Day 6 - Hsipaw

Waking up in Hsipaw I saw a flyer in my hotel for a local "popcorn garden"  Having never seen how popcorn was made besides Orville Redenbocker's way and my mom's old popcorn machine, I thought I'd go check it out to see the original old fashion way. Also, and I'll be frank here, the real reason I wanted to go was that they had local fresh coffee.  Anyone who's ever traveled in Asia is used to having 3in1 instant coffee.  And while there is a time and place for that, real coffee is much nicer and what I'd prefer.  So off I went to get a fresh "latte" at Mrs. Popcorn's garden.  Turns out there hasn't been popcorn made in 3 years there, rather her husband used to make it and when he passed away Mrs. Popcorn had taken over for a few years before tourists convinced her to turn her great open space into a garden to serve food.  She has various local fruits growing seasonally all around and she can get locally grown coffee from the area. Thus the garden was born.  In low season she doesn't see many guests but in high season it was very busy. (she had a guest book that was jam packed with letters and notes of thanks in the high season, but low time would see days with nothing.)  Mrs. Popcorn was cartoonishly nice, almost as if out of a disney movie and she was the fairy godmother to the 10th power. So sweet and friendly and man did she make a god cup of joe.  She also gave me plenty of snacks, freshly made tofu-crisps, home grown lychees, store bought crackers.  I liked it so much, and it was also so warm outside that I ordered a fresh juice. The only two fruits she had for juice were mango and banana and she whipped me up some. She also brought over some of her handmade bean crisp snacks.  After hanging out there for a bit, reading and relaxing, I decided to head over to the "little Bagan" in the area.  A gross overstatement for what it offered, the small area had old and decayed pagodas that were lovely and historic but paling in comparison to the massive and ongoing size of the real Bagan. Still, it was a nice little treat for the day.