Twenty-Eight Hours Was Rough, but the Destination Looks Like it Was Worth it.....

We left Houston in overcast, rainy weather and 12 1/2 hours later arrived in Moscow, which was pretty much as I would visualize Russia in November--overcast, dreary and covered in snow.

We had a couple welcome hours layover outside the plane, so we walked around the terminal and decided to have a Russian beer.  Ended up finding an Irish Pub that had Guinness, Budweiser, and a local Russian brew so we gave it a try.....

Not impressed but at least I can say I've tried Russian beer.

At one point, one of the airport workers referred to Devin as "cowboy," which probably made both their days.

We now refer to him as "Comrade Cowboy."

The next leg to Singapore was 11 1/2 hours and I actually was able to sleep some.  We had another layover at Singapore and mostly just walked, walked and walked to stretch our legs.  The final three hour flight to Yangon seemed to take forever but we finally made it, cleared customs and got caught in a traffic jam to the hotel with all of us crammed into a tiny taxi,

But we made it.

After checking in, we cleaned up, had lunch and walked up the hill to the Shwedagon Paya, the most important religious site in Myanmar--the photo at the beginning of this post.  It rises 350 feet above the highest hill in Yangon and is considered the oldest Buddhist temple in the world--dating back to the 6th century.

We knew shorts weren't allowed but decided to purchase a wrap-around cloth that men often wear wear here that covers the waist to the ground.

Alida is really good at putting up with us but at this point the three of us had on Luckenbach, Shiner and Houston Dynamo shirts, long skirts, and of course one cowboy hat.  But at least we got into the pagoda and could look around.

After a fairly long walk back to the hotel, I showered again and took a nap.  Devin came by later and we all pretty much decided to skip supper and just sleep off the long trip.  Tomorrow morning early we leave and fly to Mandalay--the old colonial capital of Burma--for a couple of days.  So far we've only met one other person we know but will probably mostly be keeping to the four of us anyway.

Off to a good start......

Booked a Southeast Asia Trip in November with an Emphasis on Myanmar (Burma).....

.....including a marathon run at the Bagan Temple complex and another at the Angkor Wat Temple in Cambodia.

We'll be flying into the capitol, Yangon on November 24, spending a day in the modern capital then will fly north to the old historical capital at Mandalay to visit some temples there.  After a day in Mandalay, we'll fly to the the massive World Heritage Site at Bagan.  

Of what was once a religious complex of over 5,000 temples--some over a thousand years old--some 2,000 still remain today and we'll spend a couple of days sightseeing at Bagan.  On the third day we'll be running the Bagan Temple Marathon on November 28.  Alida, Jon and I will be doing the half and Devin, of course, the full.  The course runs through the temple complex and several small villages.

It's not my first time to visit Southeast Asia--I worked several times in Thailand, one of my favorite destination places in the world--but this will be the first where I won't have to get up in the mornings and go to work.

...and it will be the first where I have my family with me.  Devin, Alida, and I will be flying Houston to Moscow to Singapore to Myanmar--28 hours.  At Singapore, we'll meet up with Jon who is a member of our Houston Dynamo supporter group and the four of us will do the trip together.

We'll be joining a running group that we've traveled to Iceland, Turkey and Costa Rica with before so we may know some others. The Bagan Temple Marathon promises to be a fantastic experience:

The day after the marathon, we'll be flying to Inle Lake which features a quaint fishing village entirely built on stilts.  We'll spend three days exploring there then will separate from the group and the four of us will fly to Bangkok--arriving in the evening.  Alida has us booked in a centrally-located hotel and the next day we plan to see the Reclining Buddha, the Royal Palace and maybe do a water taxi on the Chao Prya River.  Almost 24 hours after arriving, we'll fly to Cambodia.

