Vientiane

We arrived in Vientiane and began our usual struggle of trying to find somewhere to stay. Enquiring at a few places and finding everywhere was at least 50% more expensive than anywhere else, or only the price for a single dorm bed, we decided Diana would wait with the bags whilst I went for a hunt. Returning, all I found out was that Vientiane was more expensive than we expected, or at least it certainly was in this area. We settled for one which admittedly came with luxuries we weren't used to having frequently, such as air conditioning and a fridge.

Unsure what to do now we were settled, we headed out to a place Diana was very interested in seeing called COPE visitor centre, a rehabilitation centre for amputees and people who had suffered from cluster bombs left over from the Vietnamese war.

Taking the 'scenic' route through this concrete jungle, passing all the French style middle class eateries, we stumbled upon an interesting pagoda located in the middle of a roundabout. Unfortunately we were a little out of love for pagodas at this stage of our trip, so we took a couple of photos and wandered onwards.

The roundabouts are a bit fancier than at home...

Our next sight was of a pet shop, which wasn't a particularly pleasant one as puppies were tightly cramped into cages, without any water on a 30+ degree day. Asking the woman to give them something to drink as they were clearly dehydrated, the woman poured a tiny amount of strangely pink liquid into a small bowl, which the puppies proceeded to fight to get anything they could. Another dog in the adjacent cage saw this and started yelping as it was clearly thirsty too, and it wasn't enough she gave the others. In an act of rebellion as the woman refused to give them any more, Diana poured the remainder of our water in to the cage, which the woman saw, ran over and threw out immediately. Short of having a fight in a language we didn't know, or getting arrested, there was little more we could do and carried on towards the visitor centre, more agitated than we had been before.

We arrived at the visitor centre and were greeted by a museum explaining what they did, and how the situation has come about. After the Vietnamese war, many cluster bombs had found their way over the border and into Laos, many of which are still unexploded and buried to this day. Examples of prosthesis used were on display, along with documentaries, photos and diagrams of cluster bombs and how they were detected.

An OT in her natural environment

As we were ending our look around, a man approached us and asked us where we were from and if he could talk with us a while. He was from a village near Vientiane, 26 years old, had lost both hands and all of his sight and seemed desperate to meet a European girl to be his girlfriend, he was quite fussy about her hair and accent though, and he thought a girl from Lao would be too much work. His English was quite good, and he seemed shocked by how tall I was. 

As we were leaving we spotted an indoor sports hall for people with disabilities, where they had just started a game of wheelchair basketball. Nobody seemed to mind us watching, so we ended up spending quite a while watching and feeling impressed by their agility (and their abilities to get themselves back in their chairs when they inevitably fell out of them.

We headed back towards downtown, spotting a shopping centre along the way and figured we’d have a look about. For some reason, they were having a huge promotion on Plants VS Zombies, which I figure would have made my mum very happy due to her slight level of obsession for the game. Unfortunately, we couldn’t justify travelling with stuffed toys, so we left them where they were and just posed next to a few of the statues they had dotted around.

If you look carefully, Diana is in this photo.

We reached downtown and headed towards a night market we’d heard about. At first, it seemed there wasn’t a lot to see, only food related things (although now we had a fancy room with a fridge we took advantage and bought some of the yoghurt they had on offer). We soon realised the path carried on a lot further than we had first anticipated, and sure enough we were plunged into a standard South East Asian market scenario, all the bootleg gear you can imagine, plenty of mobile phone cases and accessories (I have no idea what they sold before phones became as popular as they did, I imagine streets were considerably more empty) and various clothing that immediately got Diana’s attention.

The next morning we tried to say we wanted to stay another night, but alas, our room was booked and we would have to move rooms. Seeing as this was still the cheapest place in the area, we agreed, but no more fridge and a significantly less maintained room overall. We’d had worse though, so we sucked it up and worked out a plan for the day.

We’d heard about a nearby attraction called ‘Buddha park’. Somewhat Buddha’d out, but apparently unmissable for the area, we rented a scooter for the day and set about it. Me on directions and Diana at the handlebars, the way there was fairly simple, pretty much a couple of little turns  and one main road. We arrived, not entirely sure what to expect, paid to park our bike and our entrance fee.

Greeted by a huge ball with windows and a stone tree growing out the top, we were already unsure exactly what the place was about. All around were various different Buddhist and Hindu sculptures, in no apparent formation or reason, like an outdoor sculpture museum. Upon inspecting the ball sculpture closer, a huge open mouthed face appeared as an entrance, so we took a look inside. The rooms went around the circumference of the ball, going both up and down stairs, with various different sculptures within. We were able to climb all the way to the top to get a view over the rest of the park, and I managed to bang my head on multiple occasions trying to climb up and down all the odd staircases.

Entrance to the sphere. Om nom nom.

Overlooking the Buddha park

We had a quick picnic of the sandwiches we’d purchased before hiring the scooter and carried on up the road, as we’d read there was a national park somewhere around, many kilometres away. Unfortunately as soon as we carried on along the road beyond the Buddha park, the road quickly deteriorated, turning more into a gravel track and dust than an actual road. Unfortunately it was quite a few KM’s on this type of road, so we took it in turns until we reached the main road again, trying to avoid the potcraters and huge puddles along the way.

