Experience Virtual Myanmar

TAKE A VIRTUAL MYANMAR TOUR

READ FYLLIS HOCKMAN’S ARTICLE: MYANMAR, A COUNTRY OF CONTRASTS: PAGODAS, CULTURE AND CONTROVERSY

Experience a Virtual Great Migration in Serengeti

TAKE A VIRTUAL SERENGETI GREAT MIGRATION TOUR

READ STEVE ROSENFIELD’S SERENGETI: THE GREAT MIGRATION

Experience a Virtual Path of Vincent van Gogh

TAKE A VIRTUAL PATH OF THE VINCENT VAN GOGH TOUR

READ ED BOITANO’S IN THE PATH OF VINCENT VAN GOGH

Experience a Virtual Buddy Guy

WATCH A VIRTUAL BUDDY GUY PERFORMANCE

READ T.E. MATTOX’S ARTICLE ABOUT BUDDY GUY

Experience a Virtual Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West

TAKE A VIRTUAL TALIESIN WEST TOUR

READ SUSAN BRESLOW’S FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S TALIESIN WEST

Experience a Virtual World War 2 German U-Boat 995

TAKE A VIRTUAL U-BOAT 995 TOUR

READ JOHN CLAYTON’S POST ON U-BOAT 995

Experience Virtual Irresistible Nashville

TAKE A VIRTUAL NASHVILLE TOUR

READ RICHARD CARROLL’S IRRESISTIBLE NASHVILLE

The post Yes, Even More BEST Virtual Vacations from T-Boy appeared first on Traveling Archive.

So yes, food plays an important role in the lifestyle of Italians.  Very important. Portions often approach gargantuan in size.  And growing, harvesting, cooking and eating hold a place of near reverence in their daily lives.

Of countless repasts I have enjoyed at home and abroad, several stand out because of what they demonstrate about the locale and the people who live there.  They range from gourmet spreads set out in a romantic setting to everyday street fare consumed by local inhabitants.   All linger in my memories, if no longer on my taste buds, because of what they taught me about the  lifestyles of those who prepare and share local favorites.

Of the many meals I experienced in Sicily, from lavish lunches to picnics among Phoenician ruins to restaurant cooking classes, one that stands out was billed as A Day in the Life of a Sicilian Family. Because family is the only thing that equals food in importance in Italy.

The up-front instructions from Alessio were clear: relax, cook, set the table, sing, dance, and be open to being part of the family despite the language barrier. A tall order, despite Alessio’s efforts to teach us Italian – though admittedly his emphasis on hand gestures – which cover a multitude of sins – weren’t that re-assuring. But considering the emphasis on food by Sicilians throughout the trip, a visit to a farm where they grow and make their own seemed appropriate. We were introduced to the family and their captivating history going back generations – both of the farm and of themselves – before trying our hand at making bread and pasta from scratch.

Parents of both the owner, Jean, and his wife plus assorted aunts and cousins all took part in teaching us the finer techniques of kneading bread and rolling pasta, all of which we consumed with gusto. Part of what made the meal even more memorable was the connection with the extended family who helped us create it. One heart-warming story told by Jean’s mother about her first kiss with her husband below the property’s huge Mulberry tree at the age of 12, was one Jean sheepishly claimed he had never heard before. What a moment. It was that kind of day!

And from Sicilian farmhouse to island inn, a marked change in venue and recipes but no less memorable. I’m not accustomed to trussing up and skewering the night’s main course, a practice not for the faint-hearted, before it was spit-roasted on an open-air fire pit for eight hours. But so it is with the Wednesday night pig roast at the Hermitage Inn on the tiny Caribbean island of Nevis. A very large head-to-tail pig on a very large spit, to be exact.

Sitting in the Great Room awaiting its theatrical entrance, I couldn’t help but reconnect with the plantation owners and their guests of yore who feasted on roasted pig and its many local dishes over 300 years ago: Plantain and rabbit pie, Bar-B-Q chicken and curried chick peas, fish in cream sauce and tomato salad, with a special shout out to the Johnny Cakes, of course…

Such elegant fare was replaced by more traditional preparation as we prepared our own meal at the Village Restaurant in Thit Ael Pin, a tiny town inhabited by farmers and fishermen in Myanmar (also known as Burma). It’s home to the Danu people, one of 135 distinct ethnic groups that are officially recognized by that country’s government, each with its own customs, traditions and food preferences.

A chef presided over the activity, and we each had our own personal assistant who instructed, and helped, us to add the pre-prepared ingredients to the cooking pots.  The nine-course luncheon began with vegetables tempura prepared in the local style, went on to steamed fish wrapped in cabbage leaves and tea leaf salad, and titillated our taste buds with a desert of crispy fried banana with honey. The food was paired with glasses of Myanmar-produced red and white wine which we found to be surprisingly good.

