Bagan, Mandalay and Pyin Oo Lwin

Bagan is an ancient city which is famous for its pagodas and payas- apparently there are 4,000 pagodas and payas in the city and it is a popular place for tourists to visit in Myanmar. Even though we had already seen quite a few pagodas, we thought we would give the place a try.

As we stepped off the bus in Bagan at 4.30am, bleary eyed and with no hotel reservation, we were met by a small crowd of taxi drivers, all offering us a ride. One of them said ‘my taxi- 10,000 kyat’ and then another said ‘mine is 8,000’. Naturally I went with the cheaper option, the guy walked us around a corner and we found ourselves face to face with a horse (Jonno apparently heard the guy saying it was a horse but at 4.30am who knows which one of us was more alert). We had our bags bundled into the cart behind it, slotted ourselves in between the bags and started the 40 minute journey to an area of Bagan we had heard had the best priced accommodation- Nyaung-Oo. On the journey we passed monks walking down the streets with bowls, on their way to get a donation for breakfast from the locals. Half way through our journey we stopped at a checkpoint and the driver turned around to us and said “$40 entrance fee” which we were not expecting but at that point we had no choice but to pay. The driver then took us to a guest house and thankfully let us check in without charging us extra, so we could catch up on some missed sleep.

Jonno took a picture of the sight he woke up to....gotta practice somewhere!

After a few hour’s rest, we rented some bicycles from next to the hotel and went off to explore the area and some of the many temples. Many of them were ruins, which we had not seen much of before as most we had visited were modern and regularly maintained, gleaming with gold and white paint. Some of them were closed off inside, so could only be seen from the outside, others you could walk around and some it was possible to climb up to the top and see some beautiful views. One of them which was fairly modern was surrounded by large Myanmar ladies with their market stalls, one of whom cornered me and another got Jonno. They showed us the way to the pagoda and said we should come back to see their shops after. Just in case we might happen to forget which one their shop was, when we returned we found our shoes had been moved and were strategically placed next to the stalls. Another woman from the same pagoda who had two of the worst teeth I have ever seen, and the two were her full set, offered to show us the way to the ‘lucky dragon statue’. The statue basically looked like a tall thin rock that had been adorned with some fabric and given offerings of coconuts and drinks. Then the woman started telling us to give some ‘lucky money’ to have a lucky future. We weren’t convinced, as we figured if it had worked then the woman should have had more luck with her teeth. There were stalls with souvenirs at most of the pagodas, and we did get lured into buying some tourist rubbish that we regretted afterwards. After a few hours of seeing pagodas and nowhere near the target of 4,000, we decided it was time to call it a day and cycled back, the last part of the journey being dark and we had no lights on our bike which was slightly terrifying.

View from the top of one of the temples

What is this? A temple for ants?

The next day we got on our bicycles again for some more temple exploring. We had heard that there was a good cycle path to some nice temples, so we started along that. What hadn’t been mentioned was that the path was entirely loose sand, which did not make for easy riding, especially with smooth road tyres. Along the path we also stumbled across a small village of wooden huts and a café, so we stopped for a drink. The woman serving us offered to show us around her village which we agreed to. As she started explaining about the village a car pulled up and some other tourists got out for a tour too, obviously this was not an undiscovered place. The village lady showed us the cotton weaving (with a whole table of souvenirs and clothes), the equipment and tools they use to make peanut oil from the peanuts they grow, the ox and cart that they use for the fields and the kitchens and living areas.

The area for melting down metal in the village

After the unexpected tour, we carried on down the path and saw about a thousand more pagodas. Once we had got bored of pagodas, we found a small market area and wandered around there for a while. Jonno, in his research, had discovered that there was a restaurant named after a popular upmarket English chain, and decided it was worth a visit for some western food (noodle soup was getting quite boring).

Going for a cheeky Spoons

The highlight of Jonno's day

The following day we had booked a bus to Mandalay, and even though it was definitely not travelling like the locals as the minivan was filled with westerners, it was very convenient as we were collected from our hotel and taken to our hotel in Mandalay. The hotel we had been recommended in Mandalay was called ET Hotel, and even though sadly there were no small waddling aliens with long fingers about, it was a pretty nice hotel.

Before we could explore the beauties of Mandalay, a place made famous by the Rudyard Kipling poem, we both required some medical attention. Jonno was in need of his next rabies vaccine, and the pain in my jaw hadn’t gone so a dentist was in order. So off we went in search for another hospital, a familiar routine now, and found one not too far away. As we learnt from previous experiences, we went straight to the A&E department which was more of a hut, and the receptionist (who we hoped was also a trained medical professional of some kind) gave him the shot straight away. As this was being done, there was a stray dog wandering in and out of the building, as if to remind us why we were there.

