It has been a while since I posted! I have been so tired at night and not sleeping well in the hotels – up for a few hours at a time, which has made for some very sleepy evenings. We are now in Myanmar but I didn't post the last few days in Vietnam so I'll go back a few days.

We all really liked Vietnam. The energy, the visual stimulation, the friendly people, the food. (The food!). A few memorable experiences:

• The girls reading to a group of Vietnamese 6th grade students. This was super awkward for them, but it was part of a TAF project – they have given millions of books to the library – and it was just too convenient to have 2 middle-school girls there and NOT have them read. They read from an awkward book – Christmas for Peter Rabbit, which had a lot of olde English terms in it – but surprisingly a lot of the kids followed it and were able to answer questions afterwards. We're proud of the girls for doing it, and know that it was embarrassing.
• Taking M, N and A to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. We got there late and expected it to be closed already, but we were one of the last groups they let in. We got in line, two by two, and walked silently through the building to pay respects to the preserved, prone body of Vietnam's former leader. Very strange. We did enjoy walking around the presidential grounds afterwards.
• Looking for art in the crowded streets  – and actually buying some.
• The Nutcracker and its unintentional humor.
• Date night with N while Daddy, M and A went to a dinner with some ambassadors.
• The breakfast buffet at the Hotel de l'Opera! OMG. We loved it. We ate it every morning (it's included in the TAF plan) and we GORGED. Pancakes, croissants, bacon, fruit, muffins, omelettes, strange rice noodles, miso soup – SO MUCH FOOD.
• The crazy traffic! We'd never seen anything like that. Cars and mopeds (Vietnam is the biggest consumer of mopeds in the world), barely observing rules of traffic. It is a danger just to cross the street!

We remarked on how friendly the Vietnamese are to Americans, even with the war not that far in the past. Also interesting that they call it The American War – I guess that makes sense. We had a good balance of doing things with TAF and going off on our own. And we barely paid for any meals, and those we did were extremely reasonably priced. Great country and we'd love to go back sometime.

We got to Myanmar last night and spent most of today near the hotel. Daddy had meetings and we joined him for a panel discussion this afternoon about the Rohingya and ethnic cleansing going on in Myanmar today, causing the displacement of 700,000 people to Bangladesh. It's a complicated, overwhelming and very disturbing situation. This afternoon we took a taxi to the old part of Yangon to see a very old synagogue that was built in the 1800s. There are now 20 (20!) Jews in Myanmar, and 9 in Yangon. The synagogue is quite large, as it used to have 3000 members, with an upstairs gallery for women. Sammy, the man who basically runs it and who is also a travel agent, met us and spent a lot of time talking to us about the synagogue. 

Otherwise, Yangon is very interesting. Beautiful serene temples encased in gold, a huge lake and peaceful people, juxtaposed with crowded streets and terrible traffic. It's a lot to see and take in. Tomorrow Daddy is flying to the capital for the day and we are going on a tour of the greatest hits of Yangon.