Somewhere between Vox & Hunter S. Thompson
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Travel
It might surprise you, but Nashville is actually a total foodie town... randomly. This guide will take you through 21 of Nashville's best and coolest restaurants. Take some notes so the next time you need to go out to dinner in Nashville, you've got some options at your disposal.
In Asian markets, there is always a huge diversity of marine life packed in ice, frozen in suspended animation, or floundering/wriggling/writhing, being kept alive in 2 inches of water. Some of these specimens are small, but others are freaking sea monsters! It looks like the cast list for one of National Geographic's "deep sea" segments all got caught in the same net. You’ll find the same smorgasbord of marine animals in cities inland as you will in coastal ones, and whenever I bear witness to it, I always find myself wondering the same thing: how did these fish get here? You'd never see fish like that in American supermarkets, so I’ve always been curious. In Mumbai, I finally got the chance to see some of the supply chain, and it did not disappoint.
If that title doesn’t get you excited, then I don’t know what will! I’m not going to sugar coat it though – New Delhi sucks. This is not going to be as interesting as some of the last few posts, regretfully. But even so, let me fill you in on what this city is all about. New Delhi is the capital of India, as well as the nation's largest city. Almost 22 million people call its metropolitan area home, ranking it as the 5th largest city in the world, and the 1st largest city I've visited so far.
For this, we'll need to rewind a few months and go back to when I was still kickin' it in Hanoi... After getting my visa into Burma, it was time for me to apply for my visa into India. Living in Hanoi is great because, being a capital city, every country in the world has (or, had) an embassy right next to my house. I could have applied for the E-Visa, but I like to do things in person if I can.
It was time to leave the Shan State, but before I did, I wanted to get off the beaten path a little bit. For 40 USD, a few new friends and I hired a truck to take us deeper into the Shan State than ever before to a temple complex called Kakku.
The canals looked like a low-key, Burmese Venice in the beginning, but as we got further out towards the actual lake, the building faded away quickly, giving way to miles and miles green grass, and scattered huts. Every once in a while I would see some construction vehicles working, and wondered how in the world they had even gotten that far out there in the first place.
Since Burma's history isn't exactly common knowledge, let's start by filling in some of your knowledge gaps. The first question is a simple one: what is Mingun Pagoda?
Fair question. It’s not quite on the level of the Great Wall or the Pyramids, so most people have probably never heard of it.
I was picked up at 4:00am and driven to a little white van in Old Bagan with the words ‘OK Express’ printed onto the back windows. Sufice to say there was no sleeping that happened on that bus. We took dirt roads for 6 hours from Bagan to Mandalay. At one point I’m pretty sure we drove through a dried up riverbed.
Before getting into the articles about my time in Burma, we're going to flash back to my time in Hanoi, and walk through how to get a visa into the country. After I booked my ticket taking me from Singapore to Burma, I was eager to start the process of getting my visa. I went online to one of Burma’s government websites to apply for my visa. However, getting that visa turned out to be a lot more difficult than anticipated.
The city state of Singapore is a former British colony and, now, one of the financial capitals of Asia. It is the third most densely populated country in the world (behind Monaco and Macao) and it really is just a perfect little bubble. The rule of law in Singapore is enforced with an iron fist, right down to the tiniest infractions, such as littering and smoking in public. The result is a quiet, clean, orderly, urban paradise. And while I disagree that drug-related infractions should carry the death penalty, this dose of peace and quiet was just what the doctor ordered after a year in Hanoi, Vietnam. Because... yikes.
![Peter Goes Deeper Into The Shan State: Kakku [Burma]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5876d8d6e3df28c4d83ae377/1485795155430-URKDTDVQBMGEJKH69EHS/kakku+temple+shan+state+burma+myanmar+18.jpg)
