We left Seoul and flew to Burma so that we could stay again at Shwe Oo Min (SOM) Monastery near Yangon. Our friend and travel agent Kalayar met us at the airport. It was great to see her again! (In case you are planning to visit this beautiful country, we highly recommend Kalayar and her team at Manie Sithu Travel & Tours.)
We spent 12 days at SOM, which is the same amount of time we spent in 2013. Much of the monastery hadn't changed, so here's a link to our previous blog posting in case you are curious. Now they are building a large enclosure around the SOM memorial. The founder of this monastery (named Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw) was deeply loved by the local people as well as the monastic community. He passed away in 2002, and the current meditation teacher at SOM that we come to study with is Sayadaw U Tejaniya.
One of the highlights of our stay was being able to participate in the alms rounds by giving rice to the monks.
This photo is especially nice for us, as Pete is giving rice to our friend Dhammasara (aka Raúl).
Raúl ordains for a month each year while he and his wife Heidi stay at SOM. Here he is with Vance who is from the Seattle area. We are looking forward to seeing Vance again in May when we go on a Spirit Rock Abhidhamma retreat where he will be assisting.
Heidi formed a women's Abhidhamma study group that Kristina joined. Heidi is to left of Kristina in this photo, and she and Raúl live in Macao. The other women in the group live in the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. Sayadaw U Tejaniya teaches meditation retreats in these countries, which is why people interested in studying more visit SOM.
This bowl pyramid was a common sight after breakfast, as this is how the washed bowls are dried. Breakfast at the monastery is usually mohinga, a tasty dish of rice noodles with eggs and chicken in a spicy broth.
Most mornings after breakfast we watched part of the alms rounds. It was a nice way to feel the generous spirit of the Burmese people.
These young nuns are holding rice that they will offer to the monks.
The alms rounds take about an hour for the monks to walk around the nearby village.
And village life goes on around them.
Sometimes the monks are given flowers for the monastery.
While at SOM we were able to visit the Venerable Viranani, an American nun who has lived in Burma for many years. To her left is Venerable Ariya who recently disrobed and returned to Switzerland to help her father. Viranani and Ariya founded Metta in Action, a non profit organization that helps Burmese nunneries. We brought vitamins to give to a nunnery.
We met Kaye at SOM. She’s from the East Coast, and she's planning to remain a nun when she returns to the US.
When we visited in 2013 there were lots of puppies. This time there were just the two adult dogs.
But there were lots of cats. This one has his front paws in someone’s flip flops!
Flowers are left and candles are lit daily for this Buddha that is under a Bodhi tree. We feel so fortunate that we were able to practice meditation here on this trip!
We went to Singapore twice in 2013 and we really enjoyed this beautiful, green city. This trip we visited the Gardens by the Bay, which is one of the nicest gardens we have seen. These photos were taken in the Cloud Forest and show how the seven story glass structure bathes the plants in natural light but was designed to keep the heat out.
It was awesome to be on the high walkways and look down on the “mountain” filled with rainforest plants.
We are sharing some photos of beautiful orchids and other flowers.
We liked the wooden statues throughout.
The Flower Dome has many desert plants like these Baobab trees.
Pete is in front of a Grass Tree from Australia. He’s posing like most of the other visitors we saw in the Gardens.
We especially liked this carved stone lion.
There was a New Year's display of mountain goats made of wood, for the year of the ram. Their shaggy coats are made of dried plant stalks.
Kristina is in front of several 'Giant Trees’. Each has thousands of plants growing up the 'trunk' and solar panels on top.
The Gardens opened in 2011. We think it will be even more beautiful in a few years when the plants are fully mature and have grow over the entire Giant Tree structures.
We went up on a walkway between the Giant Trees to enjoy the view of the Gardens. To Pete’s left is the Flower Dome building.
The Gardens generate all the electricity they need by burning landscaping waste that is collected throughout Singapore. The building is the Cloud Forest.
Another new sight for us was the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple that was built in 2002.
The inside of the temple was decorated with many beautiful Buddhas including this central Maitraya Buddha.
Nighttime in Singapore is magical, with lots of lights and boats along the river.
This sculpture by Chong Fah Cheong is called People of the River. We liked how two of the boys are caught midair as they are jumping into the river.
During our two days in Singapore we ate well. We had lunch at a hawker food market.
This is a Singapore classic dish called Chicken Rice.
We enjoyed fish head curry at an Indian restaurant named Muthu's. The dish is made with snapper and flavored with chilis to make it spicy.
