Inaccessible Myanmar

Photos: Ngapali

tomaszo — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 03:54:00 GMT

Around the Inle lake during the Water festival

tomaszo — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 09:56:00 GMT

Got enough laying in the bed just after sunrise. It wasn´t like I was sleeping or something with all the stuff going on. By now the 600+ herons outside our bungalow started to yell aswell so I checked some photo opportunities. Some local fishermen are trying to catch the "fish of the day" just 40 meters outside our bungalow. This gives me a change to study their leg rowing technique. Presumably it´s developed so that you can use both hands while fishing and to have a better visibility while rowing through high reeds. Whatever the reason, it looks very unusual. It also seems quite tiresome since they only do it for very short periods if time. Looks definitely cool.

Our boat is suppose to arrive soon after breakfast. The local guide will show us all the main attractions of the lake. We have booked the guide from 8>17. Mental note - remember the sun block!
The boat was very large. We were sitting in wooden garden chairs on the wests. Plenty of room for two tourists. Very luxiourious except for the loud engine. The guide/captain/steerman showed us floating gardens. Amazing how they chop of a part of the floating land with big poles then tow it to a place where hey want to start a garden. What we saw was T O M A T O E S! Basically, they grow tomatoes like a MF! Small tomatoes for export to Yangon. After the gardens we saw the village on stilts, aka floating village. That was a real surprise. I was expecting shacks and small bamboo tents on stilts. In stead we saw a whole smaller city/large village with huge houses and a compete infrastructure adapted to life on water. People even kept pigs in bamboo cages above the water level. The “streets” are not deep now, during the dry season so the water is maybe waist deep in the deepest part. We cruised around in the Venice of the East Asia and saw the mandatory lotus flower silk factory/weaving factory. That was quite unusual. We´ve seen a plenty of silk factories in Asia but the silk produced from the lotus flower thread was very different. The technique is similar to producing silk from the insects but here the silk comes from the lotus steam and is much thicker. AND much more expensive! The fabric feels like linen and for a scarf they wanted 80USD. OK, ripoff or not that was a HIGH starting prise. Especially since hey didn´t accept credit cards. The rule: “the cash you bring is the cash you can spend” eliminates any big shopping since well...you never know what will happened during the remaining half of the trip. They did sell some ordinary silk for "normal" price. After the lotus silk factory we went for a small cruise around the village and ended up in a cheroot(?) cigar factory. Those huge thick joints smoked by older women, that´s the stuff. Nowadays a more normal size is used. A very happy and skilled lady showed us how she makes around 500 cigars a day. The best cigar makers in the village make around 800! The thick ones, she said, for old ladies, no popular anymore! After the cigars factory the captain took us to another village, don´t really understood the name since we were half deaf because of the small engine noise. This village took the water festival celebrations to a new level.Our guide handed us some umbrellas but it was just impossible to protect ourselves. We arrived to the first water station. EPIC! They lowered a fire fighting pump into the channel and hosed down ever boat that passed from both sides with several hundred liters of water. And that was just the first station! We stopped at the silver smith and bought something that we thought we could afford even if our budget would suffer. (During the last days we met a couple that needed to visit a local doctor. No more cash, no ATMs but a huge bill for the doctor! To keep the budget in Myanmar is a nightmare!). Anyway, after the silver smith, we visited the paper umbrella factory. Reeeeaaaaly cool stuff to see how they made the paper and then constructed the umbrellas. There were a couple of “longnecks” at the factory too. And yes, I took the picture of the poor older lady and her teenage girl but it just felt awkward. Sure, they do this for a living, posing for pictures but it felt like we were using them. Lunch at the channel excellent food. Special dish: fish/frogs 5000 and grilled fish 4000. I order a strange dish where I got a grilled fish but the inside was like a paste. They gutted the fish, stripped it of all content leaving the skin and refilled it with something, frogs for sure. It tasted really nice. The place was a perfect lookout point. We sat on the balcony, overlooking the the silver smith and just above a water station where all the tourists were drowned by tons of water by both kids and adults. The water in the main channel was hardly waist deep so the locals just crossed the streets at will, no bridges needed during the dry season.
A long boat ride later we came high up to the mountains. Some of the passages, were small dams were build to divert water onto the fields, were a bit stressful at first. It felt like the huge boat was on a collision course with the dam. The driver gave it full throttle to jump to the next level and up we went. You get used to it. Skilled boats-man for sure. Seeing water buffaloes just a meter from the boat swimming in the river was a bit fun for a while. So, SHWE INN TAIN! A very strange mix between the Angor Wat and the Bagan temples, kind off. Both the pagodas and the people here were more...”wild” or maybe “less civilised”? No, not that. They kept their old culture more pure from western influence! Really beautiful place. Worth the long boat ride and the long walk to the top. We went up the stairs and saw the main pagoda at the top. Some of the stupas were repaired. The sound of the stupas crows in the wind and the strange flora around this place was really special. We walked don on the right side of the staircase and aw some older pagoda ruined and overgrown. Indiana Jones country for sure. I wish we could say there longer. Nice! Back down I had a nice talk with a cool monk. He was the teacher at the local monastery/school. We talked about muay thai and football (yeah, I know, lame. Football is gay.) He liked my clothes because his were very thick and hot. Unfortunately for him, the orange robe are the monks mandatory fashion. No GoreTex for you my friend.
Next stop, the main pagoda on the lake. An army of hawkers approach us as soon as we left the boat selling anything that a pilgrim would need. It was after, a huge holiday and many took a journey to a pagoda since they had the time anyway. The three Buddha status were just covered in gold donated by the pilgrims. Leaf by leaf the covered the status and only three lumps of gold was visible. No women were allowed to touch the status so the guys pasted leaf after leaf on the lumps of gold. I didn´t even think there was status under the gold. I red about it later.
Off we went to the final destination, the Jumping Cat Monastery. The monastery was large, kind of nice but the most interesting thing was not the bloody cats that didn´t jump but the many pilgrims living there for the holidays. Really cool to see how hey lived in the monastery at the assigned pilgrim places. The cats however sucked!

