We arrived in Yangon a day earlier than our 'EXPLORE!' trek started, so we braved Yangon on our own. We decided to walk the locals streets away from the standard tourist spots to see what it was really like. With our map, water etc we headed out into the heat, must have been at least mid 30's. The streets were really busy with small stalls selling food etc, crossing the road was an experience, they seem to just go with cars, trucks and bikes going around everyone, beeping their horns constantly. After over an hour we were drenched with sweat so hailed a taxi and asked to go to the Kandawgyi lake. Nice little walk around over a long wooden bridge, lake was quite green so no paddling! Taxi back to hotel and met up with our EXPLORE group. Our guide was a young lady from Myanmar called Xi (sounds like e) and we had a group of 15, not all what you might typically expect for a hill tribe trek in a hot country, but all seemed very nice. We all went out for food and early night ready for our first of many early starts!!