Eventually we made it back to the main road, however, we didn’t really know what we were looking for. Vaguely following the map towards the National Park, we reached a split in the road where we weren’t quite sure where to go, and needing fuel anyway, stopped at a fuelling station to try and ask for directions. We just about managed to pronounce the name of our destination correctly, and were pointed along the way we suspected. Off we went, followed by a huge truck, through a closed barrier everyone seemed to be ignoring and swerving around.

Get your moto' ruunnniiinggg...

A sign post stated that somewhere ahead was a waterfall, so we figured we’d head towards that and see what we could find. By this point we’ve been on the bike for over an hour in the hot sun, so we’re getting a little fed up but hoping we’ll find something worth it. After maybe 15 minutes of going down this dirt road, with absolutely nothing around us (almost like a disused quarry site rather than a nice national park) and no signs, we’re debated turning back as we figure it must have been a turn we missed. We stop and get ready to turn back, when the truck catches us up and points to me, then onwards up the road. Figuring he’s guessed where we’re heading and it’s not far away, we have one last attempt to get there, only to find we were about 400m from another sign up a side road to the waterfall we’d been looking for. Nodding and giving the truck driver a thumbs up, we headed along the road, Diana about at the end of her tether but we’d come so far we thought we’d give it a go, not knowing what to expect as we’d read nothing about it.

What we found though was pretty awesome. We parked up and must have been the first foreign people to the area, as we found out it hadn’t been open for long and the time it had been open it was barely advertised other than in Lao. The area was full of Lao families and friends sat at the side of the waterfall, picnicking, drinking beer and swimming around. Overheated and the sight of the nice cool water, Diana wasted little time hopping in and having a swim around, some of the clearest water we’d actually seen in Lao after being fairly disappointed with the ‘Blue Lagoon’.

As Diana was bobbing around and cooling down, a slight smile on her face after the ordeal of getting here, I was called over by a group of Lao men and women. At least, I think I was, they spoke no English and I spoke no Lao, but I went over and we mimed some things at each other, next thing I knew a glass of ice cold beer was in my hand. They pointed at Diana, indicating I should get her up to have a drink too, and soon enough we were drinking with a group of Lao people, doing our best to communicate which wasn’t too straightforward but everyone was laughing at the attempts. I made the executive decision to stop drinking (much to everyone’s disappointment as they kept thrusting more glasses of beer in my hands) as one of us needed to ride back, which we just about managed to explain in hand gestures to them. They then gestured picking up a motorbike and putting it in the back of a pick up truck (we think) so I could carry on drinking, which we declined as seeing the state of them all I figured they probably weren’t the safest hands to be driven by.

A waterfall with only two white people around!

Diana now a little tipsy and darkness starting to set in, we rode back (narrowly avoiding running out of fuel and too stubborn to buy an ample amount for when we handed back the rental bike.) The next day involved very little action, just preparing to hop on our longest bus of the trip so far, a 28 hour trip over the border to Vietnam, Hanoi.

All of our photos from Laos - Vientiane can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/132802327@N02/albums/72157661182337840 

Yangon

At about 6pm, the bus dropped us off in a miserable, raining Yangon and as usual there were a group of taxi drivers waiting to pounce at the door of the bus. After checking on our phone map we realized that the bus station could hardly be classed as Yangon as it would take around an hour to drive into town from where we were. We were quoted 17,000 (10 pounds) by most of the taxi drivers, and when we said the most we would want to pay is 10,000, we were shown in the direction of a shared taxi. We squeezed in the back seat with another passenger, while an old woman sitting in the front gave us a very distasteful look. When we started driving, she ferociously started talking Burmese with the driver, although it then became obvious what she was talking about when the only words that came from her mouth in English were ‘foreigner in car’. When I smiled at her and acknowledged that I understood that the conversation was about us, she looked even more displeased and turned her nose away (I know we look like dirty travelers but we do still try and maintain a level of hygiene, I didn’t think we were that bad!) and blanked us for the rest of the journey.

We were recommended a hotel in Yangon with the very sophisticated name ‘Beauty Land’ (Best said in a Geordie accent) and even though there were no pageant girls strutting around in ball dresses and twirling batons when we arrived; the room was a reasonable standard. We did have to pay a bit more for it though at $28. It had A/C, ensuite bathroom and a TV but with only one English Channel, which played lots of news programs and short documentaries promoting everything Myanmar. We set about transforming the room into a launderette, washing clothes in the shower and draping the clothes around the room. Deciding we needed to search for dinner, we managed to find some street food with childrens sets of table and chairs. The ‘waiter’ was very proud of his bland, oily meat with oily rice and kept hovering around us to check that we liked it- to which we responded with lots of ‘mmmmm’ noises. At least it was cheap.

A family on the street we stayed

We awoke the next day and went downstairs for our included breakfast and were treated to a feast of bananas, mango, papaya, toast, eggs and pancakes. The first thing on our list of things to do was to get the next, much anticipated installment of our rabies vaccines. When we had looked up the nearest health clinic to the hotel, we managed to find an address which turned out to be on the fourth floor of a nearby shopping centre. Stranger things have happened. After a bit of hunting, we managed to find the shopping centre, which was western in both style and prices. We went up the escalator to the second and third floors, and then the escalator stopped. There was no way of getting further up, and all the signs listed items up to the third floor. I’m not sure who was having a laugh with the westerners, possibly the grumpy old lady in the taxi, but luckily we also had the address of the nearby hospital which seemed a bit more plausible.

