Back to Thailand; Mae Sot, Chiang Mai and Pai

We crossed the ‘friendship bridge’ into Thailand, feeling exhausted from travelling for two days straight and also I still felt feverish so kept popping the paracetamol. Apparently there was a bus straight from Mae Sot, the border town on the Thailand side, to Chiang Mai where we planned to go. Unfortunately we had no idea where the bus went from and what time it left- there was a few reports online of it leaving at 12 or 2pm, and it was 12.30 by the time we crossed the border so we had no idea if we had any chance. But my fever was getting worse and seeing as we didn’t know where we had to go, we accepted the fact we would have to spend a night in Mae Sot. We took a shared rickshaw from the border to the town, and were dropped off in a fairly desolate road in the middle of the town. Meanwhile, I had retrieved the Thai Baht which we had left over from before we entered Myanmar, of which we should have had about 120 pounds worth. However, I could only find about 20 of this, and although I was fairly sure where I had left it I wanted to check the rest of my bag in the other places I might have put it. We walked for about 15 minutes trying to find a guesthouse but there did not seem to be an abundance of them. Finally we found one, but were told it was full. To save us both trundling around with our heavy bags for too much longer, Jonno left me with the bags while he went in search for one that had room.

About another 20 minutes later and he returned, 2 more places were full but he found one more that said they had a room for us. We walked 5 minutes further and put our bags down, relieved. But when we got to the reception desk, it was shut and there was nobody there, we called down the corridors but nobody answered. Ten minutes later and still nobody had showed up which was strange because Jonno had told them he would be coming straight back to check in. So Jonno went off again in search of another guest house in case we needed to go elsewhere. In this time a member of staff from the hotel showed up so I checked in, and was given the option of the air conditioner or non AC room. When I asked to see the non AC and was shown a room with an air conditioner unit on the wall, the man told me that if I wanted to pay for the AC room he would give me the remote. I figured we could try without and demand the remote if we needed it. After a thorough search of my bag and still no sign of the missing Baht, our only guess is that it had been stolen while we were in Myanmar, as there were a few times it had been in one of my bags that I had left at the reception at hotels between check out and one of the buses. Anyway, there was not much we could do about it so had to accept this was money we had lost.

Jonno returned and as we were both very tired, we spent a few hours resting before venturing out for dinner. Jonno had been craving a Pad Thai for the past week so this was what we went in search for. However, no Pad Thai in sight and there wasn’t many options at all for restaurants. We found one that had noodle soup, and even though we were very bored with noodle soup we didn’t have the energy to hunt further.

After a much needed sleep and a few night time trips to the shared toilet which included jumping over cockroaches along the corridor, I was still feeling awful the next day and decided the best plan was to recover before moving on to Chiang Mai. So the whole day was spent in fitful sleep, and Jonno making trips around the town to bring me back fruit. We researched it and apparently there was a few places to visit if we hired a moped so we thought we could stay another day and see what is around before leaving.

Multi-purpose shrine and cat house

The following day, a little better but not feeling up to any day trips, we took a walk to try and find the bus station to book our bus ticket for the next day, and were sent on a wild goose chase to various bus parks and random roads. I felt pretty rubbish so Jonno carried on the search, to find the bus booking place about a minute away from where we had been turned around by a lady boy in a shop. I went to sit outside the guest house to get some fresh air, and ended up meeting a guy we spoke to in Mawlamyine in Myanmar, and a few other people on the way in and out of Myanmar. A few of the people trying to enter the country had asked me if we had any problem crossing, and I wasn’t too sure why until another set of people said that the road we had taken out of Myanmar had been closed because there was fighting. Apparently the government and the rebels had been in dispute over ownership of the road, and people had been killed in the fighting. Luckily we had managed to avoid any of the conflict, but it explained why a lot of the guesthouses were full as there were lots of people waiting until it was safe to cross the border.

The next day we took the bus to Chiang Mai, a fairly uneventful journey, and arrived there at about 4pm. We checked a map and noticed that the town had a square network of small roads in the centre so headed towards that. We found a nice guesthouse and treated ourselves to an air conditioned room. However we didn’t have much time to rest as we had been told there was a Sunday market happening (it was a Sunday) and we didn’t think we would be there another week so we had to take the opportunity. We ventured out into the ‘Sunday walking street’ and were met with market stalls on both sides of the street, selling clothes, food and souvenirs. After battling through crowds and making a few purchases, we found the Pad Thai that we were so craving and went back to the guesthouse for an early night.

Sunday market

The next day we spent exploring Chiang Mai- and the conclusion is that it is another town to cater for the needs of tourists- there was a McDonalds, a Starbucks, lots of western bars and travel agencies offering ‘authentic’ and ‘off the beaten track’ tours to ‘become an elephant mahout(trainer)’ or visit the ‘long neck’ tribe which I had heard some not great reviews about. Jonno did need to top up on his supply of contact lenses so we went to one of the Thai optician chain stores. He also wanted to check his prescription was the same so he asked them for an eye test too. He disappeared into the eye test room only to emerge a few minutes later with the huge metal glasses frame that they can slot various lenses into on his face, and they asked him to look at the road and see if his vision felt the same when looking out onto the road, a very accurate measure. He wasn’t quite sure, so instead we managed to bring up an eye chart on one of our phones, I held it and he stood a few metres behind to see if he could read it. There we were, in an opticians, having to do a makeshift eye test. Anyway, after doing a marvellous job at being opticians, we decided that we didn’t think his prescription had changed and ordered three months worth of contacts after some haggling, and were told that they should be ready in a few days.

The streets of Chiang Mai

By this point my fever had calmed down but I was still feeling weak and my skin felt prickly and itched like crazy, which was keeping me awake at night, so the following day we decided it was time for a visit to the doctors. But first, Jonno was also not feeling very well with his head problems and wanted to try a chiropractor to see if it was his neck that was causing it. We found an address of one, and followed the signs to a small road next to a hotel. We went into the door the sign was over, and entered some kind of workshop/jumble sale, with random dusty bits lying around everywhere. We asked tentatively for ‘chiropractor’ and one of the men behind the counter stood up and lead us upstairs. Apparently he was in fact the chiropractor, and the room he took us to was like an attic room with one bench in the middle. After he had cracked Jonno as much as he could crack but no mention of any major problem or further treatment, we were on our way and went to find the doctors. The first surgery we found had people queuing out of the door it was so crowded and we were told they could not see any more people, but there was another doctors down the road. So off we went to find this other place, and when we arrived there was a mere ten people waiting. We took a seat and waited for a while, until I was called up and gestured into a small room to sit on my own and wait for the doctor. He arrived a few minutes afterwards, did a few tests and told me I had dengue fever (for the second time possibly, I never got the first suspected case confirmed by a doctor) and the prickly feeling was due to having low platelets. He then stuck a large needle in me and gave me yet another concoction of drugs, charging me 40 pounds for this wonderful experience.

