Winter in Morzine

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Not so much a holiday, more a change of life … at least, temporarily.

As we are both part-time homeworkers, Robin and I decided to shift our base from west London to Morzine, France at the heart of the Portes du Soleil for the ski season. 

Our home until April 2015 is a cosy, well-planned apartment on the top floor of a traditional chalet, just a few minutes walk from the town centre, with a great view over the rooftops to the ski runs down from Pleney.

We arrived here on Saturday 13^th December after an overnight stop in Troyes, where the old town centre retains many half-timbered houses dating from the 16^th century, including our hotel, the delightful Hotel St Jean.   The old town is exceedingly pretty as we discovered on a quick tour of the nearby streets before a typically French bisto meal – delicious – and, the following morning, an even quicker visit to the historic Cathedral, which took almost 500 years to build beset by tornadoes, hurricanes, lightning strikes along the way. 

Our plan for the next four months or so is to continue the work we would have done at home in England – and we have an excellent broadband connection to facilitate this – but devote much of our free time to skiing.  I’m aiming to improve my technique to a level that will allow me to ski with free-flowing ease into my dotage!

However, our ski plans were immediately put on hold by an almost total lack of snow.  Even in  high-up Avoriaz – where the season officially started on the day we arrived - only a handful of lifts are operating.  Luckily we are not bothered as there will be plenty of opportunities to ski when the winter truly arrives here, and Robin, in particular, has been inundated with work to finish by Christmas.

Not being quite so busy on the work front, I have been exploring the town’s largely deserted streets – the season officially starts in Morzine this coming Saturday – finding out all there is to know about ski rental vs ski purchase; lift passes; pilates classes, masseurs and physios (best to be prepared!); swimming pool opening times; recycling points; where to buy the best bread, cheese, meats, fish and other foodstuffs,  and generally getting the lay of the land.  As our apartment is 300m up a steep hill, and there are several other hills in town, I’m also telling myself that I’m strengthening my thigh muscles for skiing.

The other thing I’m getting accustomed to is the quaint French tradition of lunch-time closing! Virtually every shop in town shuts for at least an hour or two, with some pulling down the shutters as early as 12 noon.  It will be interesting to see if that continues when the season gets underway.

Having spent the first four days looking out over grassy slopes, this afternoon the clouds rolled in and snow is falling and settling.   At the risk of sounding like an English train operator, I think it’s the wrong type of snow.  Apparently we need “gros flocons” to give the depth of snow cover required by the pisteurs to flatten down to skiable pistes.  And the temperature is due to rise overnight, but in the meantime … it’s starting to look a lot like Christmas out there!

 

 Follow our experience in Morzine on my new blog at winterinmorzine.blogspot.com

Robin, the tour guide

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On our last day – having missed out on the Grasshopper Yangon tour – Robin decides he can do the job just as well, using a phone app.  We are staying downtown at Traders Hotel, close by the old colonial centre so, camera at the ready, we hit the streets. 

The colonial buildings remain though most are in poor condition, but the street life is vibrant.  Flower sellers, fresh and cooked food stalls, pavement tea shops, sugar cane juice crushed on demand, ancient tricycle rickshaws, betel nut stalls, phone from here stalls – linking into the overhead lines – shoe menders, gold and jewellery sellers, offal and things I’d rather not think about stalls, all life is here. 

We wander through the streets to Independence Square, marked by a needle like monument guarded by chinthes and rising way into the sky.  Many of the other buildings on Robin’s app surround this square, including Yangon’s other golden pagoda, Sule. 

By this stage I decide I must have carried out some meritorious deeds of my own, which means I get to bang the gong, something I’ve been dying to do since I first saw one. To make sure, I put donation money in a golden bird, which flies heavenwards (ok – it’s on a pulley). Sounding the gong lets the spirits know about your good deed, but it to be done in threes – just as well as it takes me 3 goes to get a clear ringing sound.

Sticking to the colonial theme for our final meal, we head to House of Memories a restored colonial house made out of teak, which served at General Aung Sang’s office during WW2, when he was a Japanese officer.  The father of Aung Sang Suu Kyi was a freedom fighter prepared to take any action to drive the British out.  He eventually changed sides and negotiated the end to British rule, but was assassinated in the weeks leading up to the handover.  Who knows what would have happened to this country if he had led it after independence.

It was a fitting end to an amazing journey through Burma.

Schwedagon Pagoda

Arriving in Yangon in the middle of the day, it’s HOT.  We’ve chosen a downtown hotel so we will be relatively near the main sights, but the only sight we want to see right now is the pool. After a couple of hours more relaxing we are ready to tackle the Schwedagon Pagoda, the most famous and sacred in Burma.

There has been a shrine on this site enclosing 8 strands of Buddha’s hair and other relics for over 2500 years.  The pagoda has been rebuilt – and grown in size – over the centuries and now stands at over 300ft. In its latest guise this really is bling overload.   Apart from the main stupa, there are several other pagodas here and many famous Buddha images – there is almost too much to see. 