We found the hospital with not too much difficulty, and after a bit of wandering through various departments we stumbled across a sign on the wall which said ‘Rabies Vaccine’ in both English and Myanmar. After a short victory dance, we took a photo of the sign and proceeded to flash it to everyone we could see, and were soon directed to the Accident and Emergency department, which looked pretty empty. We were then sat on a bench, a nurse opened a box and took two needles out, and we were done within two minutes. After expecting something a lot more of a challenge, this was a bit of an anticlimax. At least we would probably have to pay an extortionate amount for such a quick service. However, when we asked about payment we were told ‘No charge’. After checking a few times that this was definitely correct and receiving the same answer, we skipped away very happily (and quickly in case they changed their minds). After expecting the hospital trip to take a lot longer than this, we had a whole afternoon free, which we spent wandering around the streets and killing time by loitering at the many tea stalls scattered along the pavement. Unfortunately for me, that evening I was struck with another ailment, in the form of a stabbing face and jaw pain on the right side of my face, which kept me awake most of the night.

The only chain store we saw and it hasn't quite finished yet- We arrived just in time!

Local gin for about 50p, I couldn't resist buying some!

The following day we decided to try the tour of the other side of the river which had been recommended by the Australian couple in Mawlamyine, despite the fact that I was tired and in pain with my jaw and the only relief from the pain seemed to be when I had lukewarm water in my mouth (which Jonno found hilarious and continued to remind me how hilarious it was every few minutes). Still, we walked over towards the ferry crossing and were taken past the queues of locals and shown to the ‘foreign’ office who proceeded to charge us about ten times what it seemed that the locals were paying, and we were directed onto the ferry. Immediately we were pounced on by a guy who said he could take us around the area in his trishaw (a bicycle with attached seat in a sidecar form). Fortunately, we had been told that a good price for this cycle tour would be 7,000 kyat for both of us, so armed with this knowledge told this tour guide that this was the price we were willing to pay and would not be paying more than this. His response was- no problem, 3,500 each for half an hour. Feeling pleased that we had got away with the deal we wanted and no conflict, we happily followed the guide off the ferry and over towards his trishaw. While here, we were joined by another man with a trishaw and were told that it was illegal to have two foreigners on one trishaw but seeing as we had already agreed the price we were still happy with this.

On the trishaws in our attractive waterproofwear

 The tour took us around the local area and villages, which was quite a bit different from the other side and the main city of Yangon, this area had been hit by a cyclone in 2008 and had still not been able to rebuild everything, they had not got the wealth or resources to do this quickly. We were taken to one of the local pagodas first, then to the fisherman’s area, and a local village. When we arrived at the village there were groups of small children who were excited and wanted to walk with us and hold our hands- I am not sure if this was a tourist trap or if the children were genuinely excited by us but the guide then mentioned that we could get a donation of rice for the families that lived here, so we agreed to go and have a look. We were taken to a warehouse with huge bags of rice which had clearly been prearranged, and were told one bag was $50. We explained that we didn’t have that much money on us, we just had enough for a small donation and the guide said ‘No problem, you give some money and the next person will have to pay less’, but we weren’t convinced by the story. 

The fisherman's area, it did seem pretty bleak

The beautiful children from the village

I gave them polos and they were not quite sure what to make of them

After this, we were taken to another temple, but realized that the tour was taking a lot longer than we had agreed and it was coming up to 2 and a half hours. The guides had not said anything, so either they were being very nice and giving us a long tour for our money or they might try and get some more money out of us. So we thanked them for the tour but asked if we could return to the ferry, and they agreed. We got off the trishaws and straight away the guide told us that because the tour had been three and a half hours long it would be 25,000 kyat for each of us- definitely not what we had agreed to. We told him that even though it had been longer than what we had agreed on, it was less than 3 and a half hours and he should have discussed this with us first anyway. We offered him double what we had agreed- 15.000 and told him that we wouldn’t pay any more as we had not agreed to it. However, he was not happy with this and continued to demand 50,000, which resulted in a stand off where he would not take any money unless it was the amount he asked for. This lasted for a painful fifteen minutes until another trishaw driver came to ask us what was happening, we explained the situation and he told us if we paid 20,000 he would talk the angry guide down (who was now sitting on the floor having a strop). Accepting that this was probably going to be the best solution, we gave 20,000 to the mediating trishaw driver and walked away, feeling cheated and unsatisfied which was a shame because it had been a great experience.

After arriving back at the other side of the river, feeling annoyed and still in pain with my jaw, we decided to try and find something relaxing to do and found an address for a cinema which supposedly screened western films, however when we reached the cinema the only western film they had on didn’t appeal to us, so we continued to walk around the city. We walked through the Chinatown area of Yangon, which had lots of street bars and food stalls with bits of unrecognizable meat and fish on skewers, which strangely enough did not appeal to us, and instead we stuck to the standard, bland Myanmar noodle soup.

The following day, the pain in my jaw was still there and I had decided it was bad enough to warrant a doctor’s visit. We managed to find a health centre that spoke enough English, but had a long queue out the front of the building. Fortunately for us (possibly because we are white) we were taken straight past all of the queues and directly upstairs to a doctor waiting conveniently in an empty room. After a quick checkup and not much explanation, I was written up a prescription and told to collect the drugs from downstairs, one of which turned out to be an abortion pill. I assumed that the medication had some other purpose as well as to terminate a non-existent pregnancy (At no point did the doctor check I wasn’t pregnant and if I was that I didn’t want to keep the child- it could have led to a distressing situation), and started taking the drugs.

