This is a pickled tea leaf salad. Pickled tea leaves are called lahpet in Burmese. They are tangy and flavorful when mixed with chopped tomatoes, fried beans and shallots.
Kalayar told us about her roselle and teak tree farm, and gave us packages of the sour, delicious dried leaves. In Burmese cuisine roselle leaves are called chin baung ywet, which means sour leaf. When we are back in the US we’ll cook the roselle with garlic, prawns and green chili, or make soup and savor the taste of Burma.
As we drove into the Burmese monastery for our third stay, it felt like coming home. Since our last visit the Memorial Hall for Shwe Oo Min had been completed, so we toured it and looked at all the photos.
When Sayadaw Shwe Oo Min first started the monastery here in 1998, some Burmese people moved nearby so that they could practice meditation with him. Kristina noticed his photo over this fruit stand on the alms route.
The kids at the fruit stand were really friendly. The girls have thanaka on their face, a natural sunscreen.
One of our favorite generosity practices at the monastery is the daily alms round. Here a young nun is giving rice to the young monks.
There are a number of small nunneries near the monastery, and we saw nuns of all ages.
Kristina wasn’t really able to communicate with these nuns since they didn’t speak English, but they were very friendly and gestured that they’d like to be part of a photo.
On Kristina’s birthday she offered rice during the alms rounds.
This trip we also paid for a meal for the 300 people at the monastery. This practice of Dana is to cultivate generosity. It felt great to honor the memory of our Dads with breakfast on December 30th.
The breakfast we chose included a spicy, chicken soup that is poured over a flat bread similar to Indian rotis and topped with a spicy cucumber, onion, and chili salsa. We also had hard-cooked eggs and fresh papaya.
(Not a lot changes at the monastery, so if you’d like to know more about what it’s like there, you can check out our earlier posts from December, 2013 and February, 2015.) Kristina is with our new friend Marie from Sweden. Marie has been practicing meditation since the 1970s and shared lots of interesting stories with us.
Kristina and her new friend Liang were able to practice yoga together. Liang had to leave very early a few days before us, so we said good bye before sunrise.
After our wonderful month at the monastery, we flew to Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia for a few days. We visited the KL Bird Park, which is one of the largest aviaries in the world. There were probably a hundred peacocks there, and many liked showing their tail feathers.
We were amused that this peacock was sitting on a sign about peacocks.
This Yellow-billed Stork wasn’t shy as Pete got close to him.
Storks have interesting knees - they seem to work more like our elbows.
We think this Cattle Egret has some breeding plumage. The bird park has a successful breeding program for storks, and we saw many of them.
The Sacred Ibis is from Africa.
This is a Scarlet Ibis.
We watched the flamingos filter feeding on algae using their strainer beaks.
These three Burung Sun Conures were sharing fruit. They are a type of parakeet.
This Black-naped Oriole was eating papaya.
The Chattering Lory is a forest-dwelling parrot native to Indonesia.
Lots of birds, including toucans, are frugivores, fruit-eaters.
This was our first visit to Malasia, so we went to the historic part of the city. Now a textile museum, this building was originally built in 1905 as the headquarters for the Malay railways.
We liked the Sultan Abdul Samad Building; Built in a Moorish style in 1897, it's now the Ministry of Information, Communications and Culture of Malaysia.
The view from our apartment included the KL Tower that was completed in 1995. There was a light show each night that was pretty cool.
From warm KL we flew to cold Osaka, Japan. We toured the Osaka Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Osaka has beautiful manhole covers with the Osaka Castle pictured on them.
Pete is by this impressive stone with the castle is in the background.
Here's the view from the castle. The gilded roof ornament is a shachihoko, a folklore animal with the head of a tiger and the body of a carp. The shachihoko are thought to bring rain, and thus they help protect wooden buildings from burning down.
One day we ate at this restaurant that had plastic food displays out front.
Kuidaore is an Osaka expression used to describe people's obsession with food, which literally means "to eat oneself bankrupt.” We used this vending machine to order our meals, but they were reasonably priced.
Pete is enjoying his pork belly and ginger soup with noodles for lunch.
We took the train to Nara, the capital of Japan 1,300 years ago. The Todai-ji temple is in the background. Built in the 8th century, it burned down twice and was most recently rebuilt in 1709.
This is the world's largest bronze statue. The Buddha Vairocana is known in Japan as Daibutsu. The statue weighs half a million kilograms!
In Todai-ji one of the wooden columns has a small hole carved through it. Kristina was able to wiggle through.
Enlightenment is reportedly promised to anyone who can squeeze through this hole, so this was a good motivator to try. Pete exhaled deeply a number of times and was able to make it through too.
As a measure of how important Buddhism has been to the Japanese people, the Todai-ji records show more than 2.6 million people helped construct the Buddha and hall by contributing rice, wood, metal, cloth, or labor.
We walked up the hill behind the Buddha hall, admiring the stone lanterns.
Pete is by the belfry.
Kristina is pretending to ring the bell.
Pete is by the cool dragon fountain.
The upper temple had a pretty wooden porch with a nice view.
We especially liked this enormous incense holder.
Below the eaves of the temple was decorated with lanterns and wooden artwork.
The bronze lanterns are framing the nice view.
The roof tile gargoyle is called an onigawara. An oni is an ogre from Japanese folklore that helps to scare away evil spirits.
In addition to the cool onigawara, we liked the rustic walls outside the temple.
In Nara the sika deer are considered sacred and there are about 1,200 deer roaming around that people feed.
The Nara manhole cover includes a deer.
There are always warning signs in Japan. We were amused by the deer warning sign.
Kristina is posing in the subway next to a mobile phone sign warning of the danger of falling onto the subway tracks if you aren't paying attention.
In Kyoto subway we laughed about these warning signs about cell phone and selfie sticks. This one shows how selfie sticks might cause electrocution.
And selfie sticks can injure others.
We took the train from Kyoto to Uji, a town known for its bridge, green tea and the Byodo-in temple.
Here’s the manhole cover for Uji with its famous bridge.
Kristina is posing by the bridge.
The Byodo-in temple was built in 1053. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This is the Phoenix Hall.
The Phoenix Hall is called the Hōō-dō in Japanese. It’s the original building, which survived fires in the complex because it’s protected by a pond.
The Phoenix Hall is on the back of the 10 yen coin.
There are two golden phoenixes on top of the hall.
On the walls inside the hall are small relief carvings of celestials, who are believed to gather the souls of believers at the moment of death and transport them in lotus blossoms to Paradise. This one has been restored and painted to look like it originally did.
This celestial holds a lotus blossom.
Across from the hall is the original belfry with this elaborate bell.
It had rained that morning, so Pete got shot of a wet bench with maple leaves.
This enormous, enscribed stone stood at the entrance to Byodo-in.
After exploring the temple, we went next door to a Kaiseki restaurant. This is the lovely garden leading up to the entrance.
The meal started with a simple soup served in a lacquer bowl.
Then they brought out these boxes in front of Pete.
Here’s what was inside the boxes: sushi, tempura, fish and more.
We especially liked the mochi with green tea dessert. Each mochi was wrapped in a leaf that was folded into a triangle.
We walked around Uji so we could buy some green tea. Pete posed next to this oni and both have grumpy expressions.
These are tanukis. We learned that tanukis are extant animals of Japan called raccoon dogs, although we’ve only seen the charming statues of them.
Back in Kytoto we went out for some of our favorite Japanese food. Pete is going into Ippudo Ramen restaurant.
He ordered and ate this bowl of ramen.
Kristina is ready to eat this tower of tempura.
We’ve been to Kyoto twice before, so we wanted to visit new sites this time. Here’s a statue of Kobo-daishi (or Kukai). He was a well-known Buddhist priest who was put in charge of Tō-ji in 823.
Tō-ji means east temple and it’s a Shingon sect Buddhist temple.
Our favorite building in the temple complex is the five-story pagoda, a symbol of Kyoto.
It stands 55 meters high and is the tallest wooden tower in Japan.
We liked the beautiful lantern and woodwork on this small To-ji building.
This is the Kyoto Fine Art Garden that was designed by Tadeo Ando.
Ando often uses water in his designs. Here there are waterfalls and pools.
These porcelain reproductions are of Bishop Toba’s scrolls from the 12th century.
This detail shows a cat and frog as priests (with the black hats) while frogs dance nearby.
This reproduced Chinese scroll is called the Qingming Festival Along the River and was originally painted on silk in 1736.
Our last day in Kyoto we awoke to snow!
Peter went to the nearby temple Jotoku-ji to take some photos.
How different everything looks when dusted with snow!
This is a Jizo-do, a small shrine for Jizo, guardian of children.
In front of the Jizo is a fountain used by worshippers to clean their mouths. Today the water in the stone bowl had a layer of ice on top.
The camellias were dusted in snow. This seems a fitting end to our trip, as we are heading back to the US to spend two weeks with family and friends before we start a ski road trip.
