Asia Travel Information Blog

One of my many favorite places to eat in Rangoon, Burma is at an excellent Burmese fresh salad bar on the street right next to Sule Pagoda. It opens in the evenings as the parking spaces empty, spilling off the sidewalk and across the street.

This place is famous in Burma for the best hand-tossed rice salad in Rangoon and probably the world. It is the Golden Hand Tossed Salad Bar.

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Low plastic tables and stools filled with contented customers are out in the street. At the far edge of the sidewalk are lined up a couple tables. On these tables jars of different ingredients are placed on a shelf. Behind the table, laughing and chatting, lovely Burmese ladies with long delicate fingers are mixing your salad up to order.

A chronology of key events:

1952 The first Miss Universe is held in Long Beach, California, with 30 states and regions. Armi Kuusela (Finland) becomes Miss Universe.

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1953 There are 26 countries competing in MU. Morocco’s candidate, Colette Ribes, does not compete in the contest.

1954 The second Miss Universe pageant opens in Long Beach, with 33 states and dependencies, including Honduras, New Zealand and Singapore. Miriam Stevenson (South Carolina) becomes Miss Universe.

1955 Surprisingly Ceylon -Sri Lanka since 1972- is second runner-up for Miss Universe. On the other hand, Cuba sends an entry, Gilda Marin, to the global event in the States.

1956 Welcome to California! There are 30 entries. Finland, which had won the title four years ago, does not participate. Carol Morris (Iowa) is elected MU.

Alexandrite is a variety of chrysoberyl common in locations such as Brazil, Madagascar, Myanmar, and Russia. With a greenish shade that can sometimes turn to red purple when you view it under artificial light, it is a rare gem, costly, and believed to be a stone for good omens. And as with most kinds of jewelry, alexandrite rings are normally set in sterling silver, yellow or white gold, or platinum.

Kinds to choose from

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Solitaire: A solitaire alexandrite ring is made up of a single stone set in prongs, with the stone cut in a variety of styles including round, marquise, square, or oval.

Diamond: A diamond alexandrite ring, on the other hand, can be made up of one or more alexandrite stones alongside diamonds arranged in a certain patterns or designs, normally depicting a flower, a heart, or the sun.

The majority of the land in Bangladesh is either below, at, or barely above sea level. And if it is true that sea levels will rise in the next 40-50 years, then half of Bangladesh will be under water. There are already instances where busy streets and towns near the ocean have been flooded and forced to evacuate. The country faces a huge humanitarian crisis of epic proportions if global warming is not combated.

Millions of refugees from Bangladesh will likely move across borders in neighboring countries India and Myanmar. Not only is Bangladesh rife with environmental catastrophes, the population density of the country is the highest in the world. Making it an incredibly lethal and deadly combination that will not only impact Bangladesh but all of South Asia and Southeast Asia for many generations forward.

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According to UC Davis, approximately 75 million (half) of Bangladesh’s population would emigrate due to sea level rise.

“I love you. I love you very much. I will never forget you,” said Daw May Lwin Zin,

headmistress of the village school of Kindat, Burma (or “Myanmar” as it is now known). Before

we parted, she showered me with gifts of limes, pomelos, and green jade earrings.

We strolled arm in arm down the main, muddy thoroughfare of Kindat, as the esteemed

headmistress proudly announced to curious on-lookers in their teak houses of stilts that the Road

to Mandalay had just presented the school with much-needed school supplies.

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Perhaps the crew had chosen me to represent the ship’s passengers in this formal, moving

school ceremony because I had so enjoyed playing and singing together with the precious children of other villages.

DID YOU KNOW THAT…Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was the best ally of Mengistu Haile Mariam,who was dictator of Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991. During this period of time, Fidel Castro Ruz sent 4000 soldiers to Ethiopia. Thousands of people were killed by Cuban soldiers, many of them reportedly extra judicially executed when unarmed or after having been captured.

DID YOU KNOW THAT…Fidel Castro is the worst violator of human rights in the Third World today.The Cuban dictatorship has curtailed the republic´s free press and banned strikes. Critics and opponents of the government, including journalists, human rights activists and members of opposition political parties, are arrested and some are convicted and imprisoned. Fidel Castro claims that demonstrations against him are led “subversives” and people under the influence of the United States.

DID YOU KNOW THAT…Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu was one of most elegant women of the 20th century.In the 1950s and 1960s,she was first lady of South Vietnam. She was born in 1924 in Hanoi,Vietnam.In fact, she was compared with ladies such as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (former first lady of the United States), Dewi Sukarno (ex-first lady of Indonesia), Grace Kelly ( former princess of Monaco) and Eva Duarte de Peron (former first lady of Argentina).In the 1960s, Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu popularized the traditional Vietnamese “ao dai” (long dress). She currently resides in France, where she is writing her autobiography.She speaks fluent English, Vietnamese and French.

DID YOU KNOW THAT…Vietnam is the home to Historic City of Hue-one of the ancient wonders of the world. During the Nguyen dynasty (1802-1945), Hue was the capital of Vietnam. More than 10 palaces in Hue provide some of the best remaining examples of Vietnamese architecture in Asia. It is the monument that best symbolizes Vietnam. Hue has been recognised as a World Cultural Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Have you ever thought what it would be like if you were unable to read or understand a word of this blog? Doubtless you would be feeling the same shame and isolation as the people I wrote about in my post: Reading Between the Lines last month. Tears were aplenty as they shared their stories in the TV series Can’t Read; Can’t Write – and they weren’t solely those of the participants! There we learned that in Britain, alone, over five million adults have a reading age of 12 or less, or are unable to read at all. UNESCO reports one in five adults unable to read, two thirds of them women, and 72 million children out of school, with many more attending only irregularly. Ironic then, to be told by the Dag Hammarskjold Library (the UN website) that “close to four billion literate people in the world” is cause for celebration.

The rank of the overall international cost of living indexes is reported as at April 2010 using New York as the base city. The indexes are calculated using the prices for specific quantities of the same goods and services in each location, based on expatriate spending patterns across 13 broad categories (Basket Groups).

The cost of living studied is the cost of maintaining an expatriate standard of living. When comparing the cost of living between different locations the objective is to calculate the difference in the cost of living and express this as a cost of living index by dividing the cost of living in Location A by the cost of living in Location B.

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The cost of living index reports the difference in the cost of living between the 2 locations for the same items purchased. For example an index of 140 means that the Location is 40% more expensive than the comparator Location. This would mean that a person who moves between the two locations would need to earn 40% more, to have the same standard of living as they have currently.

Placer refers to a sandbank of soil (alluvial) deposit that contains various particles of different precious metals. These types of sandbanks are usually comprised of something known as “detrital” material, including soil and gravel mixes.

Placer gold is gold that has been formed as rocks and soil are moved through stream beds by various geological events, such as earthquakes, landslides or glacial movement. Gold that is formed in lodes will erode from its natural source over time and become equally distributed among rocks and soil. This is referred to as a secondary deposit of precious metal.

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Mining of alluvial deposits for gold or other types of precious metals, such as silver, is referred to by the term, “placer mining.” This type of mining is done using a variety of techniques for tunneling into the ground and riverbeds and retrieving the deposits. For example, open cast mining happens when an open pit is created. Another type of placer mining is hydraulic mining, in which high water pressure is used to dig into the deposits and retrieve the gold.