... 🙂

The reason for retiring to the PI is based on 1 simple fact: The UK state pension is index-linked in the PI, and therefore increases with each annual increase awarded to pensioners living in the UK. That pension is frozen for UK pensioners living in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia etc.

@BurmaBill, wonderful photo. I don't have to teach at the school on Mondays, so I usually walk round the moat (almost 8 KM!), then up and down Mandalay Hill. So your photo location is exactly where I was last Monday? @Mahseer, I want to try to get to Inle Lake/Nyaung Shwe maybe at Christmas to visit some orphanages that I previously donated to.. There is the home for disabled kids/adults just outside nearby Taunggyi, an orphanage in Taunggyi, one in Nyaung Shwe, Sasana Orphanage just outside the town, yet another poor monastery school at Htet Eian (near the vineyard) and another orphanage at Mine Thaut, by the lake. An Italian charity that I work with supports staff to look after the boys at Sasana, so I will try to visit to report on this. The only practical way to get to Nyaung Shwe from Mandalay is by 6 hour bus journey, but I'll have some holiday time at Xmas to do this 🙂 Please keep the photos and reminiscences (real word?) coming!

Hi, I'm fully aware of the relevant sanctions. At the time of building my Cubesat (2017) there were no sanctions, and the project was purely for educational purposes. When I taught in Naypyitaw, certainly some of my students were senior military/police, and again - there were no sanctions at that time. Nowadays, I doubt very much if any of my students are from police or military families, for the simple reason that they would not be welcome at the school. I'm teaching at a grade 2 school, with a much lower salary than my Naypyitaw job. This is because: 1 - I also teach online, and don't need a high salary 2 - I will soon start to receive my UK state pension, so don't need a high salary 3 - This job gives me free time to further my educational charity work I think teaching primary grade science to 8 year olds will not see me fall foul of any sanctions 🙂 Similar to Thailand, landlords do not like to rent to foreigners, because they must then register the presence of the foreigner to the authorities, which then exposes them to demands for tax payments... I never bother to register with the UK embassy, because experience demonstrates (in many countries), that the UK embassy has little interest in helping the citizens of their country.... @BurmaBill, yes please do post your photos! Perhaps others can also post photos of this amazing country.

Lol, yes a rocket scientist (in a way). I designed equipment and antennas for military, weather, scientific and TV satellites. As to the military angle, when I was last working in Naypyitaw, I designed and started to build a small, academic'Cubesat' on my kitchen table - small satellites like these are rather easy to build... here is the (defunct) link to my website at the time. https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/C4E22AQFu9_Qyj5vMUA/feedshare-shrink_800/feedshare-shrink_800/0/1576925697917?e=2147483647&v=beta&t=M2fO2DC9I3qWNlTju0sTByelPTE-CSRg17UVh4-boLU This little bird was going to transmit images of famous Myanmar sites (Shwedagon Pagoda etc) down to earth - a purely educational project. My plan was to ask China to take it up to their space station on their next Astronaut visit, 'open the window' and chuck it out into space. All was going wonderfully until I got a visit from 'the military', who were very friendly and asked if I could help them to build a satellite! So I decided to put that Cubesat on the back-burner for a while...

I relocated back to Myanmar a few weeks ago. I took with me about 2 months supply of Alfuzosin, a medication that I've been taking daily for quite a few years. However, since local supply in Myanmar of this drug is probably difficult to source, I tested whether I could reduce my intake of this drug to every other day, and then perhaps only 1 tablet per week. Right now, I have completely stopped taking the drug and I haven't noticed any reduction or change in my ability to pee. Yes, it takes me 5 minutes to slowly pee, and yes I have to pee 2-3 times at night and yes I still have my E-coli infection 🙂. But nothing has changed from previously. I can live with my current condition and will only have to do something about it if I find myself in the future totally unable to pee...

Ai is a wonderful thing.... 🙂

In fairness, GPS can sometimes be a real aid to navigation. A few years ago, I would travel by motorbike through the hills of Shan State (Myanmar). There were very few roads, very few road-signs, and all of these signs were only in Burmese (at that time, I couldn't read the script). Despite being 'in the middle of nowhere', my mobile phone GPS always had a radio signal and the directions kept me on the correct route 🙂

As usual, I get up at 6am for an exercise walk/jog of about 2km, to help to keep my lungs clear. For now, this is just up and down the road outside the hotel. The fresh vegetable seller is already doing business, and yes - that woman does have a bunch of bananas on her head.... and why not? 🙂

No idea, but as long ago as 2012, MPs wanted to make it illegal to call someone fat.... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2151939/Calling-fat-hate-crime.html In any case, even if you write in Thailand that someone is fat, I think it highly unlikely that a case of defamation would be brought against you because - quite simply - being called fat when you ARE fat is not seen as an insult in Thailand. Think how many fat people are given the nickname 'moo' (pig). Unfortunately, in the UK (and no doubt other countries), the culture of that country means that being told the truth is deemed to be an insult.. Eg - If I call Starmer a two-faced, vile d*ckhead, I might suffer some police action in the UK against me, because some don't like to acknowledge the truth.....