Since the Thai massage we had in Bangkok I had been considering the idea of doing a Thai massage course,, as it was something new and interesting I could learn and it is a bit like someone else doing yoga for you so it has many of those benefits too. I had heard that Chiang Mai was the best place for massage schools so went in hunt of some of the schools to look at the options. We searched around a little and after going through a few quiet alleyways we came across a place called ‘Wandee Massage School’. When we tentatively opened the door, a small cheerful Thai woman appeared and introduced herself as Wandee the teacher. As this was currently the low season for tourists she currently had no students, so if I wanted to learn I would get the bonus of one to one tuition. She recommended five days should be enough for me to learn the basics of Thai massage. Jonno was happy to have a few lazy days so I signed up to start 2 days later.

I think this dog has had too much protein shake

Jonno was still feeling pretty rubbish and we wanted to eliminate any serious causes, so we found a private doctors and asked them to do some general tests to check on his health. They poked him a bit and took some blood and aid they would check for various things and let us know if they discovered anything, at 100 pounds the initial tests were definitely not cheap but at least it might give us an idea of what may be causing his problems. As we had hired a scooter and had the rest of the day to kill, we took a drive up to a popular temple on the top of a large hill. Nothing spectacular about it, but it had some nice views on the way. We also found a sign to another waterfall, which again was a fairly standard waterfall for the area but it gave us a chance to have a walk around.

View of Chiang Mai

Another shiny pagoda

Someone has parent issues

On the way back to the guesthouse, we stopped at a night market and had a wander around there. We were getting hungry by this point and we spotted that in the middle of the market there were quite a few outside restaurants with sizzling domes in the middle of the tables, where people were cooking their own food. Intrigued, we investigated closer and it seemed easy enough- there was a buffet of raw meat and vegetables, you chose your food and once you have cooked it on the frying dome, its ready to eat. We could do that. So we were given a table, the waitress lit our dome and off we went to get our food to cook. We returned with a selection of items, placing them on the cooking area and waited for the magic to happen. However, we soon realised it wasn’t as easy as it looked. The meat which wen at the top had to be balanced carefully or it would slip down. And without oil or anything to stop it sticking it was creating a burnt layer over the dome. The dome also wasn’t very quick, and we got bored of waiting so were pretty sure food poisoning was imminent. And the bottom of the dome had a moat of water around it which we think was to boil vegetables (that’s what we did anyway) but this needed constant monitoring for topping up so it didn’t dry out and was also agonisingly slow. And then there was the eggs we had picked up from the buffet. How were we expected to cook the eggs? While I went for cracking the egg over the top of the dome which resulted in a burnt mess over the dome and most of it running down into the water, Jonno tried to hard boil his in about 2cm of water which after about ten minutes was only slightly better than raw. Anyway, the whole process was a struggle and we were definitely getting laughed at by the staff and other diners but it was an experience anyway.

The threat of food poisoning makes the meal more enjoyable. Notice the egg cooking technique.

The following day was the start of my massage course. Sure enough, I was the only student and was presented with a workbook and a pencil. Wandee instructed me to lie on the mattresssed area, and started to massage me. Great, this was very relaxing and not much work at all! However, it was my turn next. I had to try and do the same sequence on Wandee with some bad sketches and some of my scribbled notes to help me. When I would put my hands in the wrong place she would grab my hands and put them in the correct place, and when I got it right she would make an ‘uuugh’ noise in approval. Her catchphrase was ‘strong and smooth’, and after a few hours of trying to maintain ‘strong and smooth’ my thumbs were aching and I was mentally drained from concentrating so much. But it was great to learn something new and at the end of the day I went back to meet Jonno and show him the techniques I had learnt. The next day continued in the same fashion, I learnt more of the sequence and then practiced it again and again. At the end of the second day Wandee said she thought it might be good for me to have a day off to take it in, and we would resume again the day after.

The next day was Sunday again, so after a relaxing morning we took another trip to the Sunday night market. We had been noticing that many of the hotels and buses in the area had signs up demanding that ‘no durian’ fruit is to be brought into the premises. This confused and intrigued us; why would a fruit be banned in certain areas? In amongst the other market stalls was a place that sold durian so we let our curiosity get the better of us and bought a small amount. It was wrapped in plastic, and when we unwrapped it we realised why it was not allowed in many places. The smell was foul, like rotting raw onion, and the taste was pretty similar- it had a mushy texture and tasted of creamy raw onion. I have no idea why anyone would choose to eat it, and after suffering a couple of mouthfuls each we threw it away. However, the aftertaste would not go away so we had the added torture of being able to taste it for hours afterwards. Definitely won’t be eating durian again in a hurry!

I returned the next day for my last three days of the massage course, and was joined by one other girl from Japan which meant we could practice the massage techniques on each other while Wandee adjusted and corrected us, and to show us where to put the pressure would every so often interject with a marker pen to draw lines on us (most of the time I forgot I was covered in pen and leave the school with red lines all over me). What I didn’t realise before is that the whole Thai massage sequence takes a long time. Most of the time it is shortened as most people don’t get more than an hour of massage, but from beginning to end it takes somewhere between 3 to 4 hours. It is hard work to go on for this long and wasn’t easy on my poor thumbs! On the last day as I was going through the whole sequence, a girl came into the school asking if she could have a massage for one hour. Wandee started as if she was going to ask the girl to come back later, and then changed her mind and turned to me and asked if I was able to do it. Even though I wasn’t feeling at all confident, I took up the challenge and went with some of the bits I knew better, and even though the feedback from the teacher was I should have ended it slightly differently, I did really well overall and the customer said it was great too. She handed over some money to Wandee at the end, who passed the money over to me. My first paying customer! It was only 2 pounds but that was enough to buy myself a celebratory drink that evening!

Look how tall I am! Last day of the massage course

We left Chiang Mai the next day, and got a minibus to Pai, a more rural town about 3 hours out of Chiang Mai. We had heard a lot of people raving about this place and wanted to see why. We arrived at the bus stop in the middle of the small high street, and soon found a cosy little bungalow for a decent price. We soon discovered that Pai is a smaller, more chilled out Chiang Mai but basically offers the same things. An abundance of restaurants, a few bars, a small night market and lots of travel agencies to book activities like trekking and elephant riding, the majority of it being for tourists. But we figured we would give it a couple of days as we needed to work out our plan from there.