We had also heard that there was a train around Yangon which we could take to see the surrounding villages and countryside. The central train station was easy to find, and after a bit of searching for the ticket office we were herded into an area with other white people and told to wait. About 20 minutes after the train was due to leave, a man from behind the ticket office counter sprang into action, beckoning all of us to follow him and twirling the umbrella he had in his hand in all sorts of ways like a baton. We went up and down stairs and crossed tracks to keep up with this pied piper man, until we reached a platform with a rickety old train and were ushered into one of the carriages. A few moments later, the train pulled away and we were off. If you don’t mind being thrown from side to side for three hours then this is a worthwhile experience, it was a nice way to see the outskirts of this busy city and some of the smaller villages, markets and workers in paddy fields, I feel I didn’t appreciate it enough as the abortion pills had not yet kicked in so I was still nursing my painful jaw.

MIND THE GAP

Train rules: No smoking, littering or kissing

A market set up at one of the stations

A manual level crossing, I think Ashtead station would benefit from one of these

One of the main places to go and visit in Yangon is the famous Shwe Dagon Pagoda, and even though we resented paying the $6 per person entry fee, we decided that it would be silly not to go there, on every website it is the number one thing to do in Yangon and it is a pilgrimage site for Buddhists all over Myanmar. So we got off the Yangon train a stop early to get to the Pagoda.

When we reached the Pagoda, it didn’t seem like much from the outside. We had to follow the sign for the special ‘tourist’ entrance (where they can charge you money to get in, the locals were free) which then led to four or five escalators up to one of the gates. Even though we had seen a few Pagodas in Myanmar by this time, this one was by far the biggest and most impressive. There was a massive Paya at the centre, surrounded by a whole complex of temples and shrines dedicated to Buddha, and wherever you turned there were more shrines that emerged.

A 360 degree view inside the pagoda, you can tell by the strange sets of twins walking around 

 The only criticism I do have though was that it was raining and the floor was made of marble, and with bare feet this did not make for easy walking. As we carefully shuffled towards some of the sights, a tour guide approached us and asked us if we would like a guide, to which we said no thank you- we didn’t want to spend any more money in the Pagoda. A few minutes later, another two men approached us very nervously and in broken English, explained that they had just got their tour guide licence but they needed to practice their tour in English and would we mind if they practiced with us. Me and Jonno looked at each other with suspicious eyes- after our experience the previous day we were suspicious it may cost us more than we would want to pay. But after we asked and they confirmed there was no charge, we dubiously agreed. They took us to a few parts of the complex and explained some of the history and significance of parts of the Pagoda, which wasn’t easy to understand all the details due to their level of English and that they weren’t sure on all the facts either, there was lots of giggling and prompting each other, but we got the jist of it and it was more information than no guide which we had planned. It got to the end and we braced ourselves for a request for a ‘donation’ but they were happy enough just to practice with us and we had gotten away with a free tour, bonus! 

Our amateur tour guides

He got style

We then walked around on our own for a while, and went to visit our special ‘corner’ which wasn’t even a proper corner. Apparently the day of the week you are born on is significant in Buddhism- it gives you a dedicated creature. You can then go to a temple, find the statue of your creature and give it a wash for luck. Around the Pagoda was dotted Monday to Sunday corners, with Wednesday split into two as the Buddhist calendar has eight days. Anyway, we went to Friday corner for Jonno and Saturday corner for me, and cleaned the funny looking statues that had probably had a few thousand washes already that day. We also went to find ‘Buddha’s footprint’ which was only to scale if Buddha was Hagrid.

Not quite to the scale of a regular persons footprint

Its Friday, Friday, wash your statue for Friday

During our search of things to do in Yangon, we came across a puppet show that had the most amazing reviews, it seemed like it would be a shame to miss it. So with just about enough time to spare, we power walked from Shwe Dagon Pagoda to the puppet show, called Htwe Oo. And it definitely didn’t disappoint. The room was tiny and there was only 6 of us in the audience which made it seem cosy and personal. The owner started the show by explaining that puppet shows used to be a popular form of entertainment in Myanmar, with shows lasting from sunset until sunrise the following day. However, the tradition has mostly died out and most puppet shows are put on more for tourists than locals. There are only three of the original puppeteers left from the traditional era in Myanmar, one of which was at this puppet show and was 84 years old. The show was made up of 2-5 minute sets which told stories of people, animals and Buddhism, and the puppets were beautifully made with amazing costumes. The puppeteers were also very skilled, and could make the puppets do intricate dances and backflips, although in some of the fighting scenes they thought the best effect was to throw the puppets into each other which looked quite funny. Anyway, it was a great experience and I would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting Yangon.

The puppets are all made in great detail, in proportion and fully equipped!

Eyebrows inspired by the great Richard Batey himself

Pretending i'm a professional

We had originally planned to leave Yangon the next day for a town 2 hours away called Bago, where we had got mixed reviews about- some people said it was lovely with beautiful temples, other people said there was not much there. However, during dinner on that evening I had got a text through on my Myanmar SIM card which said that it was the first international day of yoga in 2 days time- 21^st June, and there was a yoga event being held in Yangon. This sounded like it could be interesting, so we decided to stay for another two days so we could go and see what the event was about, and skip Bago.

