repairing a moulmein pagoda

repairing a moulmein pagoda

From http://www.flickr.com/photos/phitar/7917203/:

phitar posted a photo:

the flimsiest scaffolding ever

Sittuyin

Sittuyin

From Conversation from Tokyo:

Playing exotic chess in the head. In a book about chess variants, the Burmese chess game Sittuyin caught my mind last year. Now that the non-electronic game shop Okuno Karuta in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, carries a rare single set of it, my mind is feverish. Rather than shelling the US$200 to buy it, I simply picked a copy of a cheap confidentially edited booklet in Japanese describing the game and the context of it in Myanmar. It seems that Sittuyin there is also close to extinction. Maybe the price tag is justified after all and it may be the unique Sittuyin set currently on sale in Japan. In the booklet, the author stresses how difficult it was to him to locate a set while on several trips in Myanmar. The literature available on the game is paltry and the two or so local books published quite a long time ago virtually unavailable. What the author doesn't know is that Sittuyin is playable online here. Not visually pleasing and mysterious as the black and red figurines and the wood board of the real game though. But living somewhat on the net.

And here we go again

This is the third of the triad started with Travels in Ethiopia and followed by Travels in Armenia.
This blog will we a selection of news on travelling in this asiatic country, which is bracing for a democratic future.