We arrive about an hour before sunset, in time to see the nightly ceremony of people sweeping the marble floors surrounding the main stupa, which is more of a meritorious deed than a real act of cleaning.  Meritorious deeds abound. The main stupa has seven corners containing a shrine for a different day of the week.  You are meant to find out the day you were born on and tend to the Buddha representing that day.  These Buddhas are decorated with flowers and white umbrellas and washed in scented water by crowds of devotees.

This place is vast and crowded with locals and tourists, so when I lose sight of Robin for a full 10 minutes, I start to get a bit concerned.  It’s getting dark and I can’t remember which entrance we came in (our shoes, of course, are at the bottom), and on past experience, Robin will be totally unaware that I’m at all worried and head back to the hotel without me. Luckily, on my second circuit, I find him and stick close while we take a final look at this extraordinary expanse of gold and jewelled devotion.

   

Ngapali beach

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Ngapali Beach on the Bay of Bengal is south west of Bagan, but for some reason our plane journey first takes us north east, back to Heho, before heading south to the coast.  A misty start to the New Year in the Shan Hills means our flight is delayed for a couple of hours, leaving us thankful for our hotel breakfast box as there is no food or drink available in the departure lounge.

Eventually we are on our way with Air Mandalay.  Neither leg of the journey is very long 45 minutes and 1 hour, but there is plenty of time to read the glossy airline brochure and discover they increased their fleet by 50% last year and now have 3 planes! I’m impressed by their marketing – the only internal flight with a glossy brochure – and by their in-flight snack a Danish pastry presented in beautiful eau-de-nil box from the Acacia Tea Salon.  They get my vote.

We may have been in the country for 12 days but at Thandwe airport we have to present our passports at immigration once again – and go through the same process on departure. We take three internal flights, but this is the only airport where we encounter this – may be a hangover from military rule, or another job creation scheme.    

Having been registered we have leave the airport before collecting our luggage, which is taken beyond the airport gates to waiting hotel buses and taxis.  While it may sound a recipe for disaster, it worked very well as a hotel rep took our luggage tags and sorted it all out for us.  The hotel bus is another example of 1940s transport (a la Balloons over Bagan) with a varnished timber interior.

The hotel itself – Thande Beach – our home for the next four nights, is just what we need after our previously full-on tour schedule.  Set on a stunningly unspoilt beach that curves for 1.5km in one direction and 1km in the other, with a plentiful and well-trained staff tending to the rooms, gardens, beach loungers and bar, we couldn’t ask for more. 

While breakfast is included, no-one takes dinner at the hotel.  There is much better, and cheaper, food to be had at the row of ten or so local bar/restaurants just along the beach and we check out as many as possible during our stay. All serve wonderful fresh fish – you can see the lights of the fishing boats while eating – and delicious vegetables or salads, with a free pudding thrown in. Even with beer and cocktails we struggle to spend more than £10 a night.

 Most of the restaurants have a bamboo massage room attached and all offer sunset happy hours, so we swiftly settle into a relaxing daily round of breakfast, beach, reading, quick swim, reading, lunch, beach, reading, stroll, massage, sunset drinks, shower, cocktails and dinner, bed.  The most energetic thing we do during our time here is walk the length of the beach. After a big breakfast we don’t even have to move for lunch, just buy some fresh coconut juice and fruit from the ladies who walk up and down the beach displaying the fruit on their heads.  

Paradise!

Balloons over Bagan

The plains of Bagan are most famous for the hundreds, if not thousands of pagodas and temples spread across a vast area.  Even our hotel on the banks of the Irrawaddy has its own ruin in the grounds.  They have to be seen in all their splendour, and from dawn to dusk on New Year’s Eve this is exactly what we do.

Robin and I are up before dawn to see this extraordinary site from the skies. Robin has described this so well, I’m just going to link to his blog at this point!  Click here to read all about it.

It was a truly wonderful start to the day.  I have never flown in a balloon before and I’m sure the smoothness of this flight can never be beaten, I would only repeat the experience to see another wonder of the world.  Though it has to be said that seeing all the other balloons in the air at the same time made the experience even better – an added photo-opportunity.

This must be one of the world’s greatest archeological sites, ancient temples large and small rising out of the plain studded with stands of palm trees and greenery alongside the Irrawaddy.  Over 4000 pagodas were built over several hundred years when Bagan was the royal city, starting around the time that the Normans sailed into Hastings and took over the English crown. And built for the same reason that images of Buddha are placed in caves – as a meritorious act.  Amazingly many are fairly well preserved and still contain carvings and statues of Buddha – as we found out when we followed up our balloon ride with a bike tour of a few of the temples.  There is even one with its internal frescoes still intact – though no photographs were allowed in here.

Our morning’s biking finishes with a boat trip back to Bagan town.  But there isn’t too long to relax before we are heading back to the plains for sunset.  Sunset is around 5.30pm, but our guide says we must leave at 4.15pm – we soon see why.  While we have avoided the crowds touring the pagodas earlier in the day, we are heading to Shwesandaw, known as the “sunset” pagoda, and the destination for virtually every other tourist in the area!

