Changing towards happiness

I'm going to write about happiness again, but this time it's personal.

I feel that I'm happy here... what did it take? Well, going through depression (both for me and Ruben); travelling around; being really sick for 1 month; changing a job, and getting a cat :)

The path was not easy... it took some time and a lot of nerves and doubts. But now I finally:

- LOVE what i do for living. I finally unlocked myself, and everything thanks to the fact that i was not scared to risk, to let it go, to quit. I was open for a discovery, a new challenge, a way to redefine myself. And all these found me. I got not only a new job which fulfills me completely, but a great boss who is truly a life and work coach to me.

- MEET interesting people and enjoy their company; but at the same time try to avoid those who drain my energy. I can't say I have a 'best-friend-forever' here, it may or may not come, but I did clarify for myself which type of people I want to be with.

- FEEL AT HOME. Well it may not be a 'home, sweet home' feeling. But since we have got our kitten Nalatje, I almost run to get home. Because I know that this sweet cat will be waiting for me there and desperately cry of happiness when I come in (and the next moment she will go completely nuts and jump into my plate with pasta... That's a different story though :) )

- COPE with the difficulties of living in Yangon. The heat, broken pavements, lack of any kind of comfort or etiquette... This all is not so sharp for my eye anymore. I stoped noticing certain things that disgusted me so much in the beginning.

- STARTED to enjoy being different. The way I look, the country where I'm from, the languages I speak... It is all rare and different here. I don't feel self conscious anymore about the way people stare at me and what they may say ('She is so pretty!') There were moments I wanted to be like any other Burmese girls to avoid attention. Now I understand that I DO have a privilege to be different in the way people admire me. Let's see where it will bring me.

- AM AT PEACE because Ruben is finally finding solutions for all the work-related difficulties he has got. I wish that he will enjoy his life here as much as he can. I am sure he will :*

But I must admit, that Myanmar is the most unusual place I lived so far and it I'm definitely going through the life-changing experience. 

Happiness Myanmar style

For those who are wondering how life in Myanmar is I have 2 words - difficult but HAPPY :) Watch this video, it gives a snapshot about Myanmar lifestyle. 

Happy watching!

Who is Nala?

I think from now one we should change the tagline for our blog into 'Asian adventure of Lyuba, Ruben & Nala'.

Nala is a new member of our family - our little kitten girl. We have been dreaming about having a cat already in Belgium, but due to diverse factors it never happened. And since we are in Asia for undefined period of time, we decided that there is no point to postpone. 

To be honest it felt unreal that we ARE getting a cat. It's a big responsibility since me and Ruben both have 'adventure deficit disorder' , which would mean that our cat would most probably travel with us. After doing research on how to transport a cat to different countries and what is necessary for that, we decided not to hesitate. 

In the very beginning we decided that our future cat will be an adopted cat from a shelter or taken from a street. Why to buy a fancy cat if there are so many of them out there needing human's love and care? 

I wish that every newborn cat had Nala's lucky destiny - she was born on January 1, 2014 from a stray cat, but some nice people took her and her brother in their house until they could find a permanent home for them. The couple who took them posted on Facebook page of a shelter about the kittens and immediately contacted them. Actually we didn't really see a proper picture of her... Just her back - her 'owners' didn't have a better picture. But when I saw her colors I knew that this little lion should be my 'baby' :) 

Nala on the left and her brother on the right. I couldn't clearly see her, but I knew she was a cutie

We were preparing to receive Nalatje literally as before having a real baby: read about what to buy; went shopping to buy all nice 'girlie' equipment and food for her; kitten-proofed our flat so she couldn't get hurt. I was concerned if she would like us, or maybe she get would get scared in a taxi on the way home, if she likes her cat house. 

When we arrived for her she was sleeping in her little house; she was shy while her brother was really active and playful. I could see she has a bit of eye infection and some fleas. But that is easy to treat. For me she was already beautiful. I'm used to have cats and kittens and I can immediately say if the kitten going to be a beautiful cat. 

She was so calm in the taxi; she liked her little cage-house we chose for transporting her. That evening we also took her to vet to get some treatment and decided when we can start giving her all necessary shots. 

Nala behaved so nicely! Almost didn't cry, ate well and used her litter box. I was amazed how smart she is! She was trying to hide a bit and apparently her favorite spot is behind washing machine (even while it's working). 