Scenery in Pai

An advert for a restaurant and cooking school

With Jonno still not feeling too good, we took the opportunity of a few days in a chilled out place to relax and recooperate. We found an outdoor public swimming pool which was nice for a few hours, and the balcony on our bungalow was the perfect size for my yoga practice. When Jonno felt better we even went on a few runs together. We rented a scooter for one day as one activity that was recommended for Pai was to explore the surrounding areas, so off we set. After taking a few wrong turns and circling the town about three times, we came across a big Buddha statue, a fairly disappointing waterfall, a bleak china town area and a viewpoint with free green tea (which was not really free- there was an entrance fee) where one tourist was harassing a cat and tried to keep him from walking away by holding the scruff of his neck so she could get a nice picture. We also tried to get to another waterfall which was down a dirt track and when we parked up and saw the sign for the waterfall pointing directly into the river, we realised this maybe was a waterfall which was not accessible in the rainy season so had to give up on that idea. 

Definitely waterfall with caution

Another waterfall

Cat being held captive against its will for a photo

After a few restorative days and feeling a bit more energised, we decided we were ready to leave Thailand and continue our journey onto Laos. There were packages advertised by the travel agencies with combined bus and boat travel to Luang Prabang, one of the main cities in Laos, so we figured we might as well book that and take a few days on a slow boat down the Mekong river.

A nice way to spend a few hours

Our friend who we promptly un-friended when we saw he was into cannibalism..the dirty bastard

We left Pai the following day, took a minibus back to Chiang Mai where we changed minibus to take us to Chiang Khong where we stayed overnight. The bus had made a dinner stop at a fancy hotel/restaurant so we figured the accommodation which was included in the price ticket might be a treat, but when we arrived at the guest house at 1am we were greeted with a grubby room with extremely solid beds. We didn’t have much time to enjoy the filth though, as we had to get a few hours sleep before our 7am wake up and 8am departure. From there we were taken to the Thai-Laos border, waited around for a while for us and the rest of the group to sort out our visas and we had arrived in Laos!

Our experience of Myanmar

Better late than never..! We ended up spending 27 days of our 28 day visa within Myanmar. A very interesting country with a very rich history, most of it very much still in the making as policies, governments and public opinions change.

As with India, and every country from now, we had a sit down in an.. Uhm.. Indian restaurant… And thought about what we would and wouldn’t miss about Myanmar.

Together, we decided we would miss:

• Friendly people – From day one it became apparent that tourism was definitely still fairly new in most parts of Myanmar. We arrived in Dawei, driving through small villages and wandering around streets with only one or two western faces to be seen. So few that the locals were very interested to stare and understand exactly what they were looking at. Media coverage has only recently opened up, some children wouldn’t have even realized there were people in the world who looked and sounded different to their own. Only on one occasion with a ‘misunderstanding’ over payment did we meet a person that wasn’t incredibly friendly and welcoming, and very rarely for any money incentives. People who wanted to simply know our background and let us know theirs, monks practicing their English, it was all in all an incredibly welcoming country.
• 3 in 1 coffee – Not exclusive to Myanmar but pretty much the only coffee you can get. We’ve found it in other Asian countries, but certainly not as frequently. Incredibly unhealthy for you, but a cheap, quick caffeine and sugar hit. Tastes like a coffee syrup at first, by the time you’ve had a few of them you’ve forgotten what coffee was supposed to be like and complaining about how they’re just not sweet enough. Probably a good thing we’re going to be cutting back on these really…
  

• Fancy buses – When we heard you get around Myanmar primarily by bus, we imagined what we’d been used to in India and were expecting for Nepal. If you could find a seat you’d be lucky, because you would be standing for 10+ hours. And even if you found a seat, don’t expect to keep it to yourself, a small family and their chicken will come sit on your lap. But this wasn’t the case. Organised, clean, seat allocated coaches, with (fairly) frequent stops, a complimentary cold towel, toothbrush and toothpaste when you do stop off. Blankets, on one occasion pillows, and if we’d paid more some of them even had TV screens for each person. Apart from when they drove past us or didn’t stop for dinner until very early morning, they’re pretty darn good.
• Inclusive breakfasts – Not once did we have a guest house or hotel where breakfast wasn’t included. Whilst it was rarely more than toast, eggs and tea or coffee, some did include pancakes, fruit and all sorts of local dishes such as fried rice and noodles. Likely part of the reason accommodation was so much more expensive, but it made sure we had breakfast, which for me especially doesn’t always happen.
• Shan noodles – One of the only foods in Myanmar we actually enjoyed. To be quite honest, they’re nothing too special, simply noodles in a stock with a few bits of vegetable. But when we were writing our list out, it was one of the best things we’d eaten in our month other than the food cooked for us on our treks, so it made this list. Not bad. Not great, but not bad.
• Mini monks (novices) – Every monastery we visited had a handful of under 20’s running around, generally playing silly buggers and not getting much in the way of Buddhism done. However, it was very interesting to watch, as in our minds monks had always been very disciplined and focused. It was easy to forget that children are children until we saw them flicking each other, running around playing tag and other games, and occasionally bundling another one on the floor.

• Interesting culture – One of the few countries in the world where men wearing skirts and folding their t-shirt up to form a makeshift bra is perfectly acceptable. Chewing betel nut and spitting wherever the mood takes them, piling people into pickup trucks to get good value for money transport and taking the time to learn how foreigners live and act are just a few of the cultural staples Myanmar has impressed upon us.

• Unlimited green tea – If you’re a fan of green tea, or even if you aren’t but can just about tolerate it, you’ll be just fine here, as with every meal (and even if you just order a cup of tea) you’re given an entire jug full of hot green tea. If it runs out, they bring you over another. Morning noon or night, you’ll be able to find refreshment for almost no money in the form of liquid leaves.

And, of course, a few things we won’t be too sad to leave behind:

