Our experience of Myanmar

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

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

Together, we decided we would miss:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things we took away from Myanmar:

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

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

Bye bye Myanmar!

Inle Lake

Little bit of boat acrobatics gets you around much quicker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boating - a popular pastime for monks

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

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

The lotus plant fibres used to make material

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

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

Didn't fancy messing with this particular badman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let there be tea!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One type of a number of unidentified mushrooms collected en route

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

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

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

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

Not a great look, really

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

WAKEY WAKEY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hsipaw

We arrived in Hsipaw in the early evening, and despite the fact that Jonno was having a great time with the chundering man, we got off the minivan and went to find a guesthouse. Most of the websites we had looked on had recommended a place called Mr. Charles Guest House, so we went to check it out. It was a very pretty building with most of the interior being wooden, which gave it an old English feel about it. We asked for the cheapest double room which was $14 with a shared bathroom. Unfortunately the building neighbored a before and after school programme, which started at 6am and finished at 10pm. It seems the only way people learn anything in Myanmar is by chanting things as loud as possible and as many times as possible, which was not great for when we wanted an early night or a lie in. We also discovered that even though we were in a twin room there were in fact three of us occupying the room, one of which was small and squeaky with a long tail. After attempting to position our bags so that our new friend could not nibble at them easily, we went in search of food and found a cheap roadside place with some noodle soup and returned to our room to be lulled to sleep by the chanting that sounded like some kind of satanic verse.

The next morning we took a look around the town of Hsipaw, which mainly consisted of a marketplace with various fresh and packaged food stalls. As we walked through the maze of market stalls, we saw lines of small nuns in pink robes and hats make their way around too, singing and receiving donations from the local people. I had brought along a pair of my trousers which were held up by elastic, and in some places the elastic had broken so they did not really stay up anymore.  For a while I had been meaning to take them to a tailors to see if they could replace the elastic, but had forgotten to take them with me. After about a month of forgetting, I finally remembered to bring them along so we went in search of somewhere that could repair them. We passed a few who shook their heads when I tried to explain what I needed, but one old man in a small shop took the trousers from me, dropped the fabric he was working on and began ferociously sewing away on his machine. When he had finished I asked him how much and he shook his head and would not accept payment, just one of the instances that show how friendly and kind the people of Myanmar are. It didn’t really matter that his work made no difference at all because he didn’t replace any elastic he just sewed a line where the elastic should have been, I appreciated the gesture anyway.

The nuns visiting the market stalls

On the map that the guesthouse had on their wall of the area, we noticed there was an old Shan Palace that was open to visitors, so decided to go and investigate. As we turned off the main road and onto a small path that lead to some gates that had become overgrown, we wondered if we had the right place. We saw a small sign on the gate with opening times, so gingerly opened the gate and went through. What we found was a fairly old English looking house but nobody in sight except a grumpy little dog that wouldn’t stop barking at us. As we turned to leave, a woman came out of a door and invited us inside, where there were two other tourists. She let us explore the room which was covered with old pictures and books, and then started explaining the history of the building. The Shan state of Myanmar previously had royal families for each area, and this was the home of the ‘sky prince’ of Hsipaw. The reason it looked English was that he had been sent abroad to England for university and adopted a western style and wanted his home to look the same.  He had married a woman from Holland who later wrote her story in a book called ‘Twilight over Burma: My life as a Shan Princess’. The woman who was telling us the story was his niece and now lived in the old palace and wanted to share her story with visitors. In 1962, the Burmese government arrested all the Shan princes in secret, and then denied that they had anything to do with it, but nobody ever saw the princes after that. The family are still trying to get the government to admit responsibility but to this day they still deny any involvement. The woman who now lives in the old palace started sharing her family’s story in the 1990s with her husband, but the government was not happy with this and imprisoned her husband who was released after four years. She and her husband continue to receive visitors, and have lots of stories and photos to share. It was fascinating listening to her accounts, and gave us an insight into what the people of Myanmar have experienced in recent history. Mid way through her talking to us, she heard some people outside and tutted, telling us she was sorry but some people just turn up uninvited, which is exactly what we had done but we didn’t point this out.