We had a day to kill the following day and fortunately or unfortunately our hotel was right next to a road full of fancy camera shops. Jonno already had a chunky camera with a good zoom, but he had been complaining about it for a while that it wasn’t good enough- a similar situation to the laptop, he needs to have a good gadget that does complicated things far beyond what I am bothered about. And after he had spent an hour looking doe-eyed through camera shop windows, his mind was made up that he could not function in everyday life until he had a fancy camera. So we reckoned that because we had brought a wad of dollars with us and there were plenty of ATM’s around, Jonno was allowed a technology treat and could get himself one. So the first half of the day was spent in search for the perfect camera. After a bit of haggling where we returned to a shop that we had been to a few days before and they had quoted us a much lower price, a different person working in the shop quoted us another and we said we would only take it at the other guy’s price offer, and Jonno had got himself a shiny new toy- cue some amazing national geographic style pictures from here on! The next hour or so consisted of Jonno taking lots and lots of pictures of nothing in particular- there was about 50 of one cup of tea, until it began to rain.

Such a beautiful cup of tea, taken by an exquisite camera

 We retreated back to the hotel to wait for the rain to die down, which took a good few hours, and then went to go and find a lovely travel agent lady who had helped to translate at a street food stall a few days before to book our bus tickets to our next destination; Bagan. After this was sorted, we went out in search of dinner, and the street food place we chose served us noodle soup with ‘chicken’. This turned out to be some strange looking rubbery tubes, definitely not a part of a chicken that I would recognize. Jonno’s stomach wasn’t too keen on them either and made him feel pretty ill the next day.

The following morning we were up early to get a taxi to the Yoga festival- I was expecting a hall full of stalls and various classes happening to join in with, and a chance to talk yoga with lots of different people. We arrived there and were shown through to the seating area- it turned out that it was more of a spectator event for various yoga classes from around Yangon, and speeches from various ministers of health and wellbeing, with most of the audience being groups of schoolchildren. After about 20 minutes of watching the mass of yoga classes in white polo shirts do some gentle stretches, I became too agitated (I was so ready to get my yoga on, watching it wasn’t going to satisfy me) and after checking with a confused looking steward, I made my way down to the ‘performance area’ and found a spare mat on the side to join in with the action. However, it wasn’t easy to blend in as I wasn’t in the white polo shirt uniform that the other hundreds of people were in, but I carried on regardless until a member of the organization team became too embarrassed and handed me a white polo shirt to put on.

Before

After camouflage

 I then took part in a very unsatisfying yoga routine, before having to sit and listen to the speeches until I could sneak away. As we left the building, we were each given a free yoga DVD which was in Burmese so was pretty useless anyway, and had an odd introduction, see the video below.

We got the train back to the hotel, and sat around in the communal room to wait until we had to leave for our overnight bus, with Jonno’s stomach still wasn’t happy from the random animal parts it had to digest. We had been told by reception that there were public buses we could take from nearby to the main bus terminal to save on the expensive hour’s taxi ride there, so we went in search of the bus stop. The bus stop itself wasn’t difficult to find, but all the signs on the buses were in Burmese and each bus driver we asked just pointed to the bus behind. After five or six buses, eventually one told us that they would not accept us with our bags unless we paid 1,000 kyat each (About 60p). This was still a far better deal than a taxi so we paid the extra and sat ourselves on the bus. When we reached the bus terminal it was huge and scattered down many different streets, luckily we found lots of helpful people to point us in the direction of our bus. When we got on the bus we were pretty impressed- there were huge soft blankets for every seat, the seats moved apart from each other so that the aisle was narrowed but you had more room, and at the food and toilet stop we were given toothbrushes, a mini toothpaste and face wipes. However, an overnight bus is still not the place to get a full night’s sleep and at 4.30am we were awoken and told we had arrived in Bagan.

MYANMAR - Dawei and Mawlamyine

We approached the Thai border, having done some research on the crossing and knowing there would be a 6km ‘no mans land’ to pass through before the Myanmar border guard. Diana made things easier for everybody by losing her departure card from her passport, so we had a good 10 minute discussion as the man seemed to not understand she just didn’t have it. After filling in a new one, and my passport sailing through with all the necessary paperwork completed, we were technically in ‘nowhere’.

Goodbye Thailand!

As soon as we got through someone asked if we wanted a lift to the other side. Not fancying a 6km walk with all our bags, we said yes, and after a while he looked at us with a very apologetic face saying his car was too full, so we started our walk, thumb extended hoping for the best. After around 3km of walking a lovely tarmacked road, being ignored by everyone apart from people driving in the wrong direction, we were lucky enough that someone in a pickup stopped. Naturally cautious that we may be illegally trying to enter the country, he wanted to look over our passports, visas, everything. After being sufficiently pleased we were allowed in the country, we dumped our bags in the back and hopped in the cab.

After a 2km drive up a dirt track we would have completely missed had we not been picked up, as the tarmac road was still going off somewhere into the distance, we arrived at a passport check. The man checked the passports thoroughly, asking where we were going. Replying with ‘Dawei’ seemed to be the correct answer, and we hopped back into the pickup towards the border town of Htee Khee.

The pickup driver dropped us off in the middle of a dusty car park surrounded by various shacks. He pointed over to one shack in particular and told us to go get our passport stamped here. We thanked him again, and hopped out to grab our bags. Only he seemed to have forgotten we’d had bags and started driving off. Cue the scene of us running along behind a pickup truck trying to fling our bags out of the back, trying to signal to him we needed him to stop. Luckily we succeeded in retrieving all of our belongings.