After the successful and easy rabies shot, we prepared ourselves for a struggle to find a dentist but after asking the person who stabbed Jonno with the needle, he pointed to the building next door and sure enough this was a dentists. We went up to reception and again there was no waiting, they took me straight to a dental chair and I was seen straight away. They recommended I get a dental x-ray, which they did not have there but there was a place a few streets away, and I should return to them the following morning with the x-ray. The x-ray place was not so easy to find but by process of elimination we figured out which building it was, and it only cost about 3 pounds.

Look at those beauties

After our successful medical outing, it was late afternoon and we had heard that there is a temple on top of the only hill in Mandalay with some beautiful sunset views. So we decided to take a walk there.

The walk was a lot longer than we expected, and it took us an hour and a half to reach the bottom of the hill. From there it was a long climb up to the top- I counted 971 steps. Each time we reached a flat area there was always another set of steps hiding around the corner. We finally reached the top just as the sun was beginning to set, and we were treated to some amazing views, a treat for Jonno’s camera too.

Stunning views

 While we were watching the sun set over the city, a group of monks came over to us and asked if they could practice their English with us. We agreed, and had some interesting conversations about their lifestyle and routine and what they knew of England, which actually turned out to be more than us. One of the monks told us it was the Queen’s birthday which we had no idea about.

The lighting around the temples makes it seem like a disneyland attraction

After our lengthy monk conversation, we made our way down the many steps in the hope we could find a taxi at the bottom to take us to the hotel- we had done a fair amount of walking that day. However, we reached the bottom and there were no taxis in sight, so we decided to start walking towards the hotel and hail a taxi on the way. This was easier said than done- we had passed many taxis on the way there who had all disappeared. After about 3km down the road a motorbike taxi stopped, and we balanced ourselves on the back. As we were riding along, we passed a crowd on the other side of the road and the driver told us that it was a road accident- there was a lot of accidents on these roads. When I asked if they were usually serious and did people die, he said yes and started laughing. After this comforting information, I was quite relieved when we reached the hotel.

The next day we rented bicycles from the hotel, as Jonno had a cycle tour route on his guidebook app. Firstly though, we had to pay a visit to the dentist to see how many teeth I needed extracting and if I would emerge looking like the lady with the ‘lucky dragon’ statue in Bagan. We got on the bikes we were given, started to cycle down the road and got to the first turning when I felt a jolt and a huge bang noise- my tyre had burst. Luckily it only took 5 minutes to walk back to the hotel and get a different bike before starting out again. We reached the hospital and there was a huge line of people waiting, but I got westerner privileges again and somehow went straight to the dentist’s chair. They told me there was no evidence of any damage, but it may be an infection so to take some antibiotics and go back to a dentist if the problem was still there. They then handed me a pile of small bags filled with unmarked pills, and told me there was no charge. We definitely can’t complain about our Myanmar healthcare experiences!

Loadsa drugs

We left the hospital and started on our cycle tour of the city. It took us to a church, a few pagodas, some smaller residential roads with a jaggery factory and alongside the river, where a local man asked us where the next place we were visiting would be and told us where to get the transport from.

One of the churches on the route

Women washing their clothes by the river

The cycle tour didn’t take us very long though and we had most of an afternoon left. We managed to find a huge marketplace to get lost in, with areas full of clothes, fresh foods and religious items including monks clothes. We then stopped for a typical Myanmar extended tea break at one of the street stalls, where the lady running the shop bought me some flowers for my hair.

The appetising sight of dried fish in the market

A sweet gift from the lady at the tea stall

We found an Indian restaurant for dinner which served unlimited style thalis, and on the way back to the hotel we passed an ice cream parlour, and decided to treat ourselves. Jonno ordered chocolate ice cream with cream, and I ordered strawberry. However, Jonno’s cream turned out to be some kind of cottage cheese texture, so I offered to swap so he could have my strawberry one. After about half way, he started to have a puzzled look on his face and said to me ‘I think this ice cream has a bit of an onion taste to it’. I tasted some, and sure enough it had a strange oniony taste. After a few more mouthfuls, the onion taste got stronger and was unbearable, I have no idea what they had done to it but it was awful. I got one of the waiter’s attention, and did my best to explain that the ice cream tasted of onion to somebody who didn’t speak any English (Jonno managed to use the translation bit on his phone to find the word onion), and that the waiter should try it to see what I meant, but he shook his head and let us only pay for the chocolate and cottage cheese one.

