Holiday in Burma - Act I: is it going to be a holiday?

The New Year had begun with a massive Challenge, a 2-week trip to Burma/Myanmar with the family.
We left Perth at 8.30am on NYD. You would be surprised by how many people were queueing at Perth Intl Airport at 6am on the 1st of January. It's been the first NYE I have gone to bed before midnight, and to be honest didn't feel that sad. At least the 200 other passengers must have done the same, though many looked hungover, like the immigration police officer at Perth, who checked at our passport and boarding passes, and whispered expressionlessly "youse on holiday?.."

That was followed by 12 hours of physical and psychological pain. We flew Jetstar, which grants each human being a mere 76cm of space. Child n.2 sat on our lap, so we had around 35 cm for moving our body.

Child n.1 was immediately plugged into the IPad. (Travelling implies martial law when it comes to parenting, all usual rules are suspended). He watched The LegoMovie 2 times in a row, and when the plane went through some tough turbulence, both me and Woman spontaneously began to sing "everything is awesome". Child n.2 could not sleep in the noisy environment which is a Jetstar flight, then  got bored at the third hour of flight, and had to be entertained for the remaining 3hours. We ate terrible snack, which made us more miserable.

During descent, Child n.1 had a meltdown: his right ear didn't pop, and he spent 20mins screaming "I cannot hear!!!", while kicking violently the back of the seat, and of the girl, sitting in front of him.

We arrived at Singapore airport, ate sushi and then I cowardly hid in the breastfeeding room with Child n.2, and had a 30mins nap, which brought me back to being functional. No one asked me whether I was able to breastfeed, luckily. Child n. 1 frothed over Chinese toys at the airport toy shop, then became progressively more hysterical, due to having been hyper, fed sugar, or plugged into an iPad for the previous 12 hrs. When we eventually boarded the flight to Yangon, he screamed "oh my God!" during take-off, but immediately after that he passed out, and slept (on me) for the entire flight, aka 2.5hrs. Child n.2 shifted unpredictably between crying and laughing, which proves she is a true woman.

We arrived happy and safe in Yangon, where we are now, still happy and still safe. Thismorning we went to Shwedagon Paya, and suddenly realised we Italians should stop bragging about St. Peter's as if we were the only ones who ever built something amazing. It was unbelievable, even if I spent ,most of the time trying to stop Child n.1 from drinking dirty water.



We've got 13 days ahead of us in this amazing country. I hope we won't get any disease, and that I'll manage to go for a few runs. I'll try to keep the blog posted.