I said goodbye to my girlfriend, got on a late night train
and ended up in Taungoo. What is it about Taungoo? This was my fifth time
visiting this small city, by far the most frequent visitation spot outside
Yangon.
Well, on this instance, my purpose was clear: I wanted to
visit my motorbike. As much as I enjoyed Myawaddy, I was frustrated by having
to rely on taxis and such. I wanted to go where MY Kenbo 125 was located. I say
my, but I’ve somewhat sold it to
Barbara, a fellow teacher in Yangon who makes a couple visits a month to
Taungoo, 175 km north of Yangon, as a volunteer English teacher to students at
the Taungoo Education College. I’ve agreed to sell it to her, but we’ve never
agreed on a price or anything, so it’s still mine.
Again, this was my FIFTH time in Taungoo, but the first time
I’d be spending more than one night there. This meant I could dig into themes I
hadn’t before. Namely, I wanted to see the walls of ancient Taungoo. See, for a
while, from about 1700 to 1780, Taungoo was the Rome of Southeast Asia.
The biggest of many Burmese empires over
the centuries was the Taungoo Empire, reigning over all of Thailand and parts
of India, Malaysia and Laos, and Taungoo was the capital. This little getaway from
Yangon had an old history…
Along with the old city walls, I also wanted to look for a
new lake up in the Bago Hills. This lake is not on Google Maps, but it is on
Google Earth… I wanted to go find it. Gosh… I found it. But the lake deserves
its own blog and video…
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