• Food – Apart from the exceptions mentioned above, most other travelers we’ve spoken to will agree, the food was pretty dismal. It was cheap, we both had a noodle meal for about 30p combined one night, but in general it’s bland chewy meat based meals, swimming in about half a litre of oil. Very few of the meals left any good impression on us, and probably did little for our cholesterol levels either. Enough sustenance to survive, but not a particularly pleasant experience in that regard.
• Slow Wi-Fi – you might think this was just my bugbear but we both got incredibly frustrated with the poor Wi-Fi through-out the country. Granted, it’s better than we thought as we believed we wouldn’t have Wi-Fi the whole month, but if anything perhaps the false promise of Wi-Fi was worse than not actually having it. Every place we stayed had it, but more often than not it wasn’t working, or felt like 56k dial-up speeds. Load one webpage, click a link, go out and get some fairly terrible meal and you might have loaded the page logo by the time you’re back. I believe this will get better though, and we never tried the 3g but that sounded like it was probably a little more impressive. Just enough to let people know you’re alive, but don’t expect to stream any films. Or even load any pictures.
• Crazy money – Our first experience with a currency where it was thousands to one GBP. Naturally this won’t be the most difficult currency to get our head around (although when we went it was around 1700 kyat to £1, which doesn’t really divide into anything very nicely). To add to this, we had to use dollars in a lot of places to get better value, and these were a nightmare. Not because dollars are particularly hard to source, but because of Myanmars EXTREMELY fussy attitude to them. A single mark, crease, heck even a fold in the corner, and they’re treated almost as if you’ve handed them a used wet-wipe instead of legal tender. We had to buy a long rigid purse to keep these in as if they were sheets of wafer thin gold. Any change we received had to be carefully examined for fear of them being rejected in the next hotel. A right faff, and utterly meaningless as once we left the country we could pass on ones that looked like they’d passed through a Labrador without any issue. Weird ruling, but little we could do but go with it.
• Expensive hotels – It seems a lot better when we went than the guide books made out, mostly because we went in the low season, but the hotels were certainly the most expensive we’d been in so far. Cheapest we had for a double room was $14 a night, up to as much as $28 in Yangon. Whilst by no means expensive considering at home I’ve paid £50+ for a Travelodge room, for the area, and especially the quality of some of them, it was a bit of a piss take. However, little we could do about it but sleep in the street, and we’d been advised by guide books and other travellers that we really should book places in advance as there are limited guest houses around. In reality, we never got turned away for a place being full, only by hearing the ridiculous prices they wanted. Very strange, but at least including breakfast somewhat sweetened the deals.
• Mosquitos – Not much to say about this, you all know what bastards mosquitos are. For some reason though in Myanmar these are just about everywhere, I assume due to the jungle habitats and lakes around. Didn’t matter where we were, what sprays and lotions we used, what netting was around the room, we even used a plug in repellent towards the end, but no avail, bites all over the place. My lip turned into a damn ping pong ball.
• Entrance fees for areas – not entrance fees to venues or temples, these were (sort of) understandable (although usually very overpriced for us as foreigners). No, mostly the entrance fee just to an area was a bit much. Turning up at Bagan and being told we couldn’t go anywhere, at 4am, without paying up $40 towards the government we didn’t want to support anyway was a bit much. Luckily only Inle Lake and Bagan had this in place, but it still set us back $60 we would rather have kept in our pockets.

• Pagodas – Plenty more to see around Asia, but unfortunately there were so many in Myanmar that it’ll be hard to hold too much enthusiasm. After a couple of days of photographing just about every gilded building we could see, it soon started to wear thin as every one of them looks indiscernible from the next. Honestly, looking back through my photos I have no idea where each one was located. We weren’t convinced it was the best distribution of wealth, not the first time we’ve thought this whilst seeing the million dollar structures littering cities where people can’t afford to eat.

• Dried fish – Very popular in Myanmar. Every market, and a lot of random street corners when you least expect it, will feature this particularly overpowering musk. Diana isn’t the greatest fan of fish as it is, so this limited our movements a little as we tried to avoid the scents we didn’t particularly want.
• Bus arrival times – As good as the buses were, many of these were scheduled to drive overnight and arrive VERY early in the morning, apparently so the locals don’t lose a working day too often. Whilst this happening once in a while is actually a bonus to us as it saves us looking for accommodation for a night, when it’s happening almost every time we move, it starts to drain on us a little. Arriving at around 9am is nice so we can check in to a hotel and explore, but 3am means we lose our morning trying to catch up on sleep and hoping we won’t be charged another night in the guest house (managed to avoid it so far!).
• Treatment of animals – Honestly this one is going to come up in everywhere in Asia I think. Chickens tied upside down and held in little cages, dogs left in little cages with no water, kicking strays etc. Not nice, not going to be missed, but I think we’ll be seeing this until we reach a more Western culture (Where I'm sure it still happens but hidden away).

As for the places we visited, our favourite was Hsipaw. A fairly untouched town from tourism apart from a few guest houses, it felt the most real of the places we went and the trek we did was amazing, a great tour guide and route, great people, food and locations. Definitely the highlight for us, even if trekking 11 hours in two days did give me some incredibly weak legs for a few days.

On the other hand, our least favourite was Bagan. Although the area was quite nice with all the ruined temples and open layout, it felt incredibly geared for tourists and it gets to a point where all the temples look the same. Add to this a $20 charge each just to get in for up to 3 days maximum and a premium in some of the tea houses because we’re tourists, and we just generally weren’t as excited about it all as we could have been. We spent two days here, it was definitely enough!

Things we took away from Myanmar:

• Guide books are exactly that – guides. We did a lot of research before deciding to go and almost decided not to the day before going to the embassy believing it would be too difficult. We were told there are no ATMs, difficult transport links, impossible to stay anywhere and if we did it would cost maybe $60 a night in some places, no internet and SIM cards costing £20+. Reality was almost exactly the opposite, to the point we disregarded the guide books since. It was a very easy and rewarding country to travel compared to what we were lead to believe, which was a relief. A pinch of salt with all recommendations from now on…!
• Planning every single aspect isn’t good, but a little preparation came in handy. Having clean crisp dollars arranged beforehand whilst we were in Thailand made everything a lot simpler, probably the only good advice we had before we arrived. We would have been pretty stuffed had we turned up with any old US dollars, they really were very fussy!
• Travelling in the low season paid dividends. Everything we wanted to do was fine, nowhere was fully booked, everything had capacity and everyone generally seemed very happy to see us, likely because there were far less customers around at the time of year. It all felt a lot more personal than we imagine the high season would be, where it would be more of a factory getting the most tourists through an attraction as fast as possible. Maybe, maybe not, but we found the low season rewarding.
• Treks give a good insight into the true country. Getting off the beaten track was very revealing of how real life is for little villages, not just the huge cities and tourist trap towns. I’d never been on an arranged trek/tour before, and was dubious about it, but once you get over the severe aches it’s a great way to see something real.
• Our food standards have changed a lot, whilst we used to have meat with almost every meal, we’ve come to appreciate good vegetarian food, partly due to our time back in Sadhana Forest, and party due to the meals in Myanmar being so terrible it made us wonder why an animal lost its life for it. Whilst we haven’t cut meat completely, it’s certainly reduced from how we were.
• We’ve come to appreciate when we get what we believe it a truly fair service. Whilst we’re not quite as budget travelers as some as we had a good run up to our trip to save with two incomes, we are trying to get good value for our money. This works both ways though, and we are happy to pay more when we find people who surpass our expectations.

So that’s Myanmar. A positive experience all in all, we’d certainly recommend people to go if you get a chance, and July time when we went seemed a good balance of not too busy and not too terrible weather.

Bye bye Myanmar!

