Myanmar October 10, 2012

  The beetle-nut chewing captain enjoyed quizzing me on Burmese language:  “Knee-kung lah?”(How are you?) “Kan day”(Fine)  And then he’d flash a huge smile.
     Early in the day we passed through the 3rd defile(gorge) with dense jungle like vegetation covering the steep sides in addition to the occasional river town and ever present stupas.  Some of our group disembarked at Kyar Nat where men and women were bathing and washing their clothes in the river.  Houses were on stilts here with long nets on poles used to catch bats, birds and crickets.  Originally, I thought these nets were only used for fishing.
     In the evening when we were having dinner on the open air upper deck, we noticed that 6 villagers were squatting on the bank watching us.  Later some other people came in shifts to check us out.  We were their live action TV!