At Siem Reap, we'll visit the World Heritage Site at Angkor Wat.  I visited there about a decade ago and know it to be a fantastic place.  We'll have three days there and, in the middle, they are having a half marathon!  We're all signed up and since I'm in this for the medals and they offer one for the 10K, I'm going to slack off and do the 6.2 mile race.  This should be really interesting since it is also run within the Temple complex.  

For me, this will be a return to the Thailand/Cambodia area that I worked in and so enjoyed.  From Cambodia, Jon will head back to Singapore and the rest of us will fly back to Bangkok then back to Houston on December 8--making it a circumnavigation flight leaving east from Houston and arriving back from the west.

Angkor Wat:

Spent a Full Day in Herzegovina and the Pictures are Amazing......

.....plus we had some of the most amazing weather imaginable.

The tour didn't get back to the hotel until very late at night and I'm flying out this morning, so I'm basically just posting pictures today.

Konjic--17th century 6-arched bridge over Neretva River.  Destroyed by the Nazis at the end of WWII but obviously rebuilt.

Waterfalls near Pocitelj:

Remains of Ottoman Turk walled city.  We drove to the top and walked back down through the ruins.

At Blagaj, we visited the source of the springs for the Neretva River and picked our own trout for lunch.

Mostar was the highlight of the trip--featuring a 16th century bridge.  During the 90s war, it took the Serbs three months of constant shelling to destroy it.  Rebuilt now, with most of the original stones, it is amazing.

At Mostar, we visited a 16th century mosque and I climbed the minaret tower--a first for me but the view was great.

Still haven't been able to check in for my flight this morning but unless there's a glitch, I should be home around midnight tonight.  Great trip.

Woke up to Rain and Considerably Cooler Temperatures......

.....and I knew from the forecasts that rain was expected while I am here.  It's also expected most of the day tomorrow when I go to Herzegovina.  Because of the rain, I did a leisurely breakfast at the hotel and went into town around 9:00.  The rain had stopped but it was definitely light jacket weather.

I took a different way down the mountain this morning and ran into an old, old neighborhood that must have been amazing in its day.  The old mansions are in disarray now but there was a historical plaque, in English.  This building was so amazing I couldn't get a real photograph that did it justice.  It was originally built by a doctor then had served as the British Embassy after WWI.  After the second world war it had briefly been a US Consulate, then an Olympic museum in 1984 before being set on fire in the last war.

The house beside it was almost as majestic.  It had belonged to an attorney and politician and had a five-story turret.

There is so much history packed into this small city of only 400,000.

I spent about three hours just walking the Old Town then headed out toward the airport on the main street that was known as Sniper's Alley during the war.  The architecture here quickly became Communist-era.

One building had an eternal flame dedicated to Tito and the partisans who had fought the Germans here.

Walking further along, and getting into the Sniper's Alley area, I found this Monument to Murdered Children.

Plaques in the background have the  names of over 1,600 children killed during the 1992-95 war--most of the victims killed by sniper fire from the surrounding hills.

It started sprinkling so I didn't go all the way to the Holiday Inn where most of the destruction and fighting took place.   Here are a couple of the housing blocks that were under constant fire though.

On some days the snipers would just fire onto one floor--say the third--while other days they might just fire at corner apartments.  This went on for 3 1/2 years.

I walked back to the Old Town and realized I'd been walking non-stop for four hours.  I headed back to the Brewery and this time I splurged and had a salmon dinner with the works and two mugs of beer.  Total cost:  $14.00.

I walked around probably another hour before heading to the hotel. It was dark and gloomy so I took a nap.  When I woke up, the sun was out so I headed back into town, had a pizza for supper and just took a final look around.  I came across this parade--don't know what the sign means.  Maybe "Americans go home," I don't really know.

This may have been my last trip to the Old Town.  Tomorrow I go on a day-long tour into Herzegovina and getting back kind of late.  Tuesday I head to the airport in the morning.  

I came across a sticker that should be the mantra for diversity advocates.  It certainly levels the playing field:

Did a Tour of the War Zone on my Second Day......

