The Wheel and Axle

Continued From:

Stories From Around The World, Part 1

During our first day in Mandalay, we decided to join the hostel-organized mini-tour around town that would culminate in Mandalay Hill. Here I met several people who joined the tour.

First is Harry from Australia. He has angles to him that remind me of Liam Hemsworth. I recognized him from the plane we took from Kuala Lumpur to Yangon. He wasn’t easy to forget because he was so tall that his head would almost hit the ceiling of the airplane; I am a hobbit beside him. While on the tour in Mandalay, we got to chatting, and it turned out he was traveling alone while on a 2-week holiday from work, where he’s a mining advisor. He’d stayed in Yangon for several days before going to Mandalay and was planning to go to Hpisaw the next day.

He lives in Perth, and after I mentioned that I planned to visit two of my best friends who now live in Australia and make my way to Ayers Rock, he laughed as he himself hasn’t been there yet. That said, I encouraged him to visit the Philippines next time. He’s definitely a nice guy to know, and perhaps when I visit my friends France and Brian in Australia in the hopefully-near future, our paths may yet cross again.

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One of the great things about backpacking and staying in hostels is getting to know people from all over the world. It’s something I only really appreciated during my recent trip to Myanmar, the first time I really went and got to know other fellow tourists.

In Yangon, over breakfast, Bj and I got to chatting with a Thai guy, whose name I forget and who apparently enjoys watching Manny Pacquiao. I didn’t have the heart to break it to him that Pacquiao is a homophobic, corrupt arse who is wasting taxpayers’ money for being useless as a politician (and as a *snort* basketball player). We also met a lovely Canadian couple, whose names I also forget, who offered to share their taxi to the bus station so we could split the costs; we would’ve taken them up on it except their bus leaves an hour earlier than ours and so we didn’t want to be there waiting for ages.

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