Nala's favourite place and her toy

Today is a second day since she with us. It was difficult for me to leave her this morning as both of us have work to do. I was constantly thinking about her, if she is okay and if she is not scared. But apparently Nalatje get used to the flat very fast - she already slept under our bed, on the sofa 

between pillows and on our big luggage. Nalatje knows that she is going to be a traveler and that lots of nice adventures await her :)

Nala is waiting for adventures to come

Going crazy while playing. My little lion :) 

In a couple of weeks she will hopefully feel completely confident in us and her new life. I can't wait for her to start purring and be cuddly. 

The sneaky dengue fever

Oh my, I didn't write here anything for more than 2 months. Time flies... We've been here in Myanmar for more than 4 months. Many trips and guests happened, I have to write about them all to keep track of my memories. I will, but not today.

Today I want to write about something less exciting - dengue fever - since I've been sick with it for the last 2 weeks.

First time I've heard about this disease when I got to know that a friend of mine from Brussels, Alejandra, started to work as a travel blogger for an organization called Break Dengue. Here is the website & blog http://www.breakdengue.org/. Alejandra is currently travelling around South East Asia, doing her research on dengue and writing about her findings. Back then, when I first read about dengue, I didn't even knew about other mosquito transferred diseases besides malaria. I couldn't imagine that at some point I will know about dengue as much as I know now...

Firstly, once you're beaten by a mosquito, there is an incubation period of 2-7 days. And apparently I got that one, since I didn't feel bad immediately, but rather gradually started to get low fever of 37C, muscles pain and easily get tired. I thought that i'm just tired from all the travelling and sun heat... Btw, the mosquito is active in a day time unlikely to malaria mosquito who bites during the night. Ah, brave & stupid me - I never use repellent, especially during the day.

Secondly, dengue is also called a 'break bone' disease since one of the symptoms is bones, joints and muscles aches. Tell me about it... IT IS very painful! My low back and neck were so stiff and in so much pain so I had to take a looot of painkillers.

Thirdly, fever fluctuates from low to very high. I personally had 39,9 C. It comes back no matter how much paracetamol you've taken. And it brings a lot of headache, especially in the zone behind eyes. At moments I thought that my left eye is definitely going to jump out of a socket... Another amazing part of it is that you feel hot and cold at once. You are shivering like crazy trying to get warm. And when you're finally warm, you start sweating like a pig...

Fourthly, there is no vaccine against dengue and you can't be immune to it. Well, after being sick  I'm only protected for this seasons. But since there are 4 types of dengue and it also modifies from year to year, I am not immune for the coming seasons. What a joy...

And at last, there is also no specific antibiotic or whatever medicine against dengue. You just painfully wait until it's over taking some painkillers and paracetamol and drinking plenty of fluids. For me the fever period lasted for 6 days. It felt like 6 days burning in hell, out of which I spent five in Bangkok on my visa run and was 'enjoying' my hotel room since I couldn't do ANYTHING else. At least I was lucky not getting a hemorrhage dengue with bleeding and bruises.

Thanks to dengue I've get to know that actually a doctor from a very simple private clinic in Yangon can do much better than an advanced emergency room in a good hospital in Bangkok. This doctor diagnosed me immediately and his treatment saved me from burning down just in one evening.

Now I'm recovering thanks to this magician.  It's been my 4d day without fever (or almost no fever, since it comes back for short during morning time) and it feels great! The only downside is that I feel very tired and sleepy all the time (during dengue I had some kind of insomnia since I couldn't sleep well due to pain and high fever). They say it may take up to one week to completely recover.

This dengue is a great lessons learned:

- ALWAYS wear mosquito repellent while travelling;
- GO to the doctor immediately if in doubt - you're in Asia, and crazy things happened.

My mom is scared for me and saying that I shouldn't stay in Asia : 'You see, you get very sick there, maybe Asia is not for you!'.

Maybe it's not, maybe it is. At least 6 more months to go. And hopefully without crazy stuff! :)

Chinese wedding in Myanmar

I didn't attend so many weddings in my life yet. I can actually count them on my fingers: first wedding was in Ukraine when I was still a child; then two were in Belgium. And now a fourth one - a Chinese wedding dinner here in Myanmar.

Definitely the most culturally different was the last wedding - indeed Asian traditions are much more difficult to understand. 