The next day we wanted to travel to a place called Pyin Oo Lwin, a place in the hills which was only a two hour drive away from Mandalay. We were told there were regular shared pickup trucks which we could get, and we managed to find the area they left from. There were six other people in the pickup with us, including a local couple and the wife’s sister who were going on a short holiday. Jonno and the driver seemed to have a bit of banter going on, and the guy accompanying the driver managed to forget the footstool and had to run back for it, and drop his phone off the back of the truck and had to run back for that too. After a couple of hours with a few stops we arrived in Pyin Oo Lwin.

Pyin Oo Lwin was an area that the British lived in as the summer capital when they colonized Myanmar, and we could see why when we arrived; it was cold, grey and raining. Just like home. We got off the pickup and walked towards the town. After dropping our bags off at a guest house, we went to explore the area. The buildings are all built in an old English style, and there is even a clock tower which is supposed to be a bit like Big Ben. Even though there were some other westerners around, there wasn’t as many as Yangon or Bagan, and when we walked past the school area at finishing time we caused quite a few heads to turn and a lot of waving. We decided to go to the night market for dinner, where we found our cheapest meal yet- noodles for 17p each. Unfortunately they did taste like 17p, and at this point Jonno decided maybe we should treat ourselves to some slightly more upmarket food occasionally, just to keep our taste buds happy. Pyin Oo Lwin is also famous for strawberries and strawberry related produce, so I thought I should try some of the strawberry wine. I did choose the cheapest one though, which tasted artificial and very vinegary. I’m sure some of the higher quality wine would have been quite nice.

Not the typical Myanmar style of building

A mini Big Ben

The next day we hired some bicycles again, to get to one of Pyin Oo Lwin’s famous landmarks; the gardens. We paid the $6 entry fee, not being sure what to expect. The gardens are centered on a lake, and have well looked after pretty flowerbeds. Also surrounding the lake there was a swamp area, a bamboo area, an orchard which was definitely not in the right season, an elevated path through the trees, an aviary and a butterfly museum. It took about two hours to see all of it and even though it was nothing amazing it was a nice walk around.

The gardens on the lake

After lunch, we decided to cycle to a nearby waterfall. Jonno worked out on his map that the best route would be down some countryside lanes, and we set off. The area was beautiful and there were some fancy looking houses. We had to stop at a few checkpoints that had guards on them and answer a few questions but they let us continue. As we were riding down one road, someone behind called for us to stop. It was a man in a military style uniform, and he asked us where we were going and told us we would have to find another route- we could not continue down this road. We didn’t ask questions and turned back to find a different way, but feeling very curious as to what it was down the road that we couldn’t see.

After a long cycle downhill we reached the start of the footpath to the waterfall, which was a steep downhill walk which took about an hour. The waterfall was quite impressive, and there were quite a few local families who had come to visit it as well. There was a café next to the waterfall which was being looked after by a young guy who had made a great game out of picking up his chickens and getting them to jump down again.

After a rest at the waterfall we realized we had to hurry up to get back to the hotel, as we had no lights on our bikes and did not want to be riding on the main road in the dark. We hauled ourselves back up to where the bikes were, then had a six mile cycle uphill with no gears back to Pyin Oo Lwin. This wasn’t an easy task but we managed it. When we got back to the hotel, we got a knock at the door and were presented with a huge bowl of cake- it was one of the other guest’s birthday and we were treated to some of the birthday cake.

A tiny fork for a huge piece of cake

The day after, we planned to get a bus from Pyin Oo Lwin to Hsipaw, a small town a few hours drive away. We were told that the bus left at 4.30, so we went to visit another marketplace while waiting for the bus. After collecting our bags, we got a horse and cart to the bus station where we had an hour to wait for the bus. When we were asking where to get the tickets for the bus, we were offered a space in the minivan that was leaving sooner and managed to haggle down the price to nearly the same as the bus. Jonno didn’t have the best experience on this minivan ride, as the guy sitting one side of him had a bad case of travel sickness and spent the three hours puking into a bag very loudly, and the guy the other side of Jonno was spidering himself out on the seat and pawing at the window trying to escape. At least I had a nice neighbor who was a little old lady that offered me mangoes. 