As immersed in everyday appreciation of all things culinary as are the Italians, nowhere in the world is fine food approached with more reverence than in France. A barge trip along a shallow canal in the Burgundy area of France sponsored by French Country Waterways epitomizes that tradition. All the senses are satiated, but taste and smell predominate, with wine and food the focus of the trip.

Sure, the tree-lined towpaths, medieval villages, stately chateaux, and rolling fields where magnificent, pure white Charolais cattle graze were also appealing, but we’re talking about French food here. Fresh breads and buttery croissants are brought on board each morning, still warm from the village bakery. Both lunch and dinner, exquisitely prepared and presented from products from the local farmers’ markets hurried on board to maintain freshness, are accompanied by a select red and white wine. The de rigueur Plat de Fromage, a selection of three different cheeses, is served up with as much reverence as the wine.

Each bottle of wine is tenderly caressed as its characteristics are lovingly described prior to serving. The table is hushed as it learns of the wine’s vintage, heritage, blush, fruity nose, supple taste, sweet aroma, lightness, elegance, finesse, its children, hobbies, indiscretions – whatever.

Comparable homage is paid to the cheese. There’s always your basic cow’s, goat’s and blue varieties, farm fresh, 5 months old, 2 weeks old, square curd, penicillin rind, pasteurized, unpasteurized, mild and nutty, light and fresh, tangy and robust – this is a cheese we’re talking about! But once I returned home, I found it hard to look at a glass of wine or wedge of cheese without wanting to know its entire history.  The French take their wine and their cheese very seriously. No doubt, if the barge were to sink, the crew would save the wine and the cheese first. Fortunately, this is not a concern in four feet of water.

Back on land, in a world far away, a famous chef visiting from New York City toils in a Pennsylvania kitchen several days a week. The three meals a day are scrumptiously prepared, visually appealing, enormously filling and, oh yes, so delicious you hear murmurs of appreciation at every sitting. Not unusual for any fine restaurant. But when the calorie count for all three meals ranges between 1200-1600 calories, if you factor in the two snacks available on a daily basis, the meals – every one of them – takes on new significance. Welcome to the Deerfield Health Retreat and Spa in East Stroudsburg, PA, where you may come for the exercise – virtually round the clock options – but you stay for the food. And for the very comfortable homey atmosphere where both the guests and the staff members return year after year.

After galivanting and gourmet-dining around the world, we end with a tiny snack shack in the United States.   The Pine Tree Frosty has been serving light bites and ice cream in the tiny western Maine town of Rangeley since 1964.  We have a summer home there and are regulars at the modest establishment.

The setting alone – perched at the edge of a small lake which is the seasonal home for several dozen ducks and an occasional loon – is worth a visit.  But it’s what we rate as the best lobster rolls in Maine, where that tasty treat is a traditional favorite, which keeps us coming back – and back again.

For the uninitiated, the dish consists of a New England-style hot dog roll, which is split at the top instead of the side and has flat sides, filled with delectable lobster meat.   At the Frosty, the rolls are buttered and toasted, and overflowing with 5 ounces of claw and knuckle lobster meat (more than the standard 3-4 ounces) dressed very lightly with a touch of mayonnaise. After gorging ourselves around the world, such a simple repast is especially appetizing.

The post Memorable Meals: Edible Milestones from Around the World appeared first on Traveling Archive.

A mystical, magical land filled with pagodas, temples, shrines, stupas and monasteries – of which we saw more than our share – plus the other de rigueur sites traversing lakes and mountains, city and country, caves and cooking classes.

But it is the local markets, small villages and contacts with people leading their everyday lives, usually in the form of making something by hand, that so enrich both the trip and the country. By way of introduction, men wear long plaid skirts called longyis tied at the waist with huge protruding knots; women smear a yellow paste made from Thanaka bark on their faces, in a variety of configurations that acts as sunscreen, skin tightener and coolant. I wasn’t tempted to replicate either fashion statement.

The story of everyday life is everywhere. And everywhere people are making things by hand, often out of materials which are themselves hand-made. We visited a shoemaker – ironically one of few places we didn’t have to remove ours, a de rigueur exercise at every pagoda – who is the only person in Myanmar to make shoes for people with disabilities, by hand of course.

Silver smiths and weavers and lacquer workshops, a parasol factory, a textile workshop, a bronze casting arena, sellers of jade and teak furniture – and everywhere the labor-intensive levels of individual craftsmanship are awe-inspiring. It’s like watching God individually mold the different segments of the moon over a month’s time, and then painting each night’s lunar orb with different brushes tinged with hues of gold and yellow, red and white with painstaking precision. That’s the level of Myanmar artistry. At a going rate of about $4 a day. But hey, sometimes that includes lunch!

