Naypwidaw

Blimey, what a place this is; Ashqabat in Turkmenistan comes to mind.  

It was decided to move the official capital from Yangon in 2007 and to build this, a completely new city.  It's like entering a parallel universe.  You turn off the main road to Mandaley onto a new dual cartiageway that goes on for miles and sweeps you into the city.  It's a bit like the road fron Changi into Singapore - immaculate, lined with beautiful plants, perfect red an white stripes painted on perfect kerbs - but, and a very big but, the difference is that it is deserted.  We barely saw another conveyance of any description or any people at all.  

There is an new "international" airport, whose sole function seems to be to allow everyone to escape back to Yangon for the weekend.  No families live here, not a one.  Mainly because they don't want to leave Yangon, but, mainly, because in spending the reputed $4 billion in creating this Disneyland they forgot to build any schools.  There are no children here and barely any adults.  

There is a sports complex like the Olympic Park in London, huge stadia, and an aquatic centre - empty.  A safari Park - empty.  There are plentiful, massive roundabouts to control the flow of non- existent traffic all covered in fountains and beautifully tended gardens. The most strange was the 20 lane highway (empty, of course) that  enabled our cars to line up and race down it.  Adrian was working on the car so I hitched a ride with Kate and Dougie in their XK150. Kate looked very comfortable shoe horned into the back!  Very exhilarating and great fun.

Mr and Mrs Shooter went to the Capital Hypermarket for a gawp.  It's as large as the largest Sainsbury you can ever imagine. It's fabulously stocked with everything you could possibly need in life. There's one strange thing though - although I'm sure you've guessed by now - yes, it's empty too.  We were the only customers in there.  Every person you can see in my photos is a staff member and there were plenty of those.  They were everywhere, giggling behind their hands at us.

The whole place is absolutely bonkers.  If only part of that $4 billion had been spent on electricity, sanitation and education, how lives could have been changed.

Our hotel, one of several huge affairs on the several miles of "Hotel Row" belongs more in Florida.  Actually, it's rather lovely, huge rooms in individual bungalows set around a lake with swans.  The staff are charming, as always, the food good, the wifi not so good.  We're the only guests, of course, but you would have guessed that already, wouldn't you?

Two tourism Ministers came to our evening banquet by the lake, both had been medical doctors before becoming MP's, and were interesting to talk to.

Our clutch was still sticking a bit and ace mechanic Charlie and his able team decided they wanted to do a very thorough job rather than a bodge and so they stripped it down and re- built it with a modification that has improved it considerably.  The fault lay in some work we had done when a new five speed gearbox was fitted.  The fitter had not lined something properly and the problem was just waiting to happen. You can tell I'm technical, can't you?  Anyway, it's very annoying that the job was not done correctly in the first place.  Now, thanks to the wonderful Charlie and Richard we can sail on with renewed vigour. We are joint first in our class - JOINT FIRST! I might start to get a bit competitive.***

Tomorrow, I'm going to wash an elephant.  It's good here.

*** OK, it may only be a class of three but we still have zero penalty points.