Inle Lake

Little bit of boat acrobatics gets you around much quicker

We arrived at Nyaung Shwe at some hideous time between 4.30am after another very poor and achey sleep on a bus. This is the closest town to Inle Lake, with a river leading directly to it. We hopped off, with a hotel name in mind but not being able to find any information about it. We asked the taxi driver who didn’t know about it, so he said he’d take us to one he knew about and we could judge for ourselves if we wanted to stay there.

The taxi (rather, three wheeler with a trailer on the back with long bench seats) quickly filled up with other visitors to Inle, all going to the same hotel. Before we set off however, a man came around to collect the $10 entrance fee to Inle Lake from each of us. This came as a surprise to some people, but luckily we’d been warned about it by other people on the way so, albeit begrudgingly, we handed it over. We were soon on our way, and taken to a hotel with the modest name of ‘Lady Princess Hotel’. Everyone piled out to go check if the living accommodation was up to scratch and what it would cost, and I held back to keep an eye on the bags. After a few moments, Diana came up with a thumbs up, so in we went.

The room was nothing particularly special, a twin room with TV, fan, private bathroom and pretty clean. Oh, and the doors were coated in a thick layer of coconut oil. Infact, not just the doors, but some of the floor also. Not usual. We headed to bed to catch up on the sleep we hadn’t been able to achieve on the bus.

We got up just after 10am and headed out to search for breakfast, as the coach hadn’t stopped anywhere for dinner we were both pretty hungry by now. After just about getting our bearings and working out how we’d find our hotel again, we managed to find a simple place selling vegetable dishes with rice and other condiments. Not our usual choice for breakfast, but beggars can’t be choosers. After, we spotted a place renting out bikes for 1000kyat per day, about 58p. Bargain! We got our bikes (working gears, working brakes! Incredible!), hunted down an ATM and headed back to the hotel, as I by this point had a lot of washing to do and no proper facility to dry it and wanted to get it sorted as soon as possible.

Parking our bikes outside, we go in and I gathered up everything laundry related, and used the cripplingly slow Wi-Fi to download a map of the local area. Within hours we had all of this, and headed outside to start our days proceedings. However, upon trying to get onto my bike, I found that the area where it had once been was now completely vacant. Assuming my bike hadn’t been fitted with an anti-theft invisibility cloak, I came to the conclusion it had actually been taken. Asking at reception, they believed there had been a mix up and someone had taken the bike I’d rented instead. They offered one of the hotel bikes for me to use instead until they returned. Hoping this was just a simple mix up, as we didn’t want to have to pay for a lost bike, I hopped upon the replacement. The front brake didn’t exist and it had a single working gear. This was not an upgrade, but at least it was tangible. We dropped off the washing and headed to the local market.

The market was in full swing by the time we got there. Almost impossible to get in, as the only entrance was a narrow passage wide enough to fit two people side by side, and with a few hundred trying to cram themselves through, we had to fight for our right to party. Once inside, it was honestly a lot like every other market we’d been to. Greeted by a huge selection of fruits and vegetables (of which Diana managed to procure 2 bananas after some deliberation – they insisted we should be buying an entire bunch of around 15 of them), we also found sections selling clothing, biscuits, meat and fish. These last two sections were certainly enough to put you off eating meat, as the smell was incredibly overpowering. Eventually, after Diana had eyed up every piece of green clothing, we headed out and explored further.

We tried to work out our plan for the rest of the week. We were under the impression it was almost illegal to be a foreigner and not do a boat trip, and we’d enjoyed the previous trek so much we were considering doing another one here. Diana had spotted a shop dealing with silverware and wanted to get her bracelet cleaned and as we went in I spotted a sign saying they organized treks here. Whilst Diana was talking about her bracelet, I asked about the trekking options in the area.

We had a choice of a 1, 2 or 3 day trek. The one day option was to visit a nearby mountain village and return; the two day option was to visit the same village but continue on, sleep at a monastery and then return a different way through other villages; the three day option was to trek to another town called Kalaw. After considering the options, and knowing we only had a few more days on our visa, we worked out we could potentially do the 1 or 2 day trek, but the 3 day option wouldn’t be viable without overstaying our visa. We confirmed the pricing of each and decided we’d do the boat trip the next day as I needed to collect my laundry and had nothing to wear on the trek (the shame, I can’t be seen looking scruffy in these villages!). We booked it, Diana got her shiny bracelet back, and we went down to the river to organize a boat trip.

We arrived at the river and immediately a woman took our attention offering a boat for the next morning. She told us the price, we told her the price we’d pay and it was settled. We needed to be there for around 7.30 to 8am the next day.

We headed back to the hotel, hoping that my bike would have magically reappeared. It hadn’t. We figured we would want the bikes for the next day anyway, so we sorted some stuff out in the room and headed back out to get dinner and pay for the next day. As I waited for Diana to get her stuff ready and I’d got my bike into position to set off, a guy was just pulling up into the hotel. I looked over, recognizing the company name branded onto the rear mudguard of the bike. My bike!

As the guy got off and made his way into the hotel, I, James Bond style, pulled the hotel bike up alongside it in a flash. Almost picking up my bike and giving it a quick kiss on the handlebars (reunited at last!), I rode off into the sunset, enjoying a full range of gears, before the thieving bastard could even take a look back and notice anything had happened. A good old switcheroo, and I’d be long gone before he even noticed.

Feeling relieved I wouldn’t be made to buy a new bike, we headed out for dinner. A family run restaurant, where you choose a main and are given a vast array of other foods alongside it. Ordering two dishes with a mango juice and banana juice (which was just watery banana – The dirty, evil, banana diluting bastards) we received a very tasty pumpkin soup, a vegetable curry with rice, various raw veg and other, miscellaneous things including deep fried tiny fish, much to Diana’s delight. After, we headed down to pay for another day on the bikes, showing off that we still had both of the originals as if this had ever been a concern of the guy we rented from and headed back for an early night, ready for our morning boat trip.

The following morning went smoothly enough. Breakfast consisted of tea, eggs, toast, jam and red bananas.  We hopped on our bikes (this time, we used the locks provided which we never really had a need for before, and the one time I tried to use it before I almost couldn’t get it off again) and cycled back up to the river. On the way, a man trying to get my attention for a boat tour literally started running after me at break neck speed – it was all I could do to keep ahead of him. We arrived at the dock and hop on a boat the same lady ushered us toward.

Boating - a popular pastime for monks

The boats were simple long boats with an incredibly noisy engine at the back, and two arm chairs with cushions in the middle. Fairly comfortable, actually. It took a fair amount of time going down the river before we actually made it to the lake itself, a huge expanse of water with floating islands and buildings along it where people lived and worked.