And we wanted to eat chili crab again since we like it so much. Kristina is prepared to dive in and crack the crab, yum.
Our trip to celebrate Kristina's 50th birthday includes a wide variety of cultures, temperatures and activities, and requires several different types of gear, making space in our suitcases really tight. From Singapore we flew to Indonesia for scuba diving.
We spent seven nights on this boat named the Jaya, participating in a live-aboard scuba diving trip in Raja Ampat with Wicked Diving. Here's a link to their blog posting about this trip.
Raja Ampat means Four Kings and is named for the four main islands in the area. It’s known for having the greatest underwater biodiversity in the world. There are over 500 kinds of coral here.
This sea fan is a type of soft coral called Gorgonian.
The coral supports many small creatures like these Christmas Tree Worms.
We saw many different types of Nudibranchs and sea slugs.
Here is a Banana Nudibranch.
This is also a nudibranch named Funeral Jorunna. It looked like it had a pattern of black Chinese coins.
This Dark Margin Glossodoris is a flatworm that can swim.
The ocean is so healthy in Raja Ampat, with lots of deep water upwellings that bring nutrients to the surface that feed huge schools of fish.
This is a school of Yellow and Blue Fusiliers. We also saw schools of tuna, mackerel, trevally and barracuda.
These Clown Anenomefish are protecting the anenome that is their home.
Lionfish sleep under shelter during the day. Their white spines have a poison that provides a natural defense mechanism.
We always like to see Batfish and we saw lots of them in Raja Ampat.
This Clown Triggerfish was holding really still so he could be cleaned by wrasses (who eat parasites and dead skin).
This scuba fish is Kristina. The water was so warm that we didn't need to wear wetsuits.
Pete is the underwater photographer so there aren’t too many shots of him, except when Kristina got him to do an underwater selfie.
We saw big fish too, like this Black Tipped Reef Shark.
This is a Tasseled Wobbegong Shark that is endemic to Raja Ampat.
We were excited to see Manta Rays on several dives. On one dive a Manta Ray swam close to our dive leader Kaelyn.
At Manta Point we got lucky and saw a Manta being cleaned.
Then a large black female joined him and they performed an underwater dance that was amazing. Pete videotaped part of it, and we made a movie of it with other clips of Raja Ampat that we've posted on YouTube.
One of the iconic images of Raja Ampat is this hole that we swam through at Karang Bata. In this photo Pete is approaching the hole.
And here Kristina is swimming through the hole.
How we got to the dive sites was via two small boats. The two women flashing the peace signs are our new friends Staci from Santa Barbara and Sydney from Singapore.
One afternoon we took the boats over to the Peinamu Island area. It was beautiful, with lots of small islands made of limestone that reminded us of Halong Bay in Vietnam.
The viewing area for the limestone karsts includes a large deck, so we took a group photo with most of the folks on the tour. We were surprised there were four other Americans besides us; There were also nine Indonesians, two Swedes, two Scots, two Frenchmen, two Malaysians, one Australian, and one Englishmen. The tallest guy in the photo, behind Pete and Kristina is Orrin.
Orrin is from London, and he is an amazing underwater photographer. He generously gave us some of his videos (included in our YouTube movie) and images like this Nembrotha Kubaryana nudibranch.
Tom, the dive boat leader, is giving a briefing about Melissa’s Garden dive spot.
Dave proposed to Maya at Melissa’s Garden, almost 70 feet below the surface. Maya is showing her engagement ring that Dave was brave enough to give her underwater!
We took the boats over to the small village of Arborek. As we were riding towards shore, we saw these village boys in a boat.
Arborek has two “main streets” and these youngsters were hanging out as we walked by.
We saw several paintings of Manta Rays.
And learned about Barefoot Conservation, an organization that is cleaning up the beaches of Arborek and working to understand the biodiversity of Raja Ampat.
We watched a beautiful sunset from the beach before heading back to the Jaya.
We enjoyed a number of evenings where dramatic clouds made for glorious sunsets.
On the final day of the trip we couldn't scuba dive (since we had to fly the next day) so we went to see Birds of Paradise on Gam Island. We arrived before sunrise and climbed up to the summit.
Paradisaea Rubra is the Latin name for these birds that are found only in the West Papuan Islands of Indonesia.
Kristina was glad to have a walking stick, as it was slick climbing down.
The scenery we saw was lovely.
On the last day the crew raised the sails on the Jaya so we could take photos.
Tom and Yunoz (who is the cook on the Jaya) dressed up as pirates.