We met some fellow travellers from C&C Travel at the hotel, again. We paid 9000 for 3 Mandalay beers. Well, a man has got to eat. We packed our luggage for the early departure the next day and ate sweet sour fish & chicken cashew. Price: 15000+7000 icluding 2 cokes and one beer. Way too much! But the portions were big!

The monk from across the lake started to send out his message again. Fakk!! Our hill monk however was silent. We do have a celebration of the last day of the festival across the lake on some of the islands. Like a discoteque, sending it´s cacophony across the water.

Early bedtime, our boat to the airport leaves the hotel at 06:00. Not a Christian time but what can you do?

Oh GREAT! Our monk woke up! Now we can liste to a buddist monk chant some holy scripts mixed with Lady Gaga in burmese the whole night.....focking great!

Photos: Inle Lake

tomaszo — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 04:42:00 GMT

Arriving at Inle Lake – a highly vocal religious experience

tomaszo — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 07:28:00 GMT

Early start and off to Inle lake we flew. The company: Air Mandalay! Two jumps 30 minutes each with a stop in Mandalay. The catering company supplied the Chicken tuna sandwich – a classic number two! NO CHICKEN SANDWITCH! FAKK! I preferred that. We landed on time in Thadwe. +27C! FREZING COLD compared to Bagans +43. Local people were wearing jackets and jeans!!! Talk about global warming! (The only effect of the global warming so far is that it´s actually that it´s colder. In Sweden at least. Eat that you ECO maniacs.)