The old Shan Palace

Inside the palace- definitely an English influence

After thanking the woman for sharing her story we walked back towards the hotel. One of the other tourists at the palace was also staying at our guesthouse, so we walked with her. She was from Germany and had been travelling to some of the places we had also been to, so we shared stories. She told us that the guesthouse offered advice and information on the treks that they offer, and we had heard that the area was good for trekking, so we joined her in asking for information. The guide that was at the desk explained about the 1, 2 or 3 day treks they offered. Although we had done a bit of trekking, we had not tried any more than a day at a time so we thought we would challenge ourselves and try a 2 day trek, which would take us through villages and we would stay overnight in one of the villages. The german girl also booked the same trek which would start the next morning. Still not being too sure what we were getting ourselves into, we prepared our day bags with the things we would need and got some sleep.

The next morning we gave our main bags to the guesthouse to store them and went to find our trekking group. There were five of us in the group; us, the German girl we had met the day before and 2 German guys. We were introduced to our guide and off we went.

And we are off

The trek started out with a nice easy path through some fields and past a cemetery which had different sections for each nationality that was buried there, and as we continued we hit some steeper inclines but it was manageable and we stopped for breaks a few times. The guide had brought some local sesame seed cookies for us which we all fell in love with.

We stopped for lunch at a family home in one of the villages. They had set up a small table for us and some cushions made from sacks that we could sit on, and served us an amazing vegetarian lunch of local dishes with rice. We then had about an hour to relax in some deck chairs before we continued on our journey.

Taking some much needed rest at lunch

You don't need language when you can bang on a plastic chair together

The trek took us through beautiful scenery, from farmlands where families were ploughing fields with buffalo to jungle areas where the guide had to break a path through the trees. He had lots of knowledge about the area and showed us interesting plants like the mimosa leaves that curl up when they are touched and fruit trees like jackfruit, banana and avocado. The guide also explained to us that there are only certain areas in the Shan state which allow foreigners in and even Myanmar people from surrounding areas would need a good reason to visit the restricted areas. This is because there are armies from different parts of the Shan state who have camps in the jungle, and there is often fighting between these groups and the government. As we passed some of the villages, the guide told us that it is often difficult to get the villagers to engage with politics and the issues of the country, as they often govern themselves so don’t see the relevance. We also discovered new things about the German culture with three Germans for company, which has given us an urge to travel Germany now- the difficulties of having the freedom to travel the world, there are far too many countries! The great thing about German and English is that we have a lot of words that are the same or similar (one of them being hoof as we discovered) so even when they were speaking German together we could pick out a few bits of the conversation. Jonno also had a great satisfaction as a few days before he had said how much German people love strudel and we overheard the Germans talking about their favourite types of strudel, so I was given a ‘see I told you so’ look.

The whole family works on the fields

Beautiful scenery

We arrived at the village of our homestay about an hour before sunset, after trekking for around eight hours, and were taken through the village and up a steep path to see the Monastery at the top. There was a group of unkempt looking children playing around the Monastery, who were very excited to see us and ran up to us waving and shouting hello as we passed. One little boy only knew how to say ‘ta ta’ so he repeated this over and over again.

Meeting the local kids

We entered the monastery and the guide beckoned us to sit on the floor in front of the shrine of Buddha statues. On the platform there sat one monk of 14 years old, with an elderly nun praying at his feel. The guide explained that monks are always higher than nuns, regardless of the age. It did seem very strange to see this hierarchy in a culture where you should pay respect to your elders. After the nun had finished praying to the monk, he brought a flask of green tea for us which was definitely needed after the long walk. There were about twenty other monks and novices in a room next door watching a black and white film. The guide showed us a gold statue of a bird and explained that the village had been saving up for this statue and it was going to be placed on the top of a pole outside the monastery in a ceremony the following morning. He told us the meaning behind the bird is that there is a story where a bird challenges the sun to a race which he initially is winning but then death catches up with the bird. Apparently this is a reminder to Buddhists of the inevitability of death. The guide told us we were invited to the ceremony of placing the statue on the pole the next morning, which we said we would like to attend. The guide also explained the reason behind the bells on the top of every pagoda which chime when the wind blows them, as when people were in the jungle and wanted to find their way back to the village they could just follow the noise of the bells, as every village has a pagoda.