But you can't say what you want! If I say to a fat person in Thailand "Sawasdee krap, you're a bit fat", they will probably laugh and say "yes, too many Krispie Kremes lol" etc. If I say the same phrase to someone in the UK, then I'll be investigated as uttering a hate crime..... I believe it's the same if someone is bald!

@New Guy, thanks very much for your recollections. I think most people who visit Myanmar have very good memories of the people and the country. Sometimes, it is the very small things that lodge in your brain for decades afterwards. One of my funniest recollections was in Yangon post office where the staff asked me where I was staying. To demonstrate how far away it was, I swung my extended arm in a sweeping movement and 'took out' a Burmese gentleman standing behind me!! Oh the embarrassment. Profuse apologies but everyone (ever the guy that I smacked), saw the funny side 🙂 Monday is my day off from teaching at school, so I'll take my camera phone and go walkabout and see what to take a snap off. Usually I'm not in the photos because I don't use a selfie stick and the views are more important than my ugly face!

Hi Card, there are plenty of dogs, but (unlike Thailand), I have never had a problem with those dogs? They looked rather meek last week. The only 'savage' incident was a Burmese woman who was insistent that I buy her Buddha flowers 🙂 (I didn't!). As to helping with the education in Myanmar, of course this is really difficult to figure out something that actually will benefit the local students. My view is that donating to the big charities is akin to throwing your money down the drain! Many years I sat down (with myself) to try to figure out a way that my small amounts of $ could actually make a difference. So I wrote an Android learning app which allows students/teachers to download videos while in a wifi cafe, and then to study/watch those videos 'offline' at home. I add to these videos most weeks, and they have lesson content that mirrors the Myanmar school curriculum. (I am also going to add videos in Burmese that help students to learn Korean and Japanese). Some of these videos are created by myself, and the others are downloaded by me from YouTube. Does that break the copyright rules? Probably. But I make no money from these videos and my conscience is clear. Of course, most poor kids won't have a mobile phone, but their local teachers certainly do, and it;s important to educate the teachers, so they can pass on this knowledge to others. The other way to help is to buy school books etc, but in the current state of the country, it's impossible to physically travel to many areas. You also need to be sure that you are not 'throwing loads of mud at a wall in the hope that some will stick'. I used to visit each school or orphanage, make a note of how many students and what grades, and then 'customise' the contents of my donation box to ensure that my $ was actually going to help those students. Now, since I am stuck in Mandalay, I have a list of all the government schools, monastery schools and orphanages in the city that I can try to help. I take the view that since I have managed to survive for 22+ years in south-east Asia on a relatively small income, I will be able to continue doing that on my UK state pension. I don't need to leave money to my overseas family, so I might as well use it to make a small difference to the lives of others who - by fate of birth - were born into the situation where they find themselves today.

Well, the violence is not directed at me 🙂 I would only suffer if I happened to get in the way between military/police and aggrieved locals. So I take wide berths around police and military checkpoints and boxes, ie cross the road and walk on the other side when I pass their buildings. In any case, although Mandalay is apparently only 13km from the 'front line', it is still mostly peaceful. But I can't travel outside the city to help with education in the villages. That's too dangerous for sure.

The blade probably 'kicked back' when it hit a nail or something similar. If you're not holding the cutter very firmly, then it will jump out of your hand ....

