Packing List. Myanmar and Thailand.

Miniature suitcase made from an Altoids mints tin.  It's so cute!
Crafted by Julie McGufee. Photo taken from her blog - Life in the Craft Lane.

We don't leave for Thailand and Myanmar for several more weeks but for me, it's never too soon to put together the packing list.

Every trip I go on, I try to reduce the load but I'm afraid I've not been very successful.  On my first trip, to Peru in 2006, my suitcase weighed in at barely 8 kgs....that was including the 2 kgs that the suitcase weighed!  Now, my suitcase generally tips the scale around 13 kgs and really that's not all that bad considering I'm packing for at least 3-4 weeks travel.

This trip will be to the tropics so it's going to be a lot of lightweight clothing.  However, for visiting the temples, I will need to bring a long sleeve shirt and a pair of long pants that I can then also wear on our day long trek from Kalaw to Inle Lake in Myanmar.  Keeping the clothes thin will also be important.  Except for the first few days in an apartment in Bangkok, the rest of the trip, we will likely be doing our own laundry though I hope that by the time we arrive at the hotel in Mandalay, we can pay for a load to be done.

The Food of Armenia.

This could easily be my plate of Armenian food.  It all looks very familiar and tasty!
(Photo by Ketone16.  Licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.)

Like so many global cuisines, Armenian food reflects its history, traditional cultures and geography. Although the food of Armenia has its unique tastes, it is very closely related to eastern and Mediterranean cuisine - a big reason why so much of it looks familiar to me.

The main characteristics of Armenian cuisine are a reliance on the quality of the ingredients rather than heavily spicing food, the use of herbs, the use of wheat in a variety of forms, pearl barley, legumes, nuts, and fruit (as a main ingredient as well as to sour food), and the stuffing of a wide variety of leaves. The pomegranate, which features in many a dish has a symbolic association with fertility that represents that nation. The apricot is the national fruit.

Introducing Armenia.

Central Yerevan view from the Cascade.  Snow capped Mount Ararat in the background.
(Photo by Raffi Kojian.  Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.)

A few weeks ago, I also spent an afternoon with my friend and former colleague, Areg.  Areg is Armenian and she was keen to bake some gata cookies for me, especially since I had never had them before. They are a traditional Armenian filled cookie made from flour, tons of butter and sugar and eggs, yogurt and a bit of yeast. Areg made two versions of the gata cookie.  One that was filled with just butter and sugar and the other with nuts.  She told me she found her recipe on YouTube but I found a few on the web with very easy to follow instructions:  A recipe from plain gata from The Armenian Kitchen and nut filled gata from Food'n'Chef.

The Food of Georgia.

(Photo from advantour.com)

I have been drooling for the past hour as I read up on the cuisine of Georgia and look at one image after another of delicious food. At least it all looks so delicious. I think Pat and I are really going to enjoy our meals here!

The added plus is that we get to enjoy at least of one those meals with Yuriy Klyuev, the Advantour travel consultant who coordinated our trip through Central Asia.  We had planned to meet up with him in Tashkent but at the last minute, he was relocated to Tblisi to help start up Advantour's offices there.  Yuriy and I have kept in touch, off and on.  I let Yuriy know that we'll be in Tblisi and we've agreed to meet up either for lunch or dinner.  It'll be nice to finally meet him in person!  I'm going to tell Yuriy to come starving hungry so we can order a lot of dishes!!  Oh....and he's not getting Uzbek food.