Our local connection continued at a street-long Jade Market comprised of huge slabs not yet chiseled to the tiniest of stones to a comparably-sized market of marble with statues, not surprisingly mostly of Buddhas, in every stage of development from mammoth to miniscule. Workers carving, scraping, hammering, polishing, painting, washing – blocks and blocks (referring here to streets as opposed to slabs) populated by green and white images of various sizes. Onto another workshop in a different medium – this time wood carving. More hammering – also whirring, smoothing, tapping, pounding, appliquéing – and this time Buddha had company; many animals, women in prayer and other decorative items made of teak.

More everyday life is evident on Yangon’s Circular train which takes workers, students, vendors, shoppers to wherever they need to be for a mere 30 cents for a 3-hour round trip. The fact that the train we were waiting for arrived on the other side of the platform fazed no one, so naturally, we just crossed the tracks. In the States, we’d be arrested – or worse, dead. The train was rundown and crowded – but cheap and functional not unlike the markets. Rumor has it that all modes of transportation are being renovated in the last two years under State Counselor Aung Sun Suu Kyi, known affectionately to the locals as “The Lady.”

A young boy walked the aisles selling strawberries, limes, mangoes and oranges, for 50 cents – a roving supermarket. And to think on Washington, D.C.’s Metro, we can’t even bring our own food aboard.  This exposure to a slice of life in Myanmar brought with it multiple slices of fruit, as well…

And more fruit, as well as every other aspect of the Burmese diet show up at the local markets which are teeming with people selling and cooking all kinds of foods and trinkets. The babble of unfamiliar background noises lends its own exotic flavor to the compendium of other more tangible flavors. Clothing as colorful as the red, yellow, green and orange fruits. Every inch on both sides of the narrow street, as well as right down its center, is covered with all kinds of veggies and meats and pasta, some familiar, some totally unidentifiable. Negotiating among the throngs of people and produce presents its own challenge. Vendors sitting on their haunches for hours in positions I suspect we would find difficult maintaining for more than a minute.

And now time for our aforementioned lunch at the monastery, a veritable vegetarian feast set out upon the floor. In further conversation, I found out I reminded our monk of his 86-year-old mother – which occasioned more pictures, of course, this time on his tablet. At my age, this was not a fact I found particularly pleasing, but he seemed so delighted at the idea, that I became so, as well.  Aung Pan Kyaung Tike imparted several Buddhist lessons in casual conversation: you can’t bring anything with you to the next life so might as well give away everything you have. And so it is with the monks, who have no material accumulations of their own but survive on the contributions of others in the community as well as benevolent donors. Because of them, his monastery supports a school in a small village that had none and is currently building a monastery there as well. As to a day in the life of? They awake at 4 a.m., meditate and recite 108 Buddhist mantras before breakfast, head out into the community with their “begging bowls,” and pretty much pray and chant throughout the rest of the day. Lunch is their last meal of the day. Not an easy life for a non-believer like me.

But from monk to merchant, jade cutter to parasol maker, shoemaker to silversmith, the people of Myanmar add a rich diversity to a country known primarily for its many stunning edifices devoted to Buddha and his followers. For more information, contact Myths and Mountains.

The post Myanmar: Whose People Shine as Bright as their Gleaming Pagodas appeared first on Traveling Archive.

There is very little that can entice me to get up at 4 a.m. but how often do you get a chance to bathe a Buddha? And not just any Buddha but one that the actual real Buddha is said to have embraced himself. The statue at Maha Muni Pagoda in Mandalay, Myanmar is believed to be one of only five likenesses of Buddha created during his lifetime. And the daily cleansing ritual for the hundreds of pilgrims who attend is both literal and spiritual. One of the many unusual experiences embodied in Myths and Mountains’ Myanmar Odyssey Tour.

But the given that Myanmar is a beautiful and fascinating country that deserves to be visited and appreciated cannot be considered in a vacuum. The current bloodshed in the northern Rakhine Province where Muslim refugees are either being persecuted or are themselves Bangladesh terrorists, depending upon whom you ask, is part of the equation. I thoroughly understood the horror of the ethnic cleansing scenario about which I had been reading for almost a year but I wanted to know the perspective of the Burmese themselves. But more on that later.

