Alisha's Visit to Myanmar

One of the neatest and most precious times about living overseas are when family and friends come to see you.

For starters, it means so much that they would take a long period of time off of work and fly for 30+ hours across the world to see us.

I can’t even begin to tell you what a blessing and encouragement it is. Honestly, I’ve never been good at summarizing when guests come because I always think “How do I fit two amazing and precious weeks in a post?”, but today I am going to try! 

Alisha is one of my closest friends and we lived in Korea together for a year so I was elated knowing we were going to get to hang out in Asia again. Of course time flew when she was here but we had a lovely time and I’ll always cherish it. 

Alisha’s Visit to Myanmar

Alisha arrived on a Monday morning and was kind enough to haul 4 suitcases of supplies with personal items, like Maple Syrup and tortillas, as well as a bunch of school items.

She arrived on day 1 of water festival which lasted through Thursday. We got soaking wet several times but made it! We also stood on our 11^th floor balcony and dumped water on people. It was fun. 

During the week everything but the temples were closed. So we went to a big reclining Buddha as well as Shwedagon during that time.

Some of our friends here in Myanmar love to show foreigners Thanaka so we took Alisha to their house to experience that.

After Thanaka we went to People’s Park and showed here the fun tree houses and bridges.

Saturday morning, Alisha and I went downtown for a girl’s day of shopping! We went to the big souvenir market and shopped for a looong time. It was so much fun! So much fun we didn’t even take a picture but we did find some beautiful things. I also took her to the two big grocery stores I shop at because it is always interesting to show someone a foreign grocery store. 

That evening we had Zama, Pam and the family over for dinner and it was nice to visit with all of us together. 

Early Sunday morning we flew up to the Shan state to Inle Lake. That whole are is beautiful and peaceful and I can’t recommend it enough. We spent three nights there and thoroughly enjoyed it.   

We arrived back in Yangon on Wednesday afternoon and I took Alisha to a mall where they make handmade dresses. I had been waiting for her to come shopping with me because shopping is more fun with girls. We spent a long time picking out dresses and skirts and had a lovely time. We then went to an Israeli restaurant for dinner and of course it was incredibly tasty. 

A trip to the local market across the street was a must as well and I know it’s no surprise that I took her to the flower section of the market. 

Thursday we took Alisha for a walking tour of downtown Yangon. We saw a lot of old buildings and important sights but didn’t stay out too long because it was soooo hot! 

Friday we walked to Aung San Suu Kyi’s house, visited an art gallery and we took Alisha to a fun Mexican restaurant that they have here. She left Friday evening and we won’t talk about that part. 

Other Notable Events: 

-Sleeping and napping!

-A couple of power outages to get that real Myanmar experience

-A couple big rain storms

-Lucky, Lucky, Happy, Happy Days (I’ll let you in on this one … One time a man leached himself on to us at a temple and tried to tell us about what was in there. Each thing we came across he would just say ‘lucky lucky’ and then at the end of the tour he wanted money, money. Well we did give him some money but we always joked about saying every word two times so we just made that a habit and it was  funny, funny).

-Alisha’s 1^st experience of eating ants (on accident)Fun kind notes from Dave for each of us

Last but definitely not least … mangoes, mangoes!

 Have you ever visited a friend when they lived abroad or moved to a new state?