Squirrel-catching Gloves

Now I wasn't expecting the streets of Myanmar's second city to be paved with gold but I sort of was expecting them to be paved. 

I'm in Mandalay. Another one of those places that I sort of assumed was mythical. It's also a place that is ripe for blog titles. Instead I've gone for a callback on a six year old conversation that (probably) no one reading this will get.

So Mandalay doesn't have as much of the Asian mystique as I thought it would.  Turns out it's just a big dusty city. I've managed to squeeze in the most obvious city sights - the palace with its enormous walls and Mandalay Hill. Not meaning to come across all Lonely Planet on you, but did you know Buddha once climbed Mandalay Hill as a chicken.  Must've taken ages.

Yangon

I didn't understand lunch at all. A man gestured 'food' at me, so I followed him. He led me to a table where I shared bowls of stuff (rice, soup, something made of chillis, something made of onions, green goo and animal bones) with a bunch of strangers. Turns out the whole thing was free. I think I may have gatecrashed the leftovers of a school dinner. Not certain.  Tasty though. Especially the green goo, once you had got over the fact that it looked like pond weed.

Anyway, I am in Yangon. A city where footpaths are impassable due to pop up restaurants, roads are virtually uncrossable, where rambutans and mangosteens are readily available, where chickens hang upside down from handcarts, where monks are musclebound, where there's no toilet paper and inconstant electricity. In short where the travelling smells of weird.

I like weird.

I have already hit the main site, the Shwedagon Paya, a 2500 year old gold plated temple. It was impressive with its surrounding plinth of pagodas, colours, monks and activity. The sulky monkey within thinks it would have been even more impressive if the gold hadn't been covered by matting. But that's just me wanting the moon on a stick.

A-travellin' Again

They've spruced Doha airport up a fair bit since the last time I was here. There's all kinds of bells and whistles now - TV booths, children's play areas, enormous teddybear/desklamp art installation - which is kinda nice as my flight has just been delayed.

Not too worried about the delay, I was due to arrive in Yangon at 5, which is a pretty antisocial arrival time, so a couple more hours makes the whole caboodle somewhat more civilised.

I quite enjoy time at an abroad airport; hearing flight announcements for Islamabad and Beirut just sound a bit more exotic than the departures you get from Stansted. 

Anyway, the adventure has begun...

Actual Stuff I Liked

Not certain why I feel the need to do an end of year review - but I sort of feel obliged to. 

I think it helped looking through the year end charts and realising I actually liked music this year. Which is perversely disappointing. Like the Kate Tempest album.  Like the Gruff Rhys album.  Like the Run the Jewels album. Like the Madlib album. That's four albums I actually like - been ages since that happened.  And, as things stand, I've got more gigs booked than theatre trips - I feel like I'm back in my early twenties.  

Saw me some pretty good theatre this year. Last thing I saw was Golem - if I actually was still in my early twenties I would have loved it with it's anti-capitalist stance.  As it was I thought it was clever and fun, rather than blow your mind amazing. Not certain what the thing I liked most was.  That's a lie, I am fairly certain.  Streetcar... was ace.  Skylight was ace. A View... was ace. Titus Andronicus was suitably gory and I really enjoyed Urinetown.  But it wasn't any of them. It was The Play that Goes Wrong. Somehow it managed to live up to my ridiculously high expectations. 

Not been too shabby a year for travel.  Got into double figures for countries (yes, I'm aware that that's more in a year than a lot of people go in their life time), managed seven new European capital cities (think Sarajevo was my favourite, although Athens ran it close) and saw three of the most famously spectacular coastlines in the world. As I said, not too shabby.

Improv

Now I'm not averse to a comedy night. I've been to one or two in my time so I feel like I can stand in a relatively informed position when I sneer belittlingly in the direction of improv.

The speed people come up with things is no doubt impressive but ultimately it feels like you're watching a parlour game played by professionals. And if that was worth watching Pictionary would be in the Olympics, Scategories woukd be on the telly and there would be illicit Taboo gambling in the back rooms of shady pubs.

It's like real comedy but without the jokes.

Something else I don't get: ello. Apparently it's the hip new face of social media. I feel out of my depth even thinking about it. I reckon I'm a decade too old and 82% too uncool to understand it.

Lux Interior

I was promised snow. Stamps foot like a petulant child. I wanted Europe's Most Spectacularly Sited Capital (TM) to be all snow covered and pretty. I bought boots and everything.  Instead I got drizzle.

So yeah, I've spent the weekend in Luxembourg. Now if there's one thing I know about those Benelux Low Countries is that they are all flat as the proverbial flam. This Luxembourg place has confounded that assumption, I tell thee. It's a double decker city, with the two levels split by towering rockfaces. I wasn't really expecting that.

It was way more interesting than I was expecting too. Quite a bit of that culture stuff around and chock full of Christmas markets (it's not Christmas until we get our plugs, which is a reference I just won't understand if I ever read this back).

I ventured out of the city today. I went to Echternach, up on the German border. I think it's a pilgrimage town, but can't be certain as the tourist information was closed. At a pilgrimage town. On a Sunday. When the town is up to its eyes in Christmas Market and, for some reason, a medieval fayre. Guess everyone in Echternach is getting ocarinas this Christmas. 

I didn't manage to spend all that long in Echternach (thanks to the very inconvenient Sunday public transport - for the record, public transport within Luxembourg is crazy cheap. Four euros for all you can eat) but I did manage to sneak a couple of miles along the Müllerthal Trail, Luxembourg's foremost hiking route. Way more spectacular than I was expecting - I blame the lack of flat, these not so low countries and their lack of flat...

Better than Parmesan

I went to that there Sam Wannamaker Playhouse to see everyone's favourite incest thriller Tis Pity She's A Whore . Quite liked it I did, both the show with its strangely modern stylings and that there theatre with its atmospherics and lack of electric lighting.

Wasn't a massive fan of the view tho - it took restricted to a whole other level - this is going to sound like I'm exaggerating but I'm not, I could only see half the stage. Stage left. And it seemed that most of the action was hanging out on the right. The fascist.