Waking up with diarrhea is not cool. Inevitable though, when you live in a ‘difficult country’. I drag myself from the toilet to the balcony. The sun just peeks across the horizon, it is 6AM. Yangon is still asleep, except of the monks. They walk in a long line, in their burgundy red robes, from our street towards the blinking Shwedagon Pagoda.

In front of our apartment building is an undeveloped area. In booming Burma, it will most probably become a construction site within months to built some huge villa, but for now it is a lush mini-jungle. Hundreds of birds swirm around, to eat millions of bugs for sure. There will be freaky animals like snakes in there too, but I haven’t spotted them yet, from the 5th floor.

I boil some water to make my ORS-cocktail (salt-sugar-solution): the only remedy against dehydration. The kitchen lizard jumps off the water boiler. Good morning to you too! We are getting used to each other, since we moved in a month ago. We have a lizard in every room. They do leave tiny shits on the wall, but they keep our house pretty much mosquito-free; a good deal. Especially with the increased dengue danger, since the rainy season just started.

We do spot a cockroach (as big as an egg) every now and than and of course ants. That’s what you get with a rainforest front yard. Every spilled crumble is carried away within a minute. We have become real ant hunters and developed special terminology already: “Is that a scout or a trail?” (a single ant or a bunch). We use also several non-toxic techniques: vinegar in the kitchen, baby powder (chalk) in doorways. As soon as you spot a new trail, we clean it with a wet towel, washing the trail away towards the source (the balcony).

There are far less ants now, since we moved in. Everything was sticky when we got the key - plenty of food for bugs. Now we have cleaned every corner and live as if we run a hospital, it is okay. We also don’t want to exterminate the ants completely: they clean up worse annoyances, like bathroom worms and bed bugs.

This is what we wanted, living in South East Asia for a while. We tried for years. Not particularly Burma to be honest. Thailand or Indonesia, was the idea, but we found a job here. We find it the most exciting country one can think of: literally everything is in transition. Daily life is not easy, but most people are really friendly and seem positive about their future.

The soft tone of the gong of the neighboring monastery sounds three times. Time for their next prayer, time for me to get some more ours of sleep.