Carl Montgomery

Kiev by night

Unlike the Buddhist monastery I visited in Myanmar (Burma), the caves monastery in Kiev has a stunning lack of jumping cats. Instead the Ukrainian Orthodox have and entirely different approach to worship. It’s here in 1051 before the church split that the monks worshiped in caves they dug themselves. When they died their bodies were placed in these caves and are still there in all their glory to this day. So today was an interesting day wandering through rather tight underground caves filled with a partly decomposed but still very much intact 1000 year old corpses. As with Burma, it was interesting to see the peoples religion in action. Ukrainian Orthodox decrees that you cross yourself three times, pray three times, touch the cask of the monk three times, kiss the glass case of the monk three times and you do this for every monk you come across. Thus the caves become a log jam of worship. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you feel about these things, i was not allowed to take pictures of said dead monks. Thus you will have to be content with the vista from above ground.

It’s around this part of Belarus the The Chernobyl explosion duped a large part of it’s radioactive load. I’ve visited a few of the still contaminated towns outside Gomel. Those of you that worry about me will be glad to hear i barley piked up a blip on the Geiger counter. Slightly higher than I’m used to, but far less that the level of radiation I got on the flight over.
Anyway, I’m going to preempt Matt who will inevitably ask what the food’s like in the comments of these posts. Matt, there is not much i want to say about Borch. Of more interest to certain friends and family members however is the food safety. I did stick the Geiger counter against most of what I ate and I’m fairly confident that it wont make me glow in the dark.
We’ll see if this Changes when I visit Chernobyl itself Tomorrow

KGB headquarters

When the soviet union crumbled when i was a child, all the pictures on TV i remember were people pulling down statues of Lenin amidst great celebration. That sort of attempt to bury the past never seemed to happen here in Belarus. The old history of the Soviet era are are least here in a superficial way. Whether it be the statues or the very soviet ìfunctional brickî style of architecture. In stark contrast is the modern Belarus that grown out of this. To take that contrast to an extreme, In Minsk, There’s a McDonald’s right next door to KGB headquarters.
A few pics follow

Taking advantage of being out of the third world for a few hours, I’ve uploaded the higher quality versions of the two Videos I uploaded before.
The high quality version are near enough DVD quality but will take a while to download. The medium quality is about one third the size but still ok’ish quality.
Enjoy.

Edit Dispite the title of this post, i dont garentee that these videos are anything but crappy and hastily edited

Bali Video

Download: Right click the links and “save as”. Mac users Ctrl+click Download Windows Media High quality (near DVD) (15MB – 4 minutes or less on broadband or up to and hour on dialup) OR Download Windows Media Medium quality (5 MB – 2 minutes on broadband or 12 minutes on dialup) Running time: 2min

Myanmar (Burma) Video

Download: Right click the links and “save as”. Mac users Ctrl+click Download Windows Media High quality (near DVD) (30MB – 8 minutes or less on broadband or up to 2 hours on dialup) OR Download Windows Media Medium quality (9 MB – 4 minutes on broadband or 40 minutes on dialup) Running time: 4min

Austrian food will do that every time

I totally forgot this trasit was so long.
Anyway, I have a few hours in Vienna so decided to go for a walk around the city.
Dont ask me what any of the pictures are. i did absolutly no research, just landed and walked.
Anyway, in a few hours i fly to Minsk where the sub-atomic leg of this journey begins.

A few pics from Vienna follow.
Enjoy.

Enjoy

Hi all, I leave the county in a a few hours so this will be the last post before i take extreme travel to the sub-atomic level in the former soviet union.
Before i go however I’ll take a moment to mention the people here. Rather amazenly, dispiste everything this is actually an easy place to travel, everyone is eager to help wether or not you have USD$ to offer. On top of this, dispite the dificatlies the people face is actually a safe county to visit. Never did i feel my safty was in danger and my posessions were always safe in the hands of whomever had them. Basiaclly this is a wonderful set of people.

Anyway, 4 minutes of hastily edited video is here for whoever wants it.

Your new waterfront property

A few days ago i was in Bagan. One horse drawn carriage, two rickshaws, one ox cart, one plane and five bribes later i land here, Lake Inle in the eastern part of Myanmar.
There’s any number of things I’ve visited here but one highlight would have to be Nga Hpe Chaung. This monastery is partly famous for being a 150 year old Buddhist monastery built on stilts in the middle of the lake. It’s also famous because the staff who have too much time on their hands have trained the local cats to jump through hoops.
The sight of three golden Buddhas looking down upon some guy with a hoop and cats jumping through it has to be one of the more odd things I’ve seen on this trip. I really have to question if this is good Karma. None the less, the cats jump, Buddha sits, the monks meditate and i look on at this scene in bemusement.
Pics of this circus follow.

Bagan in central Myanmar is home to literally thousands of Buddhist temples dating back to as early as 850AD. The sight of thousands of temples crammed into a small area only a 40 square Km is a sight to behold.
This is the one sight everyone comes to Myanmar to see. This 360 photo from one of the temples give you at least an idea of this place.
For shear jaw-dropability this has got to be one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.
I’d like to say that the pictures tell the story but this one you really have to see for yourself.
Pics follow anyway.

Drunken spirits
(sorry bad pun)

I’ve always understood spirits to be generally benevolent or or
unidentifiable things.
Here at the top of Mt Popa in central Myanmar however, they are far
more useful. It is here that (as legend would have it) the 37 “Nat”
spirits roam and will happily grant you your wishes as long as you make
the right offering to the right “Nat”. Theres one for everything, from
tending to your children or looking after your crops.
My favorite is the spirit of drinking and gambling. If you make the
right offering, he’ll make sure you have a good day at the races and
then get you drunker than you have ever been before.
I came at a good time as well. It’s festival time when loads of locals
come from hundred of miles around, many of which have never seen a
caucasian before. A blond haired, blue eyed guy can really feel like a
rock star amongst this.

Thankfully they dont provide amputations

New York has the Empire state building, Paris has the Eiefel tower And Yangoon, Myanmar has the Shwedagon Paya (A Buddist temple).
However New York and Paris are ever so slighly more developed
None the less, this one huge temple covered in literlly tonnes of gold rises out of this amazing city.
The pictures really tell the story. Theres a lot more i could say about Yangoon but it probably best i leave it to another time.

On a more personal note. Those trying to SMS me, sorry my phone does not work here. It’s email only and i dont know how long that will hold out.