Starting our trip with a visit to Yangon’s Shwedagon Pagoda is like beginning a trip to Switzerland at the top of the Alps. There’s only one way to go after that, no matter how beautiful the descent.  Built in 525 B.C., the immense complex is overwhelming to navigate and disarming to reflect upon — except for the escalators. They were a surprise. Very prescient folks, I thought, 2600 years ago. I was at a loss for words — not a good place for a travel writer to be — to capture the mystique, magic and magnificence of the cosmically vast structure. We were invited to participate in the nightly candle lighting ceremony, said to promote longevity. We were first quite honored — until we realized that the expectation was that we would light all 1000 wicks. Fortunately, other visitors chose to participate in the process along the way. Otherwise, we would still be there…

The many shrines, pagodas, temples, stupas and monasteries that followed continued the sense of awe embodied in the attitudes of both the faithful and the infidels who visit there. And the amount and variety of offerings to ensure longevity, beauty, wisdom or health left me feeling guilty for arriving empty-handed. Golden pagodas as plentiful as the Golden Arches here, stupas on every street corner instead of Starbucks. Some pagodas are so lit up with gold-leaf engravings and flashing neon lights — sort of the sacred bordering on the sacrilegious — that I momentarily thought I might have been at a DisneyWorld Buddhaland exhibit. More guilt for such a blasphemous thought.

A visit to Shan State, home to 34 minorities, all of whom have different cultures, language, foods and clothes, boasts a much more other-worldly and ethereal terrain than Yangon. If, as our guide Willy kept reminding us, Myanmar has been so “isolated” — always conveyed in a conspiratorial whisper — here the feeling is even more remote. Just the presence of so many water buffalo lets you know you’re in another world. So stopping at a vineyard for a wine tasting seemed totally incongruous but still I overcome my initial surprise to happily indulge.

A visit to Inle Lake was more in keeping with the area. With its serpentine series of canals navigated by long, narrow boats, Inle is reminiscent of Venice and its gondolas, with an equal amount of commerce — all of it — conducted on water. But even out-Venicing Venice, the houses, shops and schools are all on stilts — and there’s a lack of floating gardens in the Italian city. The hill tribe villages as well are a far cry from Venice’s cosmopolitan vibe. Not to mention that I’ve never seen a gondolier steer his boat or catch a fish with one leg wrapped around an oar, an amazing feat for which the Inthas are famous. Okay, maybe a very different experience than Venice.

If every pagoda, shrine and stupa you visit on the ground is impressive, imagine floating over 2200 of them in a hot air balloon. Such is the glorious adventure in Bagan.  It’s like watching over them all from heaven if only Buddha believed in heaven.  Although, at this point, with my eyes glazing over at the mere mention of another pagoda, the thought of actually having to visit any of them once back on the ground made me want to stay in the balloon indefinitely, the champagne breakfast awaiting us upon landing notwithstanding.

Alright, I’ve put it off long enough. Time to discuss the elephant in the country — Rakhine Province. Over the last 10 years, Myanmar has been emerging from the Dark Ages to flirting with Democracy, with the election, despite military rule, of State Counselor Aung Sun Suu Kyi.   Now with the crackdown on the Rohingya Muslims, the country is veering from the cusp of a tourism boom to being a pariah throughout world-wide media.

Prior to the trip, we were, of course, immersed in the world-wide condemnation of the alleged military atrocities visited upon the Muslim population in Rakhine Province and the resultant censure of the country’s first democratically-elected leader. But the many Burmese I spoke to, not surprisingly, have a very different take. In a very over-simplified form, the Rohingya Muslims — self-named and not recognized by the Burmese — are Bangladesh terrorists who want to take over Rakhine Province and make it their own state and they shot up multiple police stations and have terrorized the Myanmar populace — and the military are only acting in self-defense. In addition, Myanmar is a very poor country that cannot afford the education, medical care and housing of 700,000 illegal immigrants who provide no economic benefit — and they want them to all go back to Bangladesh where they belong and the U.N. and world stage have gotten the situation all wrong. I think Fake News is the term they used! Very hard to wrap one’s head around all the information, while also questioning just where all this information comes from.

Meanwhile, on the flip side, Aung San Suu Kyi is beloved and has done a lot for the country in two years. No controversy here — parks are now free to locals where before they were not; education as well; infrastructure changes are apparent; trains and buses have been modernized and made very affordable; corruption among the governing generals has been lessened; the economy has improved and religious constrains lifted. Nonetheless, she is powerless, we were told, against the military which is pretty much still in control. Clearly this is a country very much in transition.

No matter which perspective you accept — although it’s hard to rationalize the native assessment — the more important question for tourists is whether to visit or not, especially when safety is not an issue as is the case here. What is always true when dealing with a government whose policies you reject, is that it is never the politicians who suffer when tourism decreases — it is always the people: the tour guides, hotels, restaurants, vendors and shopkeepers. Myanmar has so much beauty and wonder and fascinating culture to offer that it is not only the country that will suffer if tourism declines but so too the many Americans who may choose not to experience this magical, mystical, memorable journey. Myths and Mountains operates tours and custom trips to a number of destinations in Asia and Southeast Asia.  For more information, visit Myanmar Odyssey: Bagan, Inle, Monywa, Ngapali and Beyond.

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