Then we went to visit a ‘typical’ village, where he is obviously well known, and discovered that the children call English speakers ‘the Hello people’ (even though we were trying to greet people with ‘Min gala ba,’ one of our few words in Burmese.) Like everyone we met, they were all extremely friendly, and the children followed us – politely – as we walked around. Zor talked about the need for villagers to have children, and introduced us to an old lady whose husband had died - she was very poor, living next door to her sister, who was lucky enough to have a husband and numerous children, and was much better off. Then to see a family drying plums in front of their house – a gorgeous site, with rows and rows of colourful fruit. As we walked around this small village, with wooden/bamboo houses, he talked about the fear of fire, which would destroy a house in no time. Since there is no insurance, each house has a kind of long rake hanging outside. If a fire does develop (they do cook on open fires) the rake is used to tear down the walls of the house as quickly as possible, so that the fire doesn’t spread. Then the neighbours get together and rebuild the house that has been destroyed.

One more pagoda before lunch, Lawkananda Paya, from 1059, but more interesting to us was the view of the river. We were now on a kind of tributary, and where boats were taking the residents from one side to the other. A monk arrived, and immediately got priority treatment – they apparently never have to wait.