Perhaps of limited interest outside the family circle…

Pyin U Lwin is famous for gardens, fruit, flowers, and plants. I went there to check out the Botanical Gardens on my birthday. All said, they were pretty great, even though the 270 varieties of orchid in the orchid garden weren’t in bloom. A bamboo garden with 70 stands of bamboo. Lots of big trees. My first encounter with the takin, a beast which is like a cross between a moose and a buffalo. And how strange, petunias advertised as exotic foreign drawcards.

The temperature in Pyin U Lwin is much lower than in Mandalay which means that you can grow strawberries there. In fact, Pyin U Lwin is Myanmar’s capital of gourmet jam production. And one of the leaders of the field? Might I present…

Pop pop strawberry jam! Hoo-rah!

Incidentally, the area is also renowned for its fruit wines. I sampled grape, strawberry, and pineapple wines and decided to take home a leetle bottle of sweet damson wine. To be honest, it tasted like booze made in a bucket, a cheap and rocky port, but I still found myself able to quaff a few drams in the interests of research. Damson wine is, however, definitely a safer option than the super cheap Myanmar rum and whiskey that I saw convert adults into blithering messes of hangover in double-quick time. If vipassana is one kind of purification process, drinking Myanmar palm rum is quite another, one tantamount to running paint stripper through the intestinal tubes.