The drive from the airport took approx. an hour. We were driving slowly because of all the water festival stations along the road. Crazy stuff. It was a bit different in a car with all the windows closed. Not the same as ride on a bicycle J. It´s really nice to see that everyone is celebrating and having fun. Well, we saw one elegant lady that went crazy after some kids poured one bucket of water on her head. Women... hahhahaa.
The architecture and the buildings were so much different here up in the mountains where the climate was cold, compared to the bamboo mat houses on the Bagan plain. The houses here were real houses and I guess that winters here could get real chilly. The road gradually got narrower and in the end hardly two cars could pass side by side. We finally arrived at Inle. A hectic little town serving as a hub for all tourists visiting Inle Lake. Looked like a hill station town, since the houses were adapted to the colder climate. First impression was that is was a town that you arrive to and then leave as soon as possible after you sorted out you ride to the Lake. Busy, crowded, and generally not especially inviting. Then....it was also colourful and full of life. I guess it depends on what you expected to see. Then we had the pleasure to arrive during the water festival. The water being poured on everybody from any possible containers. We drove through the city to the long boat harbour close to the bridge over the exit canal. Little Venezia! Really! Excpet that he gondolas in Venezia don´t have a noisy two stroke engine. We got an advice from the guy owning the boats to stock up on sodas and beer since the hotel stuff was expensive.
We were informed that the ride to the hotel, theGolden Cottages II in Thale U, would take additional 45 minutes by boat. That was a surprise. I guess a pleasant one? Seems like the Lake was much longer and bigger than I thought.
Mental note: when riding a boat across a lake at midday during dry season, put on some sun screen. My nose could compete in the “Rudolf´s nose” competition at X-mas in the evening!
We arrived at our hotel after a pleasant ride across the lake. Just the two of us in the long boat. The hotel is built on stilts and the bungalows do have an amazing view over the lake. The sun sets just in line with the balcony! Kick ass! Another surprise - when you arrive to the hotel, the staff walks out on the veranda and greet every new arriving guest with a short cacophony of local tribe music. Cute when you arrive but less cute when you sit in your bungalow and hear the orchestra banging on the instruments every time a boat arrives with guests.

We ate lunch at the hotel. No other option really. We were stuck on the stilts on the lake. They didn´t serve any fresh grilled fish. Needed to be ordered one day in advance! Lack of fish in the lake? So we had some Chinese fish dishes. I guess frozen fish fried in a wok. Tasted quite OK and the portions were huge. Paid 8000 chat - inclusive 2 beers. Winner! It seems that every place we visit is getting cheaper! GOOD TENDENCY since there were no ATMs and the only money we had was the dollars we brought. We got kind of bored of the hotel so we found our way to walk to the the Thale U village. Across the boardwalk, across the swampy brick laid path and onto the village road.

The village is very nice and clean. The houses lined the road along the road through the rice and banana plantations. Papaya trees lined the road. Water buffalos were resting in the shadows under the houses. So much greener then the villages in Bagan! The housing here seemed more sturdy. The houses seemed more permanent and well built. Might be the colder climate, the more productive crops, more wealthy farmers or all of the above. We walked through the village, along the road following a small creek with crystal clear water up to the crossing with a main tarmac road. A pleasant 25 minute walk. We continued up a staircase up to a monastery or some strange pagoda with a lot of elderly people sleeping there during the midday heat. Just as we started to walk up the stairs to the pagoda, we passed a huge tree with thousands of crickets on it. Nasty looking bugs sung so loud that we could hardly hear ourselves talking! Made some close up pics of them. Ugly little bastards. Except for a lot of elderly people sleeping in the Pagoda, there was nothing too see. A huge speaker mounted on a pole. The “sound of the day” was a monk reading some holy texts. On full volume. That texts could be heard all over our half of the lake, Including in our bungalow. It could be heard CLEAR and LOUD.