So, we were invited to attend a dinner for a Chinese wedding. First challenge was to find a suitable present - who knows what is appropriate to give? After asking some friends around, we decided to settle for a real present, not simply giving money. We chose a nice set of exclusive Chinese teas. 

The wrapping looks more Christmas'y then wedding like, but oh well... Who cares about the style when in Myanmar? :)

I didn't know much if at all about Chinese weddings before. So once we got to the dinner place, I could already feel the difference - there was a huuuge amount of cars parked next to the resto. Lots of people were attending the event.

There was a reception desk for presents. We gave ours and got back this nice card with a Ferrero Roche chocolate candy :) 

We were promptly lead to our VIP table (yes, it had a sign VIP on it :) In the middle of the round table there was a rotating plate - nice invention for getting shared food on your plate. You simple rotate the serving plate to reach it, no need to bother your neighbor.

When I saw the menu, I was surprised to see the amount of dishes to be served - 10! As far as I remember, there were all sorts of meat (bhew!) - chicken, duck, beef; one dish of fish; only one complete veggy dish (I was surprised to see not much of veggy since they eat a lot of them in China); rice; steamed breads; desert. 

Normally the dinner should start at 6 pm, but since people were gathering slowly, it started at 7 pm. There were around 600 guests in total.. Probably the biggest wedding I've attended. And apparently me and three other people were the only foreigners in the room. 

600 guests

I was anxious to see the bride and the groom; they finally showed up around 7 pm right before dinner. They actually changed their outfits twice - appearing in white at first and then changing into pink and grey. 

Couple with their parents

Singing  a love song. 

There were some traditional games and a bit of performances, but since everything was in Burmese and Chinese, we couldn't really get the meaning of everything. But it was fun to watch.

Then the dinner started. We were served the dishes one after another without any time for a small break. While eating we could enjoy the karaoke performance of the friends of the couple - apparently it is a normal practice to invite friends to entertain the guests instead of professional musicians. Since most of the food were meat I couldn't eat everything, and even though I was super stuffed with food in the end. I was surprised that the rice was served in the very end right after dessert. 

The dinner lasted for 2 hours. Right after dessert was served and eaten, people started to leave. Actually some of them were leaving even before that. I was surprised - aren't there going to be any party? Apparently not; it's a normal tradition to have just a dinner. People are fed and happy with that. They don't need a crazy party till 3 am. So people were disappearing super fast; it looked like someone gave them a signal to leave. 

People were leaving with a 'speed of light'. Only some of them were still chatting for a while with each other. 

We waited for a bit and also left. We went back home walking (it was just half hour walk for us) and probably got home faster than most of the guests: there was a huge traffic jam in front of the resto since everyone came by car and was trying to get out. It reminded me people rushing to their cars after musical concerts. 

That was definitely a different wedding and different experience.

Yangon Zoo

One afternoon when Julie and Ken (our guests from Belgium) were here we decided to visit Yangon Zoological Garden. Since it is located close by Kandawgyi lake, again 15-20 min walk form our place, it was very convenient for us to go there.

To get to the zoo we had to pay 2 000 kyat per person. Again a foreigner price.

THAT ticket... 

Once we got to the zoo we could see immediately that it was once a very nice zoo, but now it was so purely maintained... Pavement was broken in many places, cages looked very old. 

'Zoo' gang: Ruben, Julie and Ken (from left to right).

The first animals we saw were different exotic birds which names I don't remember besides peacock :) Birds looked quite fine and even happy, despite the fact that rats were also feeding from their food. Yes, the peacock was (happily?) sharing his plate with a fat hairy rat.

Afterwards we saw monkeys. There were not many of them, but they were big and pretty nice. Once they saw us, they immediately started posing and bagging for food.

This one came straight to the fence and started wash himself and posing to the cameras. 

This one was kind of a 'yoga master' - doing all sorts of stretching exercises 

We went further. It seemed that third of all the animals in the zoo were ungulates: different roes, horses, deer etc. You could buy some bananas to feed them. Actually it was the first zoo I've been to where it was allowed to feed animals.

Some zoo visitors bought banana and were feeding animals. 

Now I understand why it's not allowed: it is not only that animals can get sick or poisoned, but they start begging for food. Which almost all animals in this zoo were doing. Apparently they either don't get enough food or they are so used to beg that it became an instinct for them.