Our first stop was to look at one of these floating islands, and observe people nearby their homes fishing and going about their day to day lives. We carried on to a weaving place where they made various clothing and fabrics from lotus plants, an interesting procedure where snapping the plant produces long threads they can pull out and twist together for strength. They also made items from silk, and, as we soon realized this tour would consist primarily of, showed us their showroom full of various expensive clothing and bedding.

The lotus plant fibres used to make material

Uninterested in buying anything, we head back to our boat. The next stop they created items from wood, various small trinkets and souvenirs up to huge boats costing $2500. Inside they had a workshop where they showed how the made the local cigars, a huge leaf filled with tobacco and various other things, including honey, sugar, bananas, aniseed and differing fruits. Again, we refused to buy any cigars (They wanted a fortune for them anyway, $6 for 10. The market sold ones for under $1 for 70!) or wooden equipment, not even a boat, and on we went to the next stop, a pagoda.

As interesting as it was to pull up to a pagoda on a boat, we were both incredibly pagoda’d out by now, as there had been a pagoda every few steps in every town we’d been in. We had a nose around, but didn’t visit inside as there was a charge for cameras and we couldn’t imagine it could be much more impressive than all of the others we’d seen. Back to the boat.

Didn't fancy messing with this particular badman

The next place was a silverware shop. Now, whilst this may all be very interesting to a lot of tourists, these were tours we’d been on in various differing forms in many other places. The typical format of showing us how things are made and then trying to get us to buy overpriced wares was wearing thin, and we had no intention of buying anything. Silverware was no real difference, especially when Diana did enquire the price of a necklace and it was $150, way over the budget of around $2 we usually spend on her various accessories. We bid them good day, and were asked by our boatman where we wanted to go next. Typically the next part of their tour was to see the ‘long necked’ women, however Diana had been reading that this was something that should be avoided as it’s turned into a bit of a human zoo and propagates the fashion being passed onto children. We gave this a miss, as well as the option of lunch as we figured the restaurants on a lake would be a bit pricier than we’re used to, and headed straight for a monastery, to return back to shore after.

The entrance to the monastery was exactly what we expected a feared, many rows of shops aimed at selling souvenirs to tourists again. Brushing past all of these, we headed into the monastery (previously known as the Jumping Cat monastery as the monks trained the cats to jump through hoops, however, we later found out this led to people forgetting it’s actual purpose as a place for Buddhism and the act stopped). A fairly standard monastery really, however the cats and kittens were very cute and being able to overlook the river was a novelty we hadn’t experienced until now.

From here, we were taken back to shore. Honestly, we felt we could have not done it, Diana wasn’t feeling great for most of it anyway and we were in the sun most of the time. Being on the lake was nice, but it was no different from any other village/manufacturing tour we’d done, including the BUY BUY BUY parts at the end we don’t enjoy, and it wasn’t as if the pricing was considerably better buying from source anyway. The rest of the day was spent mostly relaxing as we’d both picked up a bit too much sun, and we also headed out to buy our ticket back to the border, or actually Mawlamyine again as this was the closest point. We managed to find one company with a direct (18 hour) bus there, and snapped up a seat whilst we could.

The following morning, all packed up ready for our trek, we headed into the breakfast room and sat down. We were asked the usual questions, tea or coffee (tea from both of us) and how we’d like our eggs. After a few moments, our eggs come through, 4 slices of toast and some jam and butter. A distinct lack of tea though. We’d almost finished our eggs when a different lady came over, asking if we’d like more tea. Not wanting to try and explain we hadn’t had any tea yet, we just said yes and off she went. Enough time had passed that we’d pretty much finished everything, the original lady came back. “More tea? More toast?” she enquired. Well, by now we were so full of tea we had difficulty accepting, but once again we accept an offer of ‘more tea’. Away she went, with an air of mystery as to whether we’d actually receive any beverages today. Fortunately, they granted us our first cup of tea, although in their eyes we were probably drinking them out of house and home.

At pretty much 8am on the dot, our tour guide appears in the doorway, his face beaming. Within moments, we were off down the road, he introduced himself as “Shanghai” and pointed in the distance towards a mountain we’d be heading towards. We quickly realized it would just be the two of us on the trek, which was fine but we’d hoped there would be others to talk with. A few roads down, being my ever observant self, I spotted that Shanghai had a tiny backpack and was wearing a pair of flip-flops, whilst Diana and I had somewhat sturdier footwear. He said he was used to them so it was fine, unless it rained. Seeing as this was the same man who recommended we brought raincoats with us, this seemed an unusual choice. Still, onwards and upwards.

We found out some of his background and some information on the town. He used to live on Inle Lake, however due to operating tours for the last year had moved to Nyaung Shwe. He had also attempted to become a monk novice when he was younger, but found it too hard as, among other things, they didn’t get to eat dinner. I could understand his concerns.

Our first stop was a meditation cave. We arrived outside and there was only one man here, a monk sat in the entrance with some torches. We took one and headed in. It was incredibly quiet, with lots of Buddha shrines in various nooks and crannies, apparently fairly recently donated. I can only assume a lot of the insect world are devout Buddhists, as a lot of them seemed to be down here meditating away. Perhaps they were hoping to reborn as humans in their next life.

From here, it was straight up some few hundred metres. We ploughed on, practically dying halfway up. Our guide told us to go in front to set the pace. What actually ended up happening seemed to be us giving the poor guy a bit of a workout, we had to keep stopping to let him catch up. With around an hour to go to our lunch stop, the heavens opened, although somewhat sporadically with bursts of a few seconds some times. This didn’t do well for our progress, as it seems he was absolutely correct and his choice of footwear wasn’t ideal for the now slippery terrain. Impressively though, we made it, and arrived at a village consisting of a few wooden huts.

Heading upstairs of one of the huts, we now found out what our tour guides backpack consisted of. Where we’d assumed it would be similar to our stuff, along the lines of a set of clothes for the next day, water, a jumper if it got cold etc. Nope, his entire bag consisted of fruit, vegetables and noodles. Turns out, unlike our tour in Hsipaw where the villages prepared food for us when we arrived, our guide was also our chef.

Something I still can’t quite get over is the way they handle cooking in these villages. We are sitting upstairs in a wooden hut, and we’re boiling water in a metal pot over an open fire. Not sure this would pass health and safety regulations back home, but it seemed to be getting the job done as we were prepared a jug of green tea, as it customary with almost every meal we’ve had now. The food was very nice, unlike most Burmese food it was vegetarian and almost void of oil, which was nice, with a fruit as a side. The sharpest plum and sweetest mangoes we’ve ever had.

Let there be tea!