On our way back, the siesta was over and we saw several locals walking home their water buffalos back home from the fields, washing their mopeds and kids and teenagers chasing us with buckets of water of unknown origin :D. Just before getting back on the swamp path to the hotel, we parked at a local pub. The second last building in the village. The whisky selection impressive. The only thing they sold was whisky (local) rum beer, soda and betel. We sat there for maybe 45 minutes and the stream of locals was constant. Good business it seems! And it seems they are wealthy since the beer in Myanmar isn´t exactly cheap.

We walked back to the hotel for the midday siesta. That was the plan but the monk with the loudspeaker on the hill pagoda ruined that. Later, a second monastery could also be heard from across the lake and was echoing to our house on stilts. So much for the siesta. We learned a lesson to keep our siesta when the locals have their siesta. Then the monk with the loudspeaker from hell is also sleeping. Unfortunately the traffic on the lake increased as well. Hundreds of motor boats could be heard speeding across the lake, bringing the tourists back to Inle for the night. Some late guests arrived, so more local music from the staff = banging on the drums. And the heat...no aircond in the bungalow is maybe OK during the other seasons but right now, in high summer.....it´s a bitch.

We had a drink in the hotel lobby but it was already after sunset so we could a s well stay in the room. It´s not that kind of lobby you sit in for a longer time. The whole lake and especially our hotel is basically all about the view. When the sun sets, the lake looses it´s charm. Went back to the room and the friendly staff turned on the light outside our house. OK...now we had a whole mosquito farm of several hundred of bugs outside the door! Not nice! Can´t go in without letting some of them in. We took turns jumping into the bungalow, trying to not to let 7000 blood sucking bugs inside each time we opened the door (they did provide a mosquito net over the bed). Thought of reading a book on the balcony was quickly abandoned when we saw the moths and other bugs swarming around the light outside. NO WAY! The mosquito net was already wrapped around the bed so I guess it´s an early night. Booked a guide with boat for a whole day for 25000 chats to drive us to all the main attractions. Start 08:00!

20:30 the monk with a big ass speaker across the lake started his reading of the holy texts again. 30 minutes later, he is still going on...Right..... So the monk across the lake went on for ages. After him frogs and insects started their concerto. At around 04:00 the monk on our side of the lake, from the hill pagoda, started his chanting. And then the birds woke up. I do love nature and outdoors. A lot. But right now I´d rather have a good night sleep and watch the bloody birds on Animal Planet on teh TV.

Other than that our bungalows have seen their better days. The rooms are OK, but the bathroom would need a make over and some maintenance would not hurt. On the other side, the view from the balcony makes up for the few negativities.

Last day watching the beautiful temples in Bagan

tomaszo — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 06:18:00 GMT

“Early start” since that is our last day among the wonderful Bagan temples. Today we actually started early to catch the sunrise over the plain but it wasn´t rally much to see. Maybe because the haze during the dry period made the horizon...duuuh...hazy J? I´m not sure that the rainy period makes the air more clear but it´s for sure less dusty. We rode our single speed English Robin Hood bikes to one of the biggest temples just outside the main road close to the Tharaba gate . A short climb to the upper terrace and we saw the sunrise...OK. Not that sexy really. The sunset is much more beautiful and it lasts longer. Somewhat disappointed or rather...whatever...we continued the bike ride and we jumped temples all across the plains again without any goal or plan. The dirt track passing several hundreds of temples was nice. Sometimes it´s nice to get “lost”. That is when you really can enjoy the surroundings. After all, most of the temples look better on the outside then on the inside. It´s mainly about the landscape view of the Bagan plain. And let´s be honest, you can only consume a certain amount of Buddha images.