Here are the happily engaged David and Maya dressed as pirates.
It was an incredible dive trip! Next we go to Bangkok.
We spent 12 days at SOM, which is the same amount of time we spent in 2013. Much of the monastery hadn't changed, so here's a link to our previous blog posting in case you are curious. Now they are building a large enclosure around the SOM memorial. The founder of this monastery (named Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw) was deeply loved by the local people as well as the monastic community. He passed away in 2002, and the current meditation teacher at SOM that we come to study with is Sayadaw U Tejaniya.
One of the highlights of our stay was being able to participate in the alms rounds by giving rice to the monks.
This photo is especially nice for us, as Pete is giving rice to our friend Dhammasara (aka Raúl).
Raúl ordains for a month each year while he and his wife Heidi stay at SOM. Here he is with Vance who is from the Seattle area. We are looking forward to seeing Vance again in May when we go on a Spirit Rock Abhidhamma retreat where he will be assisting.
Heidi formed a women's Abhidhamma study group that Kristina joined. Heidi is to left of Kristina in this photo, and she and Raúl live in Macao. The other women in the group live in the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. Sayadaw U Tejaniya teaches meditation retreats in these countries, which is why people interested in studying more visit SOM.
This bowl pyramid was a common sight after breakfast, as this is how the washed bowls are dried. Breakfast at the monastery is usually mohinga, a tasty dish of rice noodles with eggs and chicken in a spicy broth.
Most mornings after breakfast we watched part of the alms rounds. It was a nice way to feel the generous spirit of the Burmese people.
These young nuns are holding rice that they will offer to the monks.
The alms rounds take about an hour for the monks to walk around the nearby village.
And village life goes on around them.
Sometimes the monks are given flowers for the monastery.
While at SOM we were able to visit the Venerable Viranani, an American nun who has lived in Burma for many years. To her left is Venerable Ariya who recently disrobed and returned to Switzerland to help her father. Viranani and Ariya founded Metta in Action, a non profit organization that helps Burmese nunneries. We brought vitamins to give to a nunnery.
We met Kaye at SOM. She’s from the East Coast, and she's planning to remain a nun when she returns to the US.
When we visited in 2013 there were lots of puppies. This time there were just the two adult dogs.
But there were lots of cats. This one has his front paws in someone’s flip flops!
Flowers are left and candles are lit daily for this Buddha that is under a Bodhi tree. We feel so fortunate that we were able to practice meditation here on this trip!
We went to Singapore twice in 2013 and we really enjoyed this beautiful, green city. This trip we visited the Gardens by the Bay, which is one of the nicest gardens we have seen. These photos were taken in the Cloud Forest and show how the seven story glass structure bathes the plants in natural light but was designed to keep the heat out.
It was awesome to be on the high walkways and look down on the “mountain” filled with rainforest plants.
We are sharing some photos of beautiful orchids and other flowers.
We liked the wooden statues throughout.
The Flower Dome has many desert plants like these Baobab trees.
Pete is in front of a Grass Tree from Australia. He’s posing like most of the other visitors we saw in the Gardens.
We especially liked this carved stone lion.
There was a New Year's display of mountain goats made of wood, for the year of the ram. Their shaggy coats are made of dried plant stalks.
Kristina is in front of several 'Giant Trees’. Each has thousands of plants growing up the 'trunk' and solar panels on top.
The Gardens opened in 2011. We think it will be even more beautiful in a few years when the plants are fully mature and have grow over the entire Giant Tree structures.
We went up on a walkway between the Giant Trees to enjoy the view of the Gardens. To Pete’s left is the Flower Dome building.
The Gardens generate all the electricity they need by burning landscaping waste that is collected throughout Singapore. The building is the Cloud Forest.
Another new sight for us was the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple that was built in 2002.
The inside of the temple was decorated with many beautiful Buddhas including this central Maitraya Buddha.
Nighttime in Singapore is magical, with lots of lights and boats along the river.
This sculpture by Chong Fah Cheong is called People of the River. We liked how two of the boys are caught midair as they are jumping into the river.
During our two days in Singapore we ate well. We had lunch at a hawker food market.
This is a Singapore classic dish called Chicken Rice.
We enjoyed fish head curry at an Indian restaurant named Muthu's. The dish is made with snapper and flavored with chilis to make it spicy.
And we wanted to eat chili crab again since we like it so much. Kristina is prepared to dive in and crack the crab, yum.
