Yangon, Burma

And to cap off a whirlwind week of travel…..I headed from the staff retreat to the airport where I caught a flight to Singapore, overnighted in the airport and then arrived in Yangon, Burma on Saturday morning.  The trip started off with a surprise run in with my dad in the Singapore airport….small world.

I spent 4 days visiting a friend and sightseeing in Yangon.  Would love to go back and see more of the country, but 4 days was perfect for leisurely seeing Yangon via foot, boat, and train.

Tiny Volcano

The day after I returned from Tacloban, we had an office team building workshop and for one of the activities we got to climb "the world's smallest volcano" - Taal Volcano.  Not sure if that's actually true, but it was a pretty quick hike up to the crater lake at the summit.

Return to Tacloban

3 months have now passed since Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) devastated parts of the Philippines.  For work I had to make my second trip down to the worst hit area to help with environmental impact assessments for future recovery activities.  We spent most of the time visiting classrooms that had been destroyed and need to be fully reconstructed.   I'd been here 2 months ago and it was interesting to see how much had changed (more people especially development workers, more traffic, availability of goods, life returning to normal) and at the same time how little had changed (same car that was standing on its hood is still there, debris everywhere, IDP camps still prevalent).

This was a school building built by the US.

MacArthur's returned to the Philippines.

Records being dried at government offices