Back "home"

This update is way overdue. What happened was, we had a successful visa-run & holiday in Thailand, where we managed to get our Myanmar visa (70 days for me), our dollars in cash (including a year’s rent in advance) and a pretty bad sun-burn. Thailand was quite hectic – everything was harder than expected (if you think getting 5,000 dollars in Bangkok is easy, think again. And if you ever need to do it, ask me how). On top of that, the internet in our beautiful boutique hotel worked poorly (but I just loved our purple room!). So when we got back to a warm welcome in our temporary sub-rented apartment –a dinner of meat balls and potato salad made by our house-mate (YUM!) – I must say Yangon really felt like home.

Love in the sand 

Bangkok has some really beautifully designed stuff
(including our hotel room which this picture doesn't do honor to)

..and also a lot of bizarre stuff.

So I was behind on all my private and professional correspondences.

Professional aspects are looking good. I hope to go for a field trip later this week with the NGO who sponsored my visa, and on other news, I might start doing some actual (external consultancy) work with a great social enterprise founded by an American/Burmese couple we recently befriended. They train Myanmar youth how to start their own business and give them a loan to get it started. I’m normally quite critical about things, but I really just love what these guys are doing (and how). Also, they seem like really cool people.

Christmas was less festive and cozy than previous years (to say the least), but as Arne pointed out it was no worse than my first 26 christmases in this world. How quickly expectations change.

Hard liquor and sweets - my idea of a secret santa gift 

On January first we get the key to our new apartment – 2013 is going to be an interesting year.