.....but I started with a leisurely morning in the Old Town with a walk along the river and visits to a couple of tea houses.  The old main street is now a pedestrian mall but the cultural influences are very evident.  In fact, the sidewalk delineates the differences between Ottoman and Hapsburg.

If you turn one direction, it would be easy to imagine you're in Vienna:

Turn the other direction and you are in Istanbul:

And at another spot, the Eastern Orthodox and western Roman churches met centuries ago.  Sarajevo really is an amazing place.

In the afternoon, I signed up for a Sarajevo War Zone tour.  The 3 1/2 year war here claimed over 11,000 lives with 1600 of them being children.  Signs of the war are everywhere some twenty years later.   The outdoor market very near my hotel was hit with 67 people killed.

Since over two million rounds were fired into the city, hardly a building avoided damage.  Some areas of Sarajevo looked like those photos of Hiroshima after we dropped the bomb in WWII. We went through the Sniper's Alley today but I couldn't get photos out of the moving vehicle.  I may walk back down there tomorrow and spend some time.

Sarajevo was surrounded throughout the war except for a small area in the mountains.  When the United Nations took over the airport in 1993, the airport connected the city with that small area but snipers kept Bosnians from getting food, weapons or supplies since the UN was "neutral" and wouldn't allow them to arm themselves.  In response, the Bosnians built a half-mile tunnel literally under the runway and used it to supply themselves during the war.

The tunnel was literally built inside someone's house on one end and finished inside someone else's house on the other end.

After that we went up into the mountains and looked at some of the Serbian artillery and tank sites where they bombarded the city below.  The United Nations was completely useless to the Bosnians--actually keeping them from arming themselves for defense.  Technically the war ended when NATO took out the Serbian positions in the mountains.  As our guide pointed out,
NATO gets the credit but it was actually the US Air Force that did all the dirty work and did it very quickly.  He pointed out that Bosnia appreciates what we did for them but it could have been done three years earlier before 11,000 of them were needlessly killed.

Built by the Austo-Hungarian army in 1800s

Used by the Serbian Army 1992-1995

Destroyed by the US Air Force 1995

Built by the Yugoslavian Army post-WWII

Used by the Serbian Army 1992-1995

Destroyed by the US Air Force 1995

From here we went further into the mountains to the site of the 1984 Olympic bobsledding venue.  It was really neat yet kind of sad at the same time.  Even this "world peace games" venue was involved in the war here.

We actually walked the entire length of the track and met our driver at the finish line.  It's been taken over by graffiti artists, skateboarders and mountain bikes but still retains a lot of it's 1984 grandeur when the East Germans swept all the gold medals here.

It made a wonderful shield for Serbian snipers and they created holes in several places to fire down into the city.

The finish line:  My official time was somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes.

We then went even further up to the Alpine Village lodge/restaurant where Jim McKay and ABC Sports broadcast all the Olympic results from here.

There used to be a ski lift from the city center that brought tourists, journalists and athletes directly to this lodge.  It was hoped the 1984 Olympic venues would provide tourism and income for Bosnia for decades.  They lasted nine years.  If it was Bosnian, the Serbs destroyed it.

Sarajevo Roses

I find this incredibly sad.  Literally tens of thousands of mortar shells rained down into Sarajevo during the war.  Their scars are everywhere even today.

On impact, the shells created a scar with shrapnel marks.  In those places where the shells killed people, the Bosnians have filled in the scars with red epoxy, creating an almost floral effect.

There are literally hundreds of these around the city--if they are filled with red epoxy, somebody died here.  They're called Sarajevo Roses.

One last war-related note on the war today:

Serb-Bosnians raided the national library and used incendiary bombs to destroy over two million books including religions manuscripts from the four religions--some of which were over 1,000 years old.

Today was an educational day--tomorrow I have nothing planned except to be a tourist.  Monday, my last full day here, I've booked a day-long trip to five very old Bosnian towns in the countryside.

This has been a good trip.