[quote] ... What is your assessment Simon? I do recollect you posting many years ago that you had enough of Thailand and was planning to move to Myanmar. ... [/quote] Well, checking where I've been living since 2012, I note that the majority of my time has been spent living and teaching in Myanmar, followed by Laos and then Thailand. I've been a teacher in Yangon several times, Mandalay several times, then Naypyitaw and Mahlaign (spelling?). Myanmar is never my idea of a retirement or leisure destination! I go there to help with student education. The lack of decent amenities, hospitals, retirement visas etc rules it off my list. My plan is still to eventually retire in the Philippines (index-linked UK pension), but I find that I do not feel ready to retire. It's National Day on Monday next, so the amount of anti-junta activity will probably increase. Yonks ago, , I established a very small enterprise called Xtrer (XTRER), whose modus-operandi was to generate small but regular amounts of money for under-privileged families living in developing countries. "A little xtrer helps" was the company tagline, and I realised that you do not need to throw $$$ of cash at a project, in order to get results IF you cut out the middlemen and those charity workers who were greedy, lazy, and exploited the local women (or men) etc. Back in 2012, I used to see the charity workers from the big-name charities securing all the rooms in the 5-star hotel in Yangon, occasionally venturing out in their brand new landrovers for a spot of shopping. I found it disgusting! I went directly to the school book supplier, negotiated a large discount (because I was using my own cash to buy and donate the books), and I was able to help deserving students by creating mini-libraries of the books required by the school syllabus at each school or orphanage. This cost me only a small amount of money, but would make a big difference in the student's education 🙂 Here's one of these mini-libraries at SaMa Mountain orphanage in central Myanmar. There are other friends of mine also living and helping in Myanmar, and making a difference to the communities that they help. It doesn't require much money, just the desire to help 🙂

Thanks for the kind comments everyone. I'll add my replies at the bottom of this post 🙂 Today (Friday), I only had 2 science lessons in the morning to teach. (My school employs me on an hourly basis, so I don't have to stay on the premises if I have no lessons to teach). Therefore, after completing my teaching obligations, I jumped into a yellow taxi to visit a colour print shop. 8 years ago when I last taught in Mandalay, these little taxis didn't exist. I think they have been imported from India. Now there are hundred of them all over the city. At the colour print shop I needed to initiate some printing for my educational charity >> large A2 size vocabularly posters and sets of A-Z flash cards. A flashcard set (A6 size) will cost me about $10 USD and each poster will cost about $7 USD. The actual exchange rate is highly variable - anything between 2,000 - 5,000 kyat to $1 USD. I don't have to pay in USD, so the converted rate is just for my own information. But the price is certainly more expensive than my previous visits. Posters and cards are printed on heavy vinyl paper, and that's where the cost comes in. To provide alphabet sets and poster sets for each school will cost me about $50 per school, and there are many schools.... I might invest in an A2 printer if it works out cheaper! Here's one of the vocab posters that I designed. The code number against each fruit can be entered into the free Android app that I wrote some years ago, and the student can then listen to my dulcit tones pronouncing the word correctly. Next I walked up the dusty streets to check out a hotel as a possible long-term location to stay. The monthly rate for a room, as quoted on the internet was about $600, (my school will pay 50% of that fee). However, the hotel reception quoted me the ludicrous price of $1,100 USD for a small room per month. I declined their offer! Outside the hotel was a rather nice mobile petrol station 🙂 Feeling hot, I took another taxi to CityMart, where I ordered Shan Noodles. This tasty dish is very easy to remember to say in Burmese. It's "Shan Kao Sway", which sounds just like the Thai words for white rice! Once around the busy Citymart to buy my food and home again in a tuk-tuk taxi. Throughout my 3 hour trip, not a single foreigner was seen.... No chance of this happening anytime soon 😞 @Hummin - you can only transfer money in using Western Union (it's always been like this for yonks). My local currency was running low, so with some trepidation I put my Payoneer debit card into a local bank ATM (hoping that it wouldn't 'eat' it). Lucky for me, it all worked fine and spat out 3 million kyat, about $100 USD. The decent beach on the west coast is currently the scene of heavy fighting! Here it is in more peaceful days. But many of the hotels are owned by the military. It took me about 4 days riding my off-road motorbike to reach this beach from Naypyitaw a few years ago (the road wasn't very good!). So I'd give it a miss in the future... Food prices have definitely increased since my last visit. Hardly surprising, considering the inflation rate and difficulty to source goods... @ChiangMai, the personal risk level is very low. Of course, anger that the local people feel is not directed towards foreigners. The risk is simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I make wide detours around police checkpoints/boxes, in case someone decides to start shooting!

I recall visiting this hostel a few months ago when I lived in Laos. I ate lunch there. It seemed a very popular place for young foreign tourists. Clean, well-run, no sign of anything 'dubious' etc. I suspect the authorities know exactly what's happened and by whom, and are scurrying to hide the evidence and brush everything under the carpet...

Too many important things to do in my life than to worry about nitpickers. I just smile and remind myself to totally ignore that waste of space next time 🙂