We recently had a long weekend and wanted to take the opportunity to visit our friends in Bangkok. They are stark reminders that things are far from normal in Myanmar as they both work for NGOs that cannot operate effectively in the country. Like many they left the country at around the same time we did but unlike us, have never returned.
Continue reading “Thailand Trips”
It’s been a while. I know the hoards of people who avidly read our blog (that’s both Steve’s and my brother (thanks)) will be relieved to see another instalment of the Gav and Schubie diary. There’s no excuse really for not keeping it up. Lindsey will say that as she did the last post, it’s entirely my fault and she’s probably right. I will say that we’ve been extremely busy but when you look at the downtime we’ve had while travelling, ‘busy’ just doesn’t cut it.
Continue reading “Catch up”
After Lindsey’s flurry of posts – nothing. My bad. We’ve been moving around a fair bit over the last few weeks and haven’t really been in much of a routine – still no excuse! Where were we? Oh yes, Lindsey with Covid and a swim up room. All very odd.
Continue reading “Filling time”
Our October break ended on Sunday, October 24th. We were slated to fly back to Yangon on that day on an NGO flight from Kuala Lumpur. This particular NGO has been running flights bringing in humanitarian aid I think, since the beginning of the pandemic. It is possible to come in on that flight but you need special permission. However, even before that we needed to get our visas renewed and this has been going on for some time.
Continue reading “Back to Bangkok”
Our school was on holiday this past week so we had no work, yay! In non-Covid times we would try to fly somewhere fun for the time off, but obviously that’s not happening, plus we happen to be in a pretty popular vacation spot so we decided to stay put and do a few things we had been meaning to do around Phuket.
Continue reading “Under the sea”
The lack of tourists resulting from Covid is bad for the local economy but frankly a relief for us as there are fewer people about. Our villas is surrounded by 10 or 12 other villas but as far as we can tell ours is the only one occupied. I keep thinking a Russian Stag party is going to move in next door but so far we have been spared. I’m not sure whether it’s because of the fewer number of people or whether it’s always like this but an unexpected bonus to Phuket for me is the local wildlife and particularly the birds.
Continue reading “The wild (and not so wild) life of Phuket”
…you could be working in the construction industry in Myanmar. On May 3rd, a Sunday and the day before we got Mabel, the house directly behind us started getting torn down. Houses are built right up to the edge of the land here so this house is about 3 feet away from ours. At first they started removing the tiles from the roof and then wooden beams etc. We then started seeing them hammering away at the floor they were literally standing on with sledge hammers.
Well it seems like the entire world is stumbling towards the zombie apocalypse! Although there are still no cases in Myanmar (ha ha ha), government officials have forbidden any “large gatherings” (but have not defined what constitutes large) and cancelled all Thingyan celebrations in Yangon. Continue reading “Creatures Great and Small”
We decided to spend our luxurious three week 2019 Christmas break in Sri Lanka. I had been there years before in about 2000 but not since. I remember the great birds, some great sites but terrible food. On that trip there was a week long part on the beach but this time we did no such thing travelling around the whole time. Like with our trip to Laos we probably packed a bit too much in but thoroughly enjoyed it regardless.
Continue reading “Santa in Sri Lanka”
The audience for this post is not really our regular audience so feel free to give this one a miss. If however, you are interested in the birds of Yangon then I hope this will be useful. What follows is not an exhaustive list of every bird but simply every bird I have been able to identify so far. The region of Yangon is actually quite large and includes, for instance, Hlawga National Park however, I am not including birds I have seen there. This is really just for the city area of Yangon. I will try to keep it updated with new photos that I have taken and new birds as I discover them. For birders more expert than me (which is just about anyone) feel free to comment with corrections and missing species.
Continue reading “Birds of Yangon”
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