More Mandalay

The aliens are still in need of attention. The holiday memoir: When we were sick in. . . Sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes just funny. Definitely a different take on travel.

I'm out on my bike again: lovely, but much better to be two. This morning, monasteries. A great gold Buddha at the centre of a huge Turkish style bazaar with tack sold all the way up all the approaches. Full of morning worshipers, people adding to the inches of gold coating the Buddha, monks organising people, and wedding parties with parasols, gold headdresses and wings.

Lost in the suburbs: for all the reports about Myanmar, there seems to be no problem wondering on your bicycle anywhere or talking to anyone. Cows, dust roads, food stalls, planting: does not feel particularly like the 2nd city. Today along the river, rice delivery and sand digging sections. Rows and rows and rows of ants carrying sacks from the boats, and pumps dredging the river, spouting sand into containers where it is dried and shovelled into trucks. What a life.

Ul stirs and we go back to the river. In the evening mist and rosy sunset we wonder about disease, health indicators and education and hypothesize about development programmes here. Busman's holiday.