The village school, surrounded with barbed wire

By this time it was almost dark, so the guide lead us back down the steep path to the home which we would stay the night. The house was spacious but basic, and we were introduced to the family who lived there. There were grandparents, parents and five children living in the house together, and they welcomed us in with more green tea and lots of smiles. We were shown where we could take a shower- a concrete block outside with a trough of water and a bucket, and were served another delicious local vegetarian meal. The bedroom was a large room upstairs with mattresses on the floor and a mosquito net over each one- cosy enough and after a long day of trekking it was very welcomed!

Our homestay

A pretty big mosquito that has been caught by the net

We were awoken in the morning by a man with a terrible hacking cough, and then the grandfather of the house coming in to chant some prayers to the Buddha shrine in the corner of our room. We got ourselves ready and went downstairs where we were served a breakfast of rice, vegetables in a broth, omelette with anise leaves and a very strong smelling dried tofu dish. Some of the children were getting ready to go to school, but also had to help with the younger children by feeding them breakfast and getting them dressed. It was the calmest household with that many children that I had ever seen- most scenes of getting children ready for school involve parents rushing around frantically trying to get their children organised (If you have seen the programme ‘Outnumbered’ this has been my experiences). This was completely different- the children who were attending school were quietly getting themselves ready while their parents sat and chatted with the tour guide. Whatever parenting techniques had been used were clearly very effective! We left our bags at the house and walked back up to the Monastery for the ceremony, to find out that it had already finished and the bird stood proudly on its stand with a sprinkling of popcorn around the base of the pole as an offering. We went back to the house, gathered our bags, said goodbye to the family and set off, our legs feeling achier than the previous day.

We missed the party but went to check out the result

The second day of walking was easier than the first, with most of the journey on flat paths or downhill. We passed more farmland and villages, and after 3 hours reached a dirt road where we were met by a rickshaw and we all gratefully bundled on. Our legs may have been thankful for the rest but it definitely was not the most comfortable of journeys- the road was full of rocks and holes and we were flung around the vehicle. We were taken to a place that had some hot springs- they were man made pools but were pumped with natural hot spring water. One was pure spring water but it was extremely hot, and the other had some cold water added to it but was still the temperature of a bath. It was so nice to float around in them, stretching our achy muscles. 

Relaxing in the hot spring

After a while of relaxing, we were ready for lunch but when we got to the path, the rickshaw had gone and the guide explained there was something wrong with it so the driver went to get it fixed and would be back soon. This caused a slight panic as some people had left their belongings on the truck, including the German girl’s shoes, as we had assumed it would wait for us there. After about 20 minutes of waiting, the guide suggested we walk 5 minutes to a local restaurant for lunch there while we waited for the driver to return. We made our way to the restaurant, which wasn’t easy for the girl with no shoes, and the guide ordered us a local dish of Shan noodle soup which is a type of thick, sticky noodle in stock (it is pretty good). The rickshaw reappeared 15 minutes later to everyone’s relief, and took us back to the guesthouse where we said goodbye to the guide and had a very much needed shower. That evening, we went up to the communal balcony area where we ended the day with some drinks, including an interesting concoction made by the German guys of rum, hot water and sugar.

A banana- the latest hair accessory

The following day we felt that we had earned a day of rest so had a lazy morning, and then in the afternoon had a walk around some more of the town. There was an area which had been named ‘Mini Bagan’ and even though the prospect of more temples and pagodas wasn’t that exciting, we thought we might as well check it out and see if it actually did resemble Bagan. The answer was, not much, apart from it being a small collection of ruins of payas and pagodas, but it gave us something to do. We also paid a visit to the nearby Nat shrine which has lots of animal statues, and a monastery with a bamboo Buddha. We spent the rest of the afternoon in a peaceful café with some fruit juices and booked our onward ticket to Inle Lake for the following day.

Someone has great taste in shrine decor

Buddhist gangsta statue with handfuls of cash

Making sure all the animals are well fed

'Mini Bagan'

A tree growing out the top of the ruins