Our trip to celebrate Kristina's 50th birthday includes a wide variety of cultures, temperatures and activities, and requires several different types of gear, making space in our suitcases really tight. From Singapore we flew to Indonesia for scuba diving.
We spent seven nights on this boat named the Jaya, participating in a live-aboard scuba diving trip in Raja Ampat with Wicked Diving. Here's a link to their blog posting about this trip.
Raja Ampat means Four Kings and is named for the four main islands in the area. It’s known for having the greatest underwater biodiversity in the world. There are over 500 kinds of coral here.
This sea fan is a type of soft coral called Gorgonian.
The coral supports many small creatures like these Christmas Tree Worms.
We saw many different types of Nudibranchs and sea slugs.
Here is a Banana Nudibranch.
This is also a nudibranch named Funeral Jorunna. It looked like it had a pattern of black Chinese coins.
This Dark Margin Glossodoris is a flatworm that can swim.
The ocean is so healthy in Raja Ampat, with lots of deep water upwellings that bring nutrients to the surface that feed huge schools of fish.
This is a school of Yellow and Blue Fusiliers. We also saw schools of tuna, mackerel, trevally and barracuda.
These Clown Anenomefish are protecting the anenome that is their home.
Lionfish sleep under shelter during the day. Their white spines have a poison that provides a natural defense mechanism.
We always like to see Batfish and we saw lots of them in Raja Ampat.
This Clown Triggerfish was holding really still so he could be cleaned by wrasses (who eat parasites and dead skin).
This scuba fish is Kristina. The water was so warm that we didn't need to wear wetsuits.
Pete is the underwater photographer so there aren’t too many shots of him, except when Kristina got him to do an underwater selfie.
We saw big fish too, like this Black Tipped Reef Shark.
This is a Tasseled Wobbegong Shark that is endemic to Raja Ampat.
We were excited to see Manta Rays on several dives. On one dive a Manta Ray swam close to our dive leader Kaelyn.
At Manta Point we got lucky and saw a Manta being cleaned.
Then a large black female joined him and they performed an underwater dance that was amazing. Pete videotaped part of it, and we made a movie of it with other clips of Raja Ampat that we've posted on YouTube.
One of the iconic images of Raja Ampat is this hole that we swam through at Karang Bata. In this photo Pete is approaching the hole.
And here Kristina is swimming through the hole.
How we got to the dive sites was via two small boats. The two women flashing the peace signs are our new friends Staci from Santa Barbara and Sydney from Singapore.
One afternoon we took the boats over to the Peinamu Island area. It was beautiful, with lots of small islands made of limestone that reminded us of Halong Bay in Vietnam.
The viewing area for the limestone karsts includes a large deck, so we took a group photo with most of the folks on the tour. We were surprised there were four other Americans besides us; There were also nine Indonesians, two Swedes, two Scots, two Frenchmen, two Malaysians, one Australian, and one Englishmen. The tallest guy in the photo, behind Pete and Kristina is Orrin.
Orrin is from London, and he is an amazing underwater photographer. He generously gave us some of his videos (included in our YouTube movie) and images like this Nembrotha Kubaryana nudibranch.
Tom, the dive boat leader, is giving a briefing about Melissa’s Garden dive spot.
Dave proposed to Maya at Melissa’s Garden, almost 70 feet below the surface. Maya is showing her engagement ring that Dave was brave enough to give her underwater!
We took the boats over to the small village of Arborek. As we were riding towards shore, we saw these village boys in a boat.
Arborek has two “main streets” and these youngsters were hanging out as we walked by.
We saw several paintings of Manta Rays.
And learned about Barefoot Conservation, an organization that is cleaning up the beaches of Arborek and working to understand the biodiversity of Raja Ampat.
We watched a beautiful sunset from the beach before heading back to the Jaya.
We enjoyed a number of evenings where dramatic clouds made for glorious sunsets.
On the final day of the trip we couldn't scuba dive (since we had to fly the next day) so we went to see Birds of Paradise on Gam Island. We arrived before sunrise and climbed up to the summit.
Paradisaea Rubra is the Latin name for these birds that are found only in the West Papuan Islands of Indonesia.
Kristina was glad to have a walking stick, as it was slick climbing down.
The scenery we saw was lovely.
On the last day the crew raised the sails on the Jaya so we could take photos.
Tom and Yunoz (who is the cook on the Jaya) dressed up as pirates.
Here are the happily engaged David and Maya dressed as pirates.
It was an incredible dive trip! Next we go to Bangkok.
