This place is rather depressing, and we both want to get out of here, so we bought bus tickets today. We’re staying at the “base camp,” which is a dirt street lined with stalls selling disturbing looking snack that have been sitting out for who know how long, and restaurants that serve terrible food. I ordered a chicken curry at one place, which consisted of a plate of rice with a funny flavor and a couple of pieces of strange meat in a greasy sauce. Everything is greasy: eggs, cookies, cakes, curries, fried noodles, you name it.

So far the one good thing about Burmese food is the tea. There are tea shops everywhere serving little glasses of hot, sweet, milky tea. We went to one such shop, and after the usual flurry of attention settled down, a Burmese man and two girls sat down with us. He said he was an English teacher and the girls were his students. He studied English in university, graduated in 1974, and is now a tutor. The sad thing was that while he had very good pronunciation and we had no trouble understanding him, he had difficulty understanding us, especially Marie with her Czech accent. Of course he didn’t admit to not understanding her, and would simple agree with everything she said, including “do you understand me?” The questions he asked seemed to be regurgitated from English books: “are you interested in sports?” This makes sense, because there are so few opportunities to talk to native English speakers in Myanmar, so learning is done by rote. It'’ sad that someone who ha devoted their life to teaching English has no opportunity to learn how to converse with English-speaking people.

A little girl in the shop had a “Wnow Shite” tee shirt on. We tried to explain that this was funny, and a bit offensive, but he didn’t understand, and didn’t know who Snow White was. However, I think we were able to communicate that the “crap curry” at a restaurant down the road should be “carp curry.” Unfortunately the former description is more accurate.