Another interesting animal was the fishing cat. There were few cages with that species of cats. One of the animals looked like a real psycho: he was nervously walking from one side of the cage to another making weird sounds. Two other of his mates looked scared and were quietly sitting.

Fishing cat. Some of them were really big, others much smaller. Maybe male and female differentiate in sizes. 

I could not believe my eyes when I saw the elephants: there were 5 elephants, chained with their feet to the floor, on a very small space. How could those people treat poor elephants like that while other animals had quite a lot of space?

Nevertheless elephants enjoy their lives and care for each other. 

You could take an elephant ride in the zoo.

Elephants were also begging for food and many people were buying sugar cane sticks to feed them. I felt great pity for them...

But not until I saw the bears. There were 2 small bears, probably still babies, with who visitors could take pictures. Both bears were chained to benches with a very short chain. Basically those bears couldn't even walk properly! When one of them started crying, I just couldn't stay there anymore - it felt like the baby was crying! Although it seemed that only me and my friends were pitying the animals - neither bear trainers nor any other visitors seemed to care...

Somehow there were so many hypos in this zoo. Apparently when the zoo in Nay Pyi Taw (the current capital) took the biggest collection of animals from Yangon zoo, they decided to keep all hypos here. Well, at least those hypos had a lot of space and they looked OK.

This hypo was the fattest since he was the closest to the banana selling stall. 

The otters were next to the hypos and didn't look OK at all. Once they saw us coming, they got out of the water and started loudly squeaking - this is they way they were begging for food. Poor little otters...

The next was monkey island so to say. The pictures speak for themselves. Monkeys looked healthy and active. So hopefully they get enough food.

Monkey island

Lazy one

This adventurous monkey tried to escape from the island :) 

Then there were lions and tigers, whose pictures I don't even want to show since they were so skinny... The animals didn't even get up when we came to their cages. I just hope that it's their normal behavior and not because of hunger and illness.

One of the inhabitants of the wild cats compartment :) 

I left the zoo with mixed feelings. I was so sorry for those poor animals who didn't have enough care. After being in nice zoos in Europe, where all animals look healthy, I felt like crying for all those in Yangon Zoo who were starving and sick. I really hope that since the country is developing so far the zoo will evolve as well getting some corporate sponsors and donors.

Feeling royal

Last Sunday we decided to be tourists for a little bit and explore something in Yangon.

As we wanted to do something in nature without going outside the city, a walk around Kandawdgyi lake seemed like a good choice.

Kandawdgyi lake, which in Burmese means 'Great Royal Lake', is located in downtown area of Yangon, only 20 minutes walk from where we live.

To get to the area foreigners have to pay 2 USD or 2000 kyat. I don't know how much locals should pay, maybe 10th part of the amount if at all. Anyway, here in Myanmar they have foreigner prices for everything. It is such a shame that to get to any park or this particular lake you need to pay. But since there is no a good taxation system, someone needs to pay the maintenance... Rich foreigners :)

Anyway, once we got to the lake we didn't think about the high entrance fee anymore. It was just  so beautiful! All those wooden bridges spreading from one side to another looked so cute!

This long bridge connects one bank of the lake with another.

The lake is artificial and is connected to a bigger Inya lake with a system of pipes. Apparently there is not enough water exchange that's why the water gets this green color. 

Water drops on water lilies looked a bit like jelly fish :)

Palm trees along the bridge

  

We had a long walk along those bridges, enjoying the view, resting on the grass sometimes. There were lots of people, especially couples, who were hiding behind their umbrellas and kissing. Showing affection publicly is not so common here, but apparently if you're behind umbrella it's okay :)

This is the park where couples were hiding :) 

Sometimes it was quite dangerous to walk there since the bridges are poorly maintained and wooden bars are broken in many places. Also in the water there was some garbage of plastic bottles and bags. People here don't really bother about environment unfortunately.

The best view on Shwedagon Pagoda. 

We got to another side of the lake close to Kandawdgyi Palace, but didn't really go there since both were too tired. That will be our next touristy trip in the city :)

Kandawgyi palace

People were preparing to the Full moon festival by putting candles. 

Overall we did enjoy our little tour. What bothered me a bit was that sometimes locals were staring at me, making some comments in Burmese and sometimes even taking photos. I can understand that people are curious, but that was a bit too much... Still getting used to be a local celebrity - a weird white blond girl with strange dress.. :)