We headed over to the allocated ‘passport shack’ and were greeted by a room full of men, young and old, sitting, smoking and watching TV. Football to be exact, two British teams, although I won’t pretend I bothered remembering which. After a few moments, a couple of people begrudgingly got up and went behind the desk where they asked for our passports. After some photocopying, checking, writing, stamping and once again asking if we were going to Dawei, we were done here and had the next task of finding a taxi to take us the 5 hour journey to the town we were definitely expected to go to. Meanwhile, everyone else resumed their post of watching the football.

We headed down a small incline to what looked a bit like a town, and asked at the first shack populated with people we could find if they could arrange for a taxi to Dawei. They repeated Dawei to me (they seem to love talking about this place) and once we were all confirmed we were on the same wavelength, they gestured for us to sit down. We placed our bags behind us and took in the surroundings. In this split second, our bags had been whisked away and placed in a vehicle, we had no idea which but we carried on waiting, assuming we’d be repatriated with them soon enough. About 10 minutes later, they asked if we had had our passports stamped already, which we confirmed we’d done. At this point, we were pointed in the direction of the vehicle containing our bags and took a seat.

Our driver eventually turned up, except he seemed to have some number of errands to perform first, it took around 30 minutes, 10 different stops around the town and one random other man in the passenger seat before we set off in the correct direction. The road, well, didn’t really exist. A dirt track took the place of the road at first, where our driver managed to slam a wheel into a rock at around 50kph. Fractionally more terrified than we had been before this occurrence, we travelled for another 45 minutes or so before stopping at a café, where although both hungry and thirsty we couldn’t buy anything as we had none of the local currency.

Our driver set his mind to replacing the wheel he’d buckled, which started off how it would carry on, with him trying to tighten the wheel bolts to get them off rather than loosen them. Someone came over and stopped him and showed him the correct way to turn them. Next he placed the jack in a precarious place under the wheel, and sure enough, once the wheel was removed, the jack slipped and the front of the car plummeted. Fortunately no limbs were in the way, but this now caused a new issue in getting the car back up. We soon got an idea of how helpful the community is here though, as they soon came through from the back with massive lengths of wood and bric-a-brac to lever it back up. I guess they were planning to build a shed or something?

Whoops.

Meanwhile, an old man was walking around in his traditional Longyi, or to us in the west, skirt. He’d had enough of all this, converted his top into a bra by twisting it up so that his rotund belly was on display, made himself a betel nut (a concoction regularly chewed by locals here, consisting of a leaf wrapped around a nut, tobacco and various other things. Similar to paan in India, responsible for many red stains all over the floor where people spit out their progress) and sat about playing with a jack rather than helping. I briefly popped over to help out with the car, but there were already plenty of them and they all spoke the same language. Plus, bits of wood were snapping left right and centre, I was happy out of it.

Eventually they manage to get the wheel back on the car and we were off. It took another good hour or two before we were back on a nice smooth road surface though, and after passing through about 3 passport checkpoints and our driver paying tolls to several people on the way, we were finally in Dawei.

View from the road on the way to Dawei

We asked the driver to take us to a cheap hotel. Unfortunately we didn’t know what to really expect here – we’d been warned that the cost of accommodation would be a lot more than we were expecting, but we didn’t really know what that meant. We arrived at the first hotel, which, for what we’d been used to, didn’t look very cheap. Diana went in to find out the price, and immediately came back out asking the driver to take us somewhere else, as they’d asked for $80 a night. The driver took us to another place, when Diana realizes he may have actually said $18 and wasn’t sure. We pop into the next place, they’re asking for $25 which is better, but not ideal. We asked our driver if he could take us back to the first place so we could check the price again, but he didn’t really understand English, so took us to another random hotel. Eventually we found one for $20 and couldn’t be bothered to look around anymore, so we holed up here just before it started to get dark.

The hotel itself looked a lot more impressive than the room. A grandiose entrance, doormen, fancy marble everywhere. Once we got to the room however, it was a basic, just-about-clean-enough-to-live-for-a-couple-of-nights affair. We ditched our things and headed off for the first order of business, getting local currency.

Enquiring at the desk where the nearest ATM was, we head around the corner and get our first experience of a town in Myanmar. Honestly, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Although on the drive here we’d been through a few villages, this seemed quite modern. A department store, flashy neon signs everywhere, pavements… I felt it would have been a little less advanced. However, this was a town close to a border, so we’d see. We got to the ATM and went through the usual wonderment of whether we’d have our card blocked, whether it would work, and whether we’d be trying to cope without any cash for a while. The screen letting us know the maximum amount we could withdraw was slightly more over the top than we were used to, as we were able to withdraw a maximum of 300k. I’ve never withdrawn 300k of a currency from a cash machine before. Luckily, we were allowed our money, and it was provided in 5k notes, clean and crisp. Each note valued at approx. £3 each, we now had a small brick of notes to worry about, as well as a ridiculous amount of dollars. And the dollars weren’t even allowed to be folded or they were totally useless to us.

Money money money!

Next stop, food. On the way we passed by a mobile phone shop and figured, as we may need to call some hotels in advance, we’d get a SIM card. This is when we first realised how much of a language barrier we may be experiencing here, as trying to ask for a SIM card almost entirely required miming of putting something into my phone and making a phone call. A SIM was produced, exactly what we needed, and she held up 3 fingers to show it cost 3000. Working this out to be under £2, we figured we’d go for it, and got handed two green pieces of paper apparently worth 1000 each. This money was already baffling us. Transaction completed, we walk around to try and find somewhere to eat.