Bangkok - Part 2

After a fairly unsuccessful attempt at sleeping on the coach, we arrived at 5am in Bangkok, just around the corner from Khao San Road. A somewhat more depressing sight at this time, when still dark and feeling like it should be a party atmosphere, only the odd hooker and homeless family on the sides of the streets. Making our way through the city to our previous hotel, we checked in and found ourselves in the room next door to where we’d been previously. After catching up on the sleep we had tried to get on the coach, we set out into the world of Bangkok once more.

We had two jobs. One was sorting out visas for Myanmar, but that couldn’t be done today as it was a Sunday. Our next job was to go to the travel clinic for tropical diseases to try and sort out my potential incurable disease. After Diana had mentioned about rabies, which I hadn’t thought of until that point, I started doing more and more research. A fair amount of googling later and I’d managed to convince myself it should be fine, however, for the sake of going to a hospital and getting their opinion, it seemed like a good trade off compared to dying a horrible and entirely preventable death. Only, that was also closed on a Sunday. Seems we’d picked the wrong day to get here. We wracked our brains to work out what to do instead.

After a quick pad thai, Diana had read that a weekend market takes place in Bangkok called Chatuchak. Unbelievable, something we may be able to do on a Sunday! We asked the waiter for the best way to get there by bus and were advised exactly where to go and stand, he even drew a little map on a napkin for us.

On the way to the bus, we stopped by an opticians as I’d previously managed to sit on and break my only pair of glasses and was reliant on my contact lenses. The most polite people I have ever met greeted us, one of which speaking fairly good English, and handed us orange juice. Take note shops in England! After going through all the options, which every time I looked even slightly unhappy about they acted like I’d been heavily insulted and tried to lower the price or come up with other options, they took my glasses to put into new frames and we went on to where our little map said the bus would come from,

We hopped on the bus, something extortionate like 50p for both of us, and within half an hour we were in a bustling market place. A huge area, with a stall for almost everything you can think of. Unfortunately, this is in South East Asia, so this included animals which looked less than happy. It seems you can even buy a pet meerkat here and I’m not sure if they were attempting to clean the cage or separate them for another reason, but the remaining meerkat was visibly distressed, with an onlooking meerkat in a nearby cage also distressed that it couldn’t help.

The latest in doggy fashion

Having managing to top up on various items of clothing and some new pairs of sunglasses, we headed back on the bus which dropped us off right outside the opticians, which was handy as they were ready for collection and looked good as new. Another round of gratuitous behavior and we headed out for dinner and to look around Khao San road for a new bag for Diana, as she’d spotted various sellers of them dotted around in the style she liked and her bag was now falling apart in every conceivable way. Miraculously, we managed to find one in almost no time at all and concluded for the night. At least, I did, Diana didn’t manage to get much sleep due to the sheer heat of the room. We also managed to go to bed a lot later than we had planned as we were formulating a route and itinerary of what to do in Myanmar, and had to be up at the crack of dawn in order to go sort out of visa. Diana also had a distraction of suitable monsoon-y proportions preventing her from getting any shut-eye.

The following morning it was still raining very heavily. Having had only around 3-4 hours sleep, I was barely functioning, Diana was just as bad, and we had no idea if there would be any issue with the boats running the way the weather currently was. Adorning our rain jackets and putting a waterproof cover over my new rucksack I’d purchased at the market the previous day (My rucksack managed to split after buying it brand new a couple of weeks before we left, not impressive in the slightest), we venture out for a 10 minute walk to the nearest pier. We needed to get to the central pier, so any boat going the right direction would do, and fortunately the boats were still running. We jumped aboard and had a refreshing, if not incredibly sleepy, boat journey.

Finding the embassy wasn’t much of an issue. One road, pretty much, from the dock, and around a corner, and we saw the entrance. We had been warned to get there early, as when the doors open you are issued a queue number and there is only a 2 hour window to apply for a visa per weekday, so it can get pretty busy. When we arrived, two people were queueing up and we had about an hour before the door opened. We joined the line, where someone advised there was a ‘mobile office’ just up the road where we could get forms. The mobile office was nothing more than a small white van with a printer and various stationary in it, as well as a Thai lady with a digital camera in case we needed some passport photos printed up. Fortunately, we were prepared enough that we only needed a form, and I managed to fill mine out (under the shelter of a nearby office building) before the doors had opened.

