Mingalarbar, Myanmar!

Our trip to Myanmar started in Mae Sot, the Thai city on the border. When we got off of the bus we met two German girls, Corinna and Lara, who were also going to the border so we shared a songthaew to the immigration. We crossed the Friendship Bridge by foot and entered Myanmar easily, hoping to catch a bus to Yangon. Unfortunately we were to late for the last bus and the next one would be in two days. The girls had no plans either so we decided to share a taxi to Hpa An where we would get a bus the next morning to Yangon. We had to withdraw some money not knowing exactly the prices of anything so we took 200.000 kyats (aprox. 200 USD). The ATM spat out so many notes that we could not fit them in the wallet! The thing is that the biggest note was the 5.000 kyats note! 

Tachi feeling at home on another Friendship Bridge

The driver wanted 40.000 kyats (about 40 dollars) and we thought it was a good deal, until we felt how he was going to drive on those poor roads full of curves and narrow parts with cliffs to one side and rocks to the other. It was like a roller coaster, but worse! The scenery was beautiful, but we couldn't really enjoy or take good pictures because of the crazy driving! It was really scary when we passed the big trucks on those narrow roads! Now we understood why the bus goes only one way one day and the other way the next. 

Taxi ride up in the mountains

We had to stop some times to show our passports to uniformed men. It seemed like they were writing down our information in a big book to keep track of the tourists, we couldn't understand exactly what that was for. When we finally got down from the mountain we had a stop for food. It's a weird way they eat, they just bring out many little plates with side dishes and a bowl of rice to the table and we had no idea what they were. Asking wasn't an option as no one spoke English, not even the taxi driver. 

It got dark very quickly and we were still racing to Hpa An. Suddenly we heard a loud noise, and went out to see our flat tire! Oh, what a nice start in Myanmar! It was in the middle of nowhere, in the darkness, and we had to use the flashlight of our phones so that the driver could change the tire. After 5 horrible hours on the road, we finally got to Hpa An. We bought our bus tickets for the next day and went straight to a guesthouse to rest our super tense bodies and minds.

Flat tire

The next day we had breakfast and took the bus to Yangon. It was a local bus for only 5.000 kyats, with ok space, air-con and TV where they were showing karaoke music videos and very overacted Burmese movies. It was also funny that it stopped in the middle of nowhere to pick up locals that had to sit on small plastic stools. It was about 6,5 hours drive to Yangon. From the bus station we shared a taxi to the Sule Pagoda area where we checked in at a very ugly and dirty guesthouse. We had some late lunch and walked around exploring the nearby area. The next morning we decided moving to a neighbor guesthouse, a bit cleaner than the other one. We took a local bus to the area near the famous Shwedagon Pagoda. It was very hot so we looked for a place with air-con, bought some things and headed to the Pagoda. It is believed that it was built more than 2.600 years ago, making it the oldest Buddhist stupa in the world. 

Shwedagon Pagoda

We were supposed to meet Corinna and Lara there, but it was so crowded that we couldn't find them. We spent a lot of time there and got to talk with some Burmese English students that wanted to practice their English. When it got dark we went to the Vista Rooftop Bar where we could get a nice view of the Shwedagon Pagoda by night.

Shwedagon Pagoda by night

The next day we went to the train station to buy tickets to Bagan. A man that we thought worked at the station recommended us to go by bus because the trip was shorter and almost the same price. He took us to a travel agency that offered us "VIP" bus tickets for 25.000 each. Luckily, Tachi had read about the prices before and she thought that was a bit more expensive and suggested that we went back to the hotel to check it. On our way back we stopped by another agency to ask for prices and they offered it for 5.000 less and that was what Tachi had read, so we just bought the tickets there. We had lunch at the 999 Noodle Shop, which was quite good but nothing special like TripAdvisor said. 

A street near the Sule Pagoda

It started to rain so we headed back to the guesthouse to have a siesta and wait for it to stop. Late afternoon we walked to the river where we had heard about a pagoda that was supposed to be nice for sunset. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy and foreigners had to pay to enter so we decided to just have a walk along the riverside.
At night we met up with the girls and went for some food in Chinatown, but we didn't find Chinatown to be very exciting. The food did not look very tasty or Chinese, so we ended up just having some beers and David got to try deep fried crickets with some locals sitting next to us.

The next day we checked out from the guesthouse and relaxed in the park until we had to head to the bus station, where we met the German girls. We arrived in Bagan around 4am and had to spend 20 USD each just to enter the city. We found a nice guesthouse to rest a little, have breakfast and rent bikes to tour around some of the more than two thousand pagodas.

Some of the pagodas and stupas

Enjoying the sight from atop a pagoda

The next morning we woke up early to try to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately it was cloudy, but it was still a beautiful view. We got some sandwiches from the guesthouse that we had as breakfast on the pagoda before we continued biking to some villages. In the afternoon we tried to watch the sunset, but the weather was not so helpful again. 

Sunset in Bagan


On the next day we took a bus to Kalaw from where we would start a new adventure.