We found a street place which had a cart with various pots of food. After looking over the options for a while and realising a vegetarian option wasn’t happening, we pointed at a couple of things and rice and waited to see what we got. And what we got was an incredibly oily, spicy chicken something with rice. Not entirely inedible, but not the finest cuisine we’ve had on our entire journey so far.

The following day we got up early for a luxury we hadn’t had with any hotels so far, inclusive breakfast. I’d pretty much forgotten about this though, so I was confused why Diana was in such a hurry to leave the room when we had no real plan until she reminded me. We got there later than everyone else had been so we had the room to ourselves, and were brought a plate of two bananas, a water jug, and after a while, some sort of onion soup. Not exactly a breakfast of kings, but we had it anyway, and got our first introduction to the wonders of coffee in Myanmar. The jug of hot water was accompanied by a number of sachets, which were labelled as ‘3 in 1’. This was a combination of coffee, sugar and creamer, in various different ratios – a ‘just add water’ affair. Well, once we’d got over the initial shock of how sweet these are, the addiction set in. Different brands used different ratios of the three, but one thing was for certain, they weren’t healthy, but definitely a bit of a boost.

Breakfast?

After this, we had a look around some of the markets and got an idea of what the locals were like. One thing was for certain, people definitely weren’t used to seeing Westerners in the markets. After getting plenty of practice at the Burmese for Hello (“Min Ga La Bar”, took us a fair few attempts to remember it properly, along with Thank You – “Chee zoo tin bar day”) we concluded there wasn’t a great deal of things to do in this town, but at this stage I also needed my next rabies shot, so we thought we’d check out where the nearest hospital was. We had little trouble finding it, however it wasn’t the greatest condition ever, and the easiest way we could tell it was a hospital was to look up on the balcony of the run down building, seeing people on stretchers with IV’s attached to the supporting columns. I’ve not been to many outdoor hospitals before, but we figured the shot could wait until Yangon.

Walking around from here, we’d heard there was a pagoda nearby. This would be our first of many experiences of pagodas, so filled with childish optimism we headed off to see it. It seemed to be closed, and as soon as we arrived it began to rain quite heavily, so we took shelter under the covered area we were in. After a while, a man opened the door from the inside and invited us in rather than sitting outside and we got our own private viewing, they turned on all the lights and we sat in front of a huge statue of Buddha for a while until the rain died down. After this, we headed for a nearby tea shop, as we’d heard these were very common around Myanmar, and ordered one of their finest 3 in 1s. Along with this came a separate jug of Chinese green tea, which we found was free and unlimited, and seemed to be common to every teahouse and restaurant we went to.

Our own private viewing

Diana and her private Buddah moment

Local teahouse

On our way back we found another pagoda, this one a much larger area than the last. In fact, it even offered free Wi-Fi, bizarrely enough. I presume for all the monks on their smartphones. We spent a while looking around, when a tuktuk full of school children arrived. All looking at us, smiling and laughing and somewhat confused, a few of them approached us, poking Diana’s white skin and trying to pull out my arm hair, as if a couple of aliens had just beamed down in front of them and they couldn’t quite work them out. Confident we were humans in the end, they let us go, and we continued on to our next task of booking a bus ticket to the next destination, Mawlamyine.

You're going to see a lot of these...

It wouldn’t be too difficult to find a bus there – there was an entire area devoted to booking bus tickets through various different companies. After working out it would take around 10 hours to travel, we decided we’d get an early bus, 5am to be exact. We then had the option of air-con or non for about £2 difference, so decided we’d take the air conditioning option and asked at our hotel if they could arrange us a rickshaw to the bus station for the following morning.

After a disgustingly early wake up of around 3am, we shuffled our stuff out to the front where the guy on the reception called up a rickshaw driver. Sitting outside and watching rickshaws driving up and down with nobody in, we figured we probably should have just hailed one down, but we hung on for a while until eventually they turned up. Lobbing everything into the back, we were taken to a very dark bus depot, and before we were allowed entry a police officer requested our passports. We got the feeling we would be getting this a lot. Asking where we were going, how long we’d been here, what our purpose in Myanmar was and what colour underwear we had on that day, he was sufficiently satisfied and asked someone who I assume was a budding police officer to show us to our bus. Through a small labyrinth of buses we were taken, and we eventually ended up in a dingy little shed with a few seats. We handed our ticket over, everything checked out and, apart from the inevitable power cut, we were on our way to Mawlamyine.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the smoothest ride ever, so catching up on a few Z’s wasn’t happening very easily. I managed to get some for a little while, and Diana who was awake a lot longer informed me I’d missed the coach turning into a local bus, filling up with school children taking them some of the way to school in the morning. Eventually, many windy roads and unfinished roads later, we arrived. We also realized that we had booked the AC bus, but it seemed it was just the same bus, only the left hand side didn’t have vents above them. This seemed preferable, as the bus was freezing cold, and as we were wearing clothes to deal with 30 degree heat outside, a bit of a shock to us. But eventually, we arrived without too much of a problem.

