Myanmar.

Inle Lake

Today was yet another Alina – mum day. Stéphane stayed in the guesthouse to work and Lara preferred to stay with him listening to her story and drawing in her book. Alina and I are already used to those days and are enjoying each other’s company.

We had not made any specific plans but just wondered around town. First we found ourselves in a shop and looked for a bag to replace the kid’s bag that was slowly falling apart (Sorry Andrea, die SoulCollage® Tasche hat es 2 ½ Monate mit uns geschafft, jetzt mussten wir sie ersetzen). And in this amazing treasure shop we didn’t just find those bags but also bags for carrying the water bottles. Usually the person who is carrying the day backpack (Stéphane or me) is carrying several liter of water. This is really not nice, especially when we are cycling or when it is very warm. Now each one of us has his/her bottle with them and we also always know how much we are drinking.

After that success we wondered over the market and looked at things nobody needs – like rings, bracelets… but after all that I decided I didn’t need the ring I really liked. Instead we got ourselves a nice lunch, bought some snacks for the bus journey and slowly but surely went back in the direction of our guesthouse. But before we arrived there we stopped at a nice coffee place, Alina had wanted to check out for days “The French Touch”. In there we loved it. Alina had some ice cream and I had a coconut mocca. We placed cards and I read a bit in the Rough Guide, which is the competition to the Lonely Planet guide book. And when it was time to pay we decided to have another ice cream and another coconut mocca 🙂

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in the French Touch Café
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waiting for the bus

Our day was not finished yet. Back in the guesthouse we had already packed all our bags and were patiently waiting for our tuk tuk that was supposed to bring us to the bus station. At 18:30 there was no tuk tuk and I started to get nervous. But all went fine and we found ourselves on time in front of a shabby place that was apparently the bus station. We had deliberately chosen a normal bus over the VIP version, which would have been 8000 kyat more expensive than the normal bus. And usually there is no big difference. So we got on the bus, the travel sickness tablets were given out to my family members, the blankets were used to cover ourselves before the lights went out. And I could even sleep a bit before the ritual of lights on – dinner break started all over. The bus usually pulls into one of those restaurant places and there is a 30 minutes break. I could just stop the guy from waking up Alina and we left both girls peacefully sleeping in the dark bus while we went into the freezing cold night air.

The rest of the trip was ok until Lara woke me up around 3 am telling me she felt sick and I had just enough time to grab the plastic bag for her to throw up. Afterwards she really had a hard time. There was a second and a third time when she was sick before we finally arrived just an hour later. She kept saying she hates taking the bus. Poor baby 🙁