Calm

I've arrived in Nyaungshwe in Shan state. What a lovely small town: mountains to east and west, a lake to the south, lots of trees and plants. The Shan are the biggest ethnic group in Myanmar after the Bamar and are, I understand, very happy that the country is now called Myanmar not Burma.

I hired a bike to cycle round the town, buy some fruit and peanuts from the market and have a look at the river. Heading out of town I saw a child riding a bullock, people making paddy fields and deep irrigation channels (not only yesterday but many times here, I've been struck by people's hard physical labour we northerners wouldn't contemplate without a machine), a fisherman, a woman washing clothes in the river, a man washing himself in the river, a monastery with young monks bent over their books...

After hot and humid Yangon and hot and dry Bagan, here is pleasantly cool (i.e. pleasantly warm, by UK standards). My room is unbeautiful but clean and has a huge window looking out onto trees, house roofs, mountains and sunrise. Everywhere else I've stayed has been dark but this is a room I'm happy to spend time in, which is just as well as I need a rest. And there is internet here and the wifi seems to reach all the way to my room from the lobby. I don't think there's anything else I could ask for.