No adventures with any thorns in the tires today. We managed to bike across the fields to New Bagan without major hiccups. Except one mud guard coming loose. My Mrs stopped it by shoving a wooden stick in the hole where the screw used to be. Worked just fine for 20 kilometers! We got soaked to death by all the water stations around the New Bagan village and then later in Minkyaba. It was fine really since the clothes dried almost instantly and my photo gear was in a waterproof Northface bike courier bag. It was just sweet to be able to enjoy the local traditions and bring so much joy to the kids in the villages. Just before we entered the Minkaba there was a mother of all water stations. I guess half of the village people want out on the road. Both adults and children. They have put up some speakers that played the latest local rave hits. They all attacked and poured buckets upon buckets of water on everybody passing through, inclusive us. A sick combination of a rave party and a hosing down with water. Not even the monks, that seemed to be omitted by the water attacks in other places, were safe here. Everyone got some. I was a bit worried since the water came for the local pond and was not really safe to drink. Yes, you did get that water right in your face passing the water station, so it was hard to avoid it hitting your mouth but then....there was some local shops selling local Myanmar whiskey for disinfectionJ. Convenient. I was impressed by the amount of water a group of kids can pour in you in 10 seconds. It was amazing! We saw busses and pick up trucks leaking water several kilometers after they passed one of the stages. I´m not sure everyone liked it but hell...live with it. It´s a local custom and most of the people seem to enjoy it.

We stayed in Minkaba at the road shop just opposite the main temple and sat down and watched the locals having fun for hours. Went back to the mother of all stations to get some more photographs, got wet again. Didn´t really mind that since it was over +40C. On the way back home we shopped some more lackerware gifts and rode pass the hotel to the Sarababab behind the Tarabha gate for lunch. The sweet and sour duck and the grilled fish were actually OK, far better the lunch yesterday but the Myanmar cuisine is far better at the Gooden Myanmar 50meters futhrer down the road. Came back to the hotel at around 13:00 since the chain of my bike fell off! Easy fix, yes unless.....the chain in encapsulated in a metal cover and you can´t access it. Needed tools to remove it.Some local kids wanted to help us, I mean, how hard it it to put back a chain on a bike, but since we could not access it, we gave up. My Mrs jumped on the bike and used it as a push bike and on the flats I pushed her sitting on the crippled bike while I was pedalling on her bike. I think I lost like 8kg on that ride home hahahahaa. We got back to the swimming pool in midday and dropped dead on the launge chairs by the pool.

I guess four days among the temples. Even in a beautiful hotel like the Thiripyitsaya Sakura Hotel it´s actually enough. We didn´t visit EVERY temple. Nor was it our intension. We did get a good chronological ride among the temples of Bagan. We saw the amazing temple initiation rituals. We saw the life in a real rural village of Bagan. We experienced some great moments while joining the traditional water festival games. We got “lost” on the plain and rode our bikes all around the temples. We met some wonderful people. We got some nice relax time at our beautiful hotel and ate some great traditional Myanmar food. LIFE IS GREAT!

Photos: Bagan

tomaszo — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 02:02:00 GMT

On single speed bike around Bagain temples in baking hot sun

tomaszo — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 06:43:00 GMT

Me and my single speed bike!

Woke up before 07:00 to get some pics of the sunrise over the Bagan plain. We didn´t really managed to leave the hotel before 07:30 so it was a bit too late for taking pics. No problem. I´m a kick ass photographer so I figured, I´ll take some great pics in the mid day, baking hot sun and harsh shadows. And I did J and they all came out just perfect. To my defence, we had an ambitious goal to wake up at 06:00. Then we remembered...OH...VACATION,,,OK and slept in.
Anyway, we rented bicycles at teh hotel. “Robin Hood” Single Speed kick ass bikes! A relic from the colonial times J. They were quite OK really. Normal bikes, nu fuss. No bloody mountain bikes where all you energy is transferred to rocking the bike up and down instead of pushing the bike forward with the power of your body. Off we went. It was still before 08:00, hence no hawkers at the major sites. Except for one location. We left that temple quickly. We managed to get several temples to ourselves. Most of the guides start their tours at around 08:00 and we were long time on the road by then. We crossed the whole Bagain plain all the way to the tarmac road gig around it. Partly pