Another leisurely departure (9AM) but with all our luggage as we will head to the airport for our flight(s) to Siem Reap, Cambodia right after our morning tours.

We stopped at a local weaving factory to watch ladies weaving beautiful, ornate silk material that will end up as men’s high end longyi skirts (called htamein for women) for special occasions (weddings, dress up events). Although an everyday longyi costs less than $10 these ladies were making longyi’s (that take a month to make) that will sell for $1,000.

The next stop this morning was to visit the largest monastery in Myanmar, where over 1,000 monks live and study. The guide wanted us to see the monks gathering for their main meal of the day, served at 10:30 AM. They are not supposed to eat food after 12 noon.
We toured the huge open kitchen area where the meal is prepared, then proceeded to the area where they congregate with their food bowls and wait for the calling bell, at which time they silently collect a large bowl of rice and march into the dining hall where the rest of the meal (pork today, a soup and vegetables) awaits them. The sad aspect of this ritual was the presence of hundreds of people (us included) jockeying for position to record their procession into the dining hall. Today we even saw a brief shoving match between two visitors wanting a better view. Somehow this seems wrong at such a solemn event. We did have an opportunity to briefly visit and talk to a monk about the teachings of Buddha. The monks were selling books written by monks about Buddhism and we bought a couple to try to get a better understanding of the Buddhism philosophy (which they claim is not a religion as we commonly think of it).

It was then off to the airport for check-in for our flights to Siem Reap. Lunch was not on our agenda so we had ordered box lunches at the hotel, but we found we probably could have skipped that as Bangkok Airlines invited us into their lounge where we were able to have free snacks and even order light luncheon fare.

We then flew to Bangkok before catching our connecting flight to Siem Reap. All went well getting to Bangkok, a very large airport and a major hub for air transport in this area, and we gained back the 1/2 hour time zone change we made when going into Myanmar. Our layover in Bangkok was about 1.5 hours and the Internet is free and fast. Time went quickly. The flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia was only 50 minutes.