Myanmar - Su Paung Kyun village

Season’s greetings.
The weather on Rarotonga for the past week or so has been wet and windy but today, New Year’s Eve is sunny and warm. Apparently that’s not going to last long – there’s more and wind on the way to welcome 2013. However, we’re much better off than Fiji and Samoa with cyclone Evan and now the Solomons with cyclone Freda.
I’m still going through video from my trip to Burma. Our journey on the RV Katha Pandaw took us to a small village called Su Paung Kyun on the bank of the Irrawaddy River in Central Myanmar (Burma).
We had a short glimpse of the rural lifestyle.
During the wet season the village would be situated by the river so most of the houses were on stilts. The land left above water as the river level drops is used for crops, mostly lab lab beans hereabouts. Women in the village were winnowing beans from the last harvest. Since it was a Saturday when we visited, the children were not at school and they were obviously as fascinated by us as we were by them! Our guide told us that we were the first foreigners to go to that particular village but with the way tourism is increasing in Burma we won’t be the last.
Things will change but I hope the people can remain as delightful as they are now.