There are no restrictions on people climbing on the pagodas here, and hundreds of tourists haul themselves up the steep steps, hanging onto the handrail provided.  We are not early enough to get in the front line of the top tier, so we grab the best spots on the second (there are five in total) and get our cameras ready.  Even my new camera is no match for the enormous zoom lenses set on tripods behind me.  But having seen a perfect sunrise, we are treated to a perfect sunset.  

Then its back to the hotel to see the New Year in in style – I am even wearing my smart new (female) longhi.  The calendar new year isn’t traditionally celebrated in Burma – the Buddhist new year is in April – but our hotel hosts a western and local food feast for its guests, complete with local entertainment followed by a DJ, fireworks and much dancing.  It is our last night with the tour group and our lovely tour guide, Chan, joins in the fun – to such an extent that we are up and waiting for him to take us to the airport for our early flight to following morning

Laquerware and luxury

After a night of luxury and delicious, in my case western, food at Popa Mountain, we swoop back down the hill and head back to Bagan on a nice tarmac road.  Our stops take in a local teahouse – tea and snacks are popular in Burma – and one of Bagan’s famous lacquerware workshops, reputedly amongst the finest in the world.  

It’s another skilled process using a combination of horsehair and bamboo before the lacquer surface is applied in many layers, polished, engraved and painted.  One of the painters takes my camera and applies a gold elephant – sadly it rubs off before it has time to dry!  The quality of the work here is evident and I am keen to return to UK with an example and eventually buy three dark engraved bowls in Yangon which look very smart back home.

 Back at our hotel, Riverview, we have a surprise in store.  We have a bit of a wait for our room to be ready, but we don’t mind at all when we get the key – we have been upgraded to our very own Villa, with two bedrooms, a sitting room and even a galleried sleeping platform with another 5 beds!  Fortunately no-one else arrives to occupy them, so we enjoy another two days of luxurious space.

Mount Popa & the Nats

I’ve not talked much about the cycling in this blog, so here's a cycling story.  After the bumpy tracks earlier in the trip,  around Bagan the off road surface changed to sand, which can stop bicycle wheels dead in their tracks.  Despite this, our lovely tour guides decide that the best way to cycle from Bagan to Mount Popa includes an 11km section off the main road on, you guessed it, sand!  You need the ability to stop suddenly and safely in these conditions so I spent most of the time pedalling with my heel to make sure my shoes don’t accidentally clip into the pedal cleats.  This precaution isn’t fool proof one ouf our group found out.  Taking a left turn over a small bridge his back wheel slipped away and he went over the handlebars, landing unhurt but much to the amusement of the family perched on the back of a bullock cart who had stopped to make way for us.  They had definitely chosen the best way to travel on this surface!

Back on tarmac we headed onwards and upwards to our hotel for the night, Popa Mountain Resort.  This was definitely the star hotel of our trip with fabulous rooms, a spa offering fantastic massage, and of course the view.  Our wooden veranda overlooked dense forest.  No traffic noise, just birdsong.  From the restaurant terrace the view was even better – Mount Popa itself topped with a golden monastery and the home of Burma’s Nat spirits.

Even after our visit to Mount Popa, and climbing its 777 steps, I’m not sure I understand the Nats.  They definitely pre-date Buddhism in Burma, which is over 2500 years old.  And they are still worshipped so seem to sit comfortably alongside the Buddha, in one tableau are worshiping him themselves.  But they are quite strange – 37 superhumans who appear to have gained their superpowers by meeting violent deaths, and then there are a kind of sub-Nat, who gained special powers by eating a dead Nat.  I think.  But they are obviously important to the Burmese – we saw two very old women being carried up and down the incredibly steep steps to the temple.  

The site is also home to macaque monkeys.  They greet us as the bottom of the steps.  We hear them jumping on the tin roof covering the walkway as we ascend, and they cheekily eat the flowers left by the Buddha images. 

There is a protocol for visiting holy sites in Burma.  No shoes, no socks, no shorts above the knee, no spaghetti straps or low cut tops. This is not a problem for me and I grow to enjoy the feel of cool marble or tile under my feet as we walk around.  Occasionally one of our group is caught out by the no shorts requirement, at which point our well-prepared guide steps in with a concealing longhi.  In this innocent country, this was the cause of much amusement.

The longhi is traditional dress for both men and women and daily wear for most of the population, especially outside of the major cities.  But there are differences between the male and female longhi – not just in their colour and pattern, but also in the way they are tied.  The female version is essentially a sarong; the male version, a cylindrical tube that you fold across the front of your body and tie over your tummy, is actually far more practical.  As our guides are male, the spare longhis are also male versions, which are given to the female members of our group when needed.  Without exception, every Burmese woman who saw them wearing the “wrong” longhi burst into giggles and nudged her friend to point out the silly tourist.  Another example of a land steeped in tradition. Long may it continue.