Bangkok and South to Bang Saphan

Nom wahn...sweet milk.  One of the take aways from this trip will be learning to ask for sweetened condensed milk for my coffee.  It's nom wahn, wahn being the accent, sounding like it starts with a k instead of wa, and clipped at the end.  Impossible to hear the first or second or even third time.  There is a book called Very Thai that is sweet and funny and great if you spend any time traveling in Thailand and want answers to the imponderables that come up, i.e. why small thin squares of pink tissue for table napkins, how the motorbike taxis work, why the police and army uniforms are so tight they look about to pop off of the men who wear them.  They need one of these guides for Myanmar.  I spent a small portion of my days in Yangon pondering the new paint jobs on the old, mildew encrusted buildings.  Bright turquoise paint now covers part of the front of the huge colonial building across Sule Paya Road from the May Shan, our Yangon home.  Did they run out of paint?  Did they only paint as far as they could reach?  Did they add Kilz-it to the paint before they used it?  Did they pressure wash before starting (I doubt it)?  Will they match this color and do more?  Or is this all they had in the basement of an old colonial era paint store?  These are questions I will never know the answer to.  How does a country so far neglected and compromised begin to renew itself?  In some places Myanmar has chosen to pull down these dilapidated mementos of the British Raj and replace them with Chinese Industrial architecture devoid of grace or charm and poorly built to boot.  But isn't that the way it is everywhere?  I don't know.  With no TV, limited internet, running low on reading material and long days to contemplate Life's mysteries, these are some of the things I think about.  Sweet Milk, where my next cup of coffee is coming from, will I finish the mystery I started only two days ago, today, and will there be a place to eat tonight?  I need a book to guide me...instead, I find the Belt of Orion, turn to the north and find the Big Dipper low in the horizon, its handle dipping into the sea, and wonder some more why I didn't take a course in star gazing.