We sat down at the desks, typical college style things with a little fold away table on it. Very boring room, three windows at the end with a number above each. We waited until they started calling out the numbers, whilst putting the finishing touches on our forms. The whole process was incredibly painless, and it did turn out beneficial we had turned up early as it wasn’t long before the room was packed with at least 50 people. The only issue we encountered was at the desk, upon reading our ‘occupation’ answers, mine IT and Diana’s Occupational Therapist, we were both received with blank looks. I was asked who I worked for. I told him I had no job, he didn’t seem happy about that and asked if I was in university. No, unemployed. Nothing. Nada. He looked at me again, and asked if I worked in a private company. Wanting to move on from this, I said yes, and he ticked it. I’m not sure what benefit this had, but he was happier. Diana had to explain she worked for the NHS, which he thought was an NGO. Eventually, they were happy with it though, and we progressed with our day, one passport lighter.

A friendly street lizard!

Next stop, hospital. I’ll go into more detail in a later blog post about all of our hospital visits, as these are all fairly interesting in themselves, however I will say that it didn’t go entirely to plan, it cost us a fair amount more than we wanted to spend on being injected (although nothing astronomical) and would involve a further hospital trip the next morning to a different place.

Finally, I’d heard that not far from where we were was a large shopping mall, with many levels and various different shops on each. A lot larger than I expected, we ended up getting horribly lost for a while, not really buying much but with plenty to look around. On one of the floors, a huge electronics maze existed, where almost every stall sold exactly the same range of knock off smart phones, selfie sticks, speakers and other flashy items, which was fine, except there were hundreds of them around the room and it was incredibly disorientating, to the point we could barely find out how to get out of the building again. We did discover an amazing sweet treat though, a very thin, crispy pancake with a liquid meringue style filling. Extremely sweet, probably 120% sugar, but amazing.

After eventually navigating out way out of there, we headed towards the bus stop. About 3 buses were on the route we wanted back to Khao San Road. After around 50 minutes of waiting and every bus except our one turning up, we went to a nearby food stall and had dinner, deciding to just walk the route and hope the bus would pass by us. Unfortunately for us, we watched one of the buses we wanted disappear down the road, just missing it, and unsure if another would come by, we started weighing up our options for getting back. After trying to negotiate a motorcycle taxi, who wanted to charge us considerably more than we wanted to pay, we were starting to wonder if we’d even make it back. We found another bus stop, advertising the bus route 2 which was one of the ones we wanted and had missed, and stuck it out. Luckily, one arrived and we made it back safe and sound, to our now air-conditioned room, as Diana was sick of feeling too hot in the night and stumped up the extra £2.

The next morning, we head to the other hospital, opposite the one we’d been to the previous day, to try and get this resolved. Again, I have loads to write on this, so I’ll save it for another blog post, but this time everything went a lot smoother (although we had to be at the embassy for 3pm so a lot of clock watching occurred). As it was getting on in the day, we took a taxi straight to the Myanmar embassy, collected our passports with no fuss and did a little victory dance.

Heading back towards our hotel, Diana wanted to try a Thai massage, and apparently I had no choice in the matter. An interesting experience, where a tiny Thai lady effectively turned us into accordions. A cross between a masseuse and a chiropractor, it was a somewhat relaxing experience, crossed with a small degree of terror as to whether I’d be leaving with any dislocated joints. Either way, it was definitely an experience and if you have a decent pain tolerance I’m sure it can be relaxing. Diana definitely enjoyed it anyway!

The following day, we headed to Kanchanaburi, site of the bridge over the river Kwai. A fairly simple task, which would involve us taking a bus to the southern bus station, impeded by the fact that none of the three buses we needed arrived after 45 minutes of waiting. Actually, two of them did, but both said they weren’t going to the bus station for some reason. A Thai man who was selling items on a nearby stall and clearly saw we were struggling advised we went around the corner to another bus stand and got a different number. Typically, as we walked up to this location, we watched as the bus we needed drove past us, stopped to pick up others and drove into the distance. Somewhat put out, we headed to the other bus stand to await the other bus, seeing one leaving just as we arrived. Figuring we knew we were at least in the right spot, we waited for another 30 minutes with no sign of a bus. Giving up at this point, we hailed a taxi and decided to do it the easy way. Typically, no sooner had we turned the corner in the taxi, our bus we wanted was coming the other way. We decided this may not be our luckiest morning.

We arrived at the southern bus terminal and headed to the kiosks to buy a ticket. After being redirected to other booths twice, and figuring this was our bus luck continuing from earlier, we were starting to get a bit frustrated. Finally, a woman told us we had to go downstairs to where the buses leave, platform 10 (actually her exact wording was ‘GOTTA GET DOOOOWWN’, whilst making a somewhat gangster hand gesture, which was odd coming from a middle aged Thai lady). We headed to the platform, bought our tickets and stocked up on snacks, ready for a couple of hours bus journey.