We finished our meals and spent a few minutes relaxing, when another couple of people appeared in the doorway. It seemed they were doing the same tour with a different guide and must have gone a slightly different route as they hadn’t been to the cave that we had. They were both Danish, although the girl had Vietnamese parents so didn’t look western herself. Their guide also came in and went to the kitchen area to prepare meals for them whilst we chatted. They told us he had been extremely good and knowledgeable about the area and nature around, and came recommended to them by people they’d met in Hsipaw.

Once everyone had finished their meals, our guides popped their heads through and said we were all going to be staying at the same place so we would walk together and leave in about 45 minutes, as the rain had stopped but they wanted to wait until the ground was a bit drier. Fine with us, but the Danish guy and girl decided they’d go for a walk around the area for a while as they’d wanted to leave sooner. Some half an hour or so later, they came back so we all got ready to leave, when they approached their guide and asked if they could walk a bit longer today (we were only another hour away from where we’d be staying the night). The guide looked a little puzzled and said they wouldn’t be staying at the monastery if that was the case, and the guy said that wasn’t a problem. And then it all went a little bit mad.

We believe the guides had been drinking some rice wine, so that may go some way to explain, but their guide suddenly started shouting at them. Exactly what point he was trying to make we’re not quite sure, but we can only assume he really didn’t want to walk another 3 hours. Accusing them of not trusting him, telling them he liked tourism but hated tourists, repeating over and over again that they need to realise he has a family. Our guide suddenly started showing us all sorts of leaves and fruits we’d already walked past on the way here, but whether it was a diversion tactic or to try and make himself look good whilst an argument was ensuing, I’m not sure.

We walk a bit further as a group, all the while the odd sentence of anger being thrown around. The Danish guy explained that they were fine just walking the one hour to where we were going, it wasn’t a problem, but the guide was still incessantly shouting about how much he hated tourists and couldn’t trust them. Our guide was now informing us to be careful of the cows we were next to, as they were racist.

Also training us in the useful skill of turning thin leaves into projectiles

The other group came to a complete stop, as the guy was now saying he didn’t want to trek any further as it felt far too uncomfortable even if they were going the way originally planned. At this point, our guide ushered us to the path onward, and so with just a few fleeting glances, we continued on, unsure what fate would befall on that situation.

The rest of the journey to the monastery was again mostly uphill. Our guide showed us how we could turn various plants into projectiles, how some leaves had an almost Velcro like effect to them when placed on clothing, and how you could make a large bang noise by placing a leaf on the opening in your fist, all more than we were expecting from a 5 hour walk. We passed through a village, however nobody seemed to be there as they were all apparently in Nyaung Shwe at a festival. Further up, we passed a school where we were allowed to look in. All the youngest children were incredibly distracted by us, gathering round and incredibly excited to have their photos taken, physically pushing each other out of the way to be in the shot and see the results.

We made it to the monastery. In the middle of absolutely nowhere, incredibly peaceful aside from the novice monks running around and playing some form of ‘tag’. Our guide set up our beds and headed off to go make dinner. Enjoying the fact we weren’t having to move anywhere for a while, we relaxed and took it all in. Diana was worrying about the group we’d left behind, although there wasn’t a lot we could have done and our guide was incredibly keen to get us out of the situation anyway.

Some 30 minutes passed, when we heard some footsteps and the group from before appeared. Naturally, we wanted to know what had happened, but they refused to say anything whilst their guide was around. Fortunately, he went off to help make dinner soon after, and we managed to find out the gossip in private. It seems they’d spent almost an entire hour being told how much tourists were dishonest and dangerous. They’d been told not to talk to us when they arrived, and the guy was worried someone would report him as threats to tourists is regarded a very serious crime in Myanmar and would put you in prison for 7 years. The guy was some sort of psychopath – apparently on the way they all saw a king cobra, and his immediate reaction was to try and kill it with his cigar. They seemed genuinely terrified from some of his behavior, and we could see why, he reminded me of the crazy eyes guy from The New Guy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q6KjdrNn4A). Apparently he’d been picking mushrooms as they’d been going along, putting them in his bag for god only knows what reason.

One type of a number of unidentified mushrooms collected en route

Dinner time. We head into one of the buildings near the monastery, the only source of light a single, solitary candle on a little table. We all gather around it, as the guides bring dish after dish through to us. Our guide, who had a good grasp of English but clearly not every version of every word, informed us that the tomato salad had been made from ‘tomatoes from his daddies garden’, a phrase we’d never heard a 23 year old man say before now. Crazy eyes had definitely had a few more drinks now, he was swaying and giggling to himself every so often. Now, things get even weirder, as they didn’t just serve our food, but proceeded to sit over our shoulders as we ate it. Crazy eyes kept spurting out odd comments, like ‘it makes us happy when you eat’, ‘I hate it when there is food left over’ and, the clincher as far as I was concerned ‘eat up, it’s not poisoned’. A man who spent an hour and a half of the day preaching how much he hated tourists, collecting various fungi on the way, and then making sure we eat all our dinner and reliably informing us it wasn’t poisoned? Hmmm.

The entertainment wasn’t quite over yet however, as his attention was now drawn to the naked flame of the candle. Holding his hand over it, and looking me square in the eye and informing me it wasn’t magic, no dynamo stunt. How he’d even heard of a magician from Yorkshire before I’ll never know. He then proceeded to put his fingers around the flame and tell us how funny it was, how no matter who you are or where you’re from, or what age you are, it’s always funny when someone puts their hand around a flame. And then he made the most childish giggle ever, we all proceeded to crack up. Which only encouraged him to do it again and giggle even more. Eventually we’ve all got no idea what we’re even laughing at, whilst a terrifying man toddler is giggling and playing with a flame.

But soon enough it all turns serious again, as the topic of meditation comes up. He starts telling us (and to be honest, I think this was just an excuse to carry on playing with the candle) that the candle is like a person. The candle itself the body, the flame the soul. And then proceeded to hold each of his hands in the flame for a while, proving that it didn’t hurt or something, because it was only his body and pain is in the mind. Eventually he pissed about with the candle enough that he accidentally put it out, and we were sat in the pitch black with a mad man. The other guide went and relit it, I’m not sure if he was as scared as we were but it was just an invitation for the nut job to play around with it again.

Eventually he’s decided to call it a day at only second degree burns, and we head to bed. Not quite finished here though, he decided to hold a meditation session with Diana and the Danes. I would have joined in, but sod that, I focused on trying to get to sleep whilst they all sat in front of Buddha in what I understand was an incredibly uncomfortable position. We got a fairly early night, around 8.30pm, which unfortunately was not as uneventful as it could have been. Mosquito protection was almost entirely nothing save for the blankets we were under, which left my face incredibly vulnerable. I believe I must have caused an uncontrollable lust in one particular mosquito, as it decided to take me by the lips, causing the most swollen lip I think I’ve ever had in the middle of a night in a monastery. I woke Diana up, for reasons I’m not sure of, in case she happened to be an expert in insect bites all of a sudden, and we spent about 30 minutes trying to work out if it was getting bigger, smaller or indifferent. After a while of it not changing in size, I did my best to get back to sleep with what felt like a new potato attached to my face, which wasn’t the most comfortable feeling in the world.