As per usual, we got off and were amassed by tuktuk drivers, all hoping for a fare. As soon as they spotted us, and the colour of our skin I’d assume, suddenly we were prime targets and everyone else pretty much ignored. I’d assume we were a fair game for 10x the usual price. We told them a guest house we’d found the name of before we arrived, Breeze, and we were on our way.

Similarly to before, Diana hopped off and poked her head in to ask the price. Only $14 a night, bargain (for Myanmar, anyway). This being the first time we had received change for our dollars, we had to be careful that we were receiving nice, crisp and clean notes. After inspecting them all, only one wasn’t, a $10 note which we tried to swap with him but he said it was fine. We thought it wouldn’t be, but it didn’t bother me too much as we’d be able to spend it in another country. We grabbed our bags and were shown the rooms. They weren’t exactly spacious, more like cubicles with just enough room for a bed and a desk fan, but it would do. The entire place gave the impression of sleeping in a ships galley, somewhat claustrophobic but good enough. The staff were incredibly friendly and spoke good English though.

We headed out into the world to find a tea house, and to do a walk that was in our guide book that supposedly introduced us to a number of things in the local area. We found a teashop just up the road en route, where we found out that it wasn’t just the coffee you could get in 3 in 1 form, but tea also. An odd, sugary affair, with what was effectively coffeemate added. Not as nice, but still very drinkable and reminiscent of the sweetness of Indian chai. After this, we headed on the way to where we’d start the walk, spotting a male Great Dane in Ruby style colours, with such blue eyes we initially thought he was blind. Very friendly and obedient, much unlike his distant British bitch cousin!

After being told to lay down. Much more obedient than other Great Danes I know of.

We’d barely started our route at all, before we were accosted by a midget. A friendly midget, who I took the benefit of the doubt that he just wanted a chat rather than to try and sell us something, although he was a motorcycle tuktuk driver. We went and sat with him, and spent a good 45 minutes chatting about Myanmar, English and, mostly, religion and Buddhism. Apparently, he’d tried almost every religion to see which worked for him, and ended up at Buddhism, as he believed that it was the most reasonable for him. He used several analogies, for instance, if you are hanging from a cliff, you can call for Jesus to come and help you, or Shiva or Ganesh, but they won’t come. Buddhism is for helping yourself. If you can’t help yourself, nobody else can. It somewhat made sense, but I’m still as unreligious as I was prior to the conversation. He started going through some photos of foreigners on his phone he’d spoken to, when we found out the answer to an age old question. And the answer is, yes. We do all look the same to Asian people. Because he brought up a photo of a random white girl, and started exclaiming ‘Look! Your twin! Exactly the same!’ to Diana. Absolutely no similarity we could see at all, but he was absolutely convinced. So don’t worry everyone, it’s not racist, everyone looks the same.

We eventually broke free, although we had his phone number in case we wanted to go to see some of the nearby sites. We then followed the route, going past some interesting sites and trying some of the local food and drinks along the way, such as a deep fried pancake (Roti, really) with sugar. The general theme here is that nothing at all is healthy. Nothing. Nada. Sugar and oil are staple foods and no mistake. Along the way we came to a pagoda which overlooked the entire city, a Christian church and ended up in a park with a children’s playground and many families playing.

Tasty, but not exactly nutricious

A church in Mawlamyine

Church interior

View around Mawlamyine

We headed for dinner, a place called Grandma and Grandpa with a logo of an old man and woman, where apparently some of their profits go towards looking after the local elderly. We had arrived in the middle of a huge football match, I believe between Myanmar and Thailand, and almost every person had their eyes glued to a screen on the wall. The food was okay, and we returned back to the guest house to find they had converted the reception area into a football viewing area also, where mostly women were watching and getting incredibly passionate about the results. I believe this was a repeat showing though, as people were going up and down the road on motorbikes, most of them sounding drunk and waving Myanmar flags around, which was odd as Thailand won the match.

Just like being at the pub when a games on, only with more Burmese.

The owner of the guest house approached us about visiting a nearby island, called Ogre Island. For $15 each we would have a tour of the island and its villages, lunch and so on. Seemed like a good deal, they needed at least 4 people for it to be viable, and they had 3, so we said we’d go for it. We handed over $30, the $10 note being the scruffy one they’d handed us that morning, and they told us they couldn’t take that note as it wasn’t good condition. I informed them we wouldn’t have this note had they not given us it. They reluctantly accepted it back and we headed to bed.

Setting our alarm early for breakfast and the trip, we got a knock on the door as we were getting ready, saying it wouldn’t be possible as the couple who were going to go didn’t want to pay. It was impossible, he repeated maybe 6 times. We accepted that to be the case, and headed to breakfast, being refunded our money in Kyat instead of Dollars and confusing the entire issue. At breakfast we ended up chatting for a while with some of the other people there and decided we’d leave for Yangon this day, getting the 1pm bus. We went for dinner at a nearby South Indian restaurant to see how it compared, receiving something akin to a Thali, but not quite. Joining us at our meal was a four legged, long tailed creature, running around the floor, the first time we’d had the pleasure to have a mouse for company whilst we ate, but probably not the last.

Unfortunately for us wasting the time away, we asked at 12pm if we could get a lift to the bus station, only to be told the bus was at 12pm and not 1pm. After quickly arranging us a ticket, the taxi driver took us to a place the bus would stop further along its route, and we hopped on, the last two empty seats. We played it a little too fine really, but the bus was nice and provided us blankets and neck pillows. We were on our way to our next stop, Yangon.

I feel preeeettttyyyy...