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.