Not a great look, really

By morning, it had reduced enough that, had I not taken a picture, nobody would have really believed me. We were awoken in the gentlest possible way – a gaggle of monk novices ran in and started shouting out Buddhist rituals at full volume. At least, some of them were, some couldn’t read their notes so Diana handed them one of our head torches so they could read it. The rest of the ones who weren’t participating were pretty much playing British Bulldog, flicking each other, or just generally misbehaving. Still, it was physically impossible to sleep through, so we got up. About an hour later, breakfast was ready, which was an impressive selection of fruit, toast, eggs, biscuits and cake (for breakfast!), along with our favourite 3 in 1 coffee. Where it came from though is an absolute mystery, as the guides’ backpacks only seemed big enough for lunch the day before, let alone dinner and breakfast. Perhaps as well as being generally terrifying, the other guide also happened to be Mary Poppins.

WAKEY WAKEY

After breakfast, we decided to travel back as one group. This time, everyone seemed to get along much better, our guide and crazy were chatting and the rest of us were getting our way around just fine. Passing through some more villages, we eventually found one to stop at for lunch. Our guide told us that they can’t handle the sort of foods we eat for breakfast, strangely, they will only usually eat rice based dishes, which as a Westerner is a very confusing idea. However, as the monasteries receive food from the nearby villagers, this can cause some issues if there is none left over, and today they’d only received food from one family, which resulted in a lot of hungry novices and our guides. We ended up having a good Shan noodle soup, and we tried some of the local rice wine, which tasted similar to a flat, slightly less sweet Smirnoff Ice, and with a hint of a powdery taste to it. Not entirely unpleasant, and didn’t taste too alcoholic although I’m sure it was. We headed back towards the town, deciding we all just wanted to get back now rather than visiting the French winery in the area as that didn’t seem particularly authentic to Myanmar anyway.

We finally arrived back at our hotel and had one more job to do, our final Rabies injections. Whilst we did manage to get these done, I’ll save the details for the separate blog post as this ones already quite wordy, but we successfully managed to negotiate a full course of Rabies shots. Hoorah!

We didn’t do a lot more with the rest of the day. We organised for a taxi to come collect us the following morning as we needed to get our bus back to Mawlamyine at 11am. We were told the bus stop was an hour away, so we agreed to what sounded like a fair price, and were told they’d collect us at 9am the next day, leaving time for us to have breakfast and head straight off. We got dinner and a nice early night, incredibly weary after such a long couple of days walking, a much deserved sleep.

The following morning, breakfast was a little less interesting and went without a hitch. We actually received all the tea we requested, a triumphant success. And just before 9am, our taxi driver arrived, although with a little more questioning we found out the journey was actually under 30 minutes. This made us feel a little cheated for the price we’d been quoted, so hand a short standoff where we tried to get the price down, which we eventually did. It also posed the issue of us being there an hour and a half early, but we were used to hanging around.

We arrived at the bus stop, showed our ticket and, satisfied we were at the right place, took a seat. We’d were told the bus wouldn’t arrive until 11:30, half an hour later, so we had a good two hours hanging around. Other than someone coming off their bike right outside where we were sat, due to slamming their brakes on to stop in time for a yellow light (it’s illegal to go through a yellow light here, and if you do, you need to be back before the line before it’s red, you can’t just carry on over). As there was a police checkpoint right here, they clearly panicked and off they came. Luckily they didn’t seem to get a fine to go with their scuffs, so no literal insult to injury there. Eventually, 11:30 came, but no bus. Then 11:45. Then 12. Then the bus.

Unfortunately, the bus driver failed to understand the concept of a bus. At least the ones we’d got before involved waiting at the bus stop with your valid ticket, the bus stops, we get on the bus, sit there for a few hours whilst the bus moves around and get off where we want. This bus drive skipped the entire ‘bus stopping’ stage, and we watched with futility as it disappeared off into the distance. Turning back to the guy who looked at our ticket, he got making calls and told us it would turn around. So we waited, again.

The bus never did turn around. Eventually after about 20 minutes, we were ushered into a tuktuk, where we were driven at break-neck speeds (except he also stopped to pick up a couple of ladies who didn’t seem to understand our urgency) to where the bus had pulled over on the side of the road to wait for us. Eventually, we were reunited with our bus, and received apologies from all the staff who it would seem forgot their main purpose for the vehicle in the first place.

The journey after this point was fairly uneventful. Unfortunately, Diana at this point started feeling feverish and headachey, which we later realised was the onset of Dengue. Also, we had no idea if we would be stopping for dinner, as the bus stopped at Naypitaw for about an hour at 6pm but we weren’t informed it was a food stop, and anyhow, it seemed to only be bus stations around here. Overhearing us asking if we’d be stopping for food anytime soon, a lady in front of us handed us an entire cake, which, when we eventually stopped at around 10-11pm, we replaced with a like for like cake in one of the shops.

We arrived in Mawlamyine at around 5:30am. Unsure how we got to the border town of Myawaddy, with a suspicion we were at the wrong bus station and running low on Kyat at this point as we were being stubborn and not going to withdraw anymore, we jumped off the bus and were greeted by the usual rickshaw drivers, asking where we wanted to go. We said Myawaddy, and luckily there was a driver planning to go there that day, so we didn’t have to worry about transferring to another place and had enough Kyat and a little extra. We hopped in the taxi, and after collecting a couple and their baby, we set off for a 6 hour drive. One thing I never quite got used to was how the road system worked. As everyone drives on the right, and most of the cars are still right hand drive from when people drove on the left, there was a slightly different system in place for people indicators. Nobody indicated when turning, no, it was actually used as an overtaking indication. If the person in front of you indicates left, it’s safe for you to pull out to the other side of the road to judge if you want to overtake or not. If they indicate right, there’s something coming. For a continent where indicators are very dubiously used anyway, this seemed like a lot of trust in another driver to me.

But, after 6 hours of Diana playing peek-a-boo with a baby, traffic jams, watching a mob of people attacking a van because the driver had done something they weren’t too keen on, flooded roads and very numb backsides, we arrived in the town of Myawaddy, right next to the ‘friendship bridge’ between Myanmar and Thailand’s Mae Sot. After getting our passports checked out, we spent the last of our Kyat on lunch, hair conditioner and a large multipack of 3 in 1’s for the rest of our trip (very addictive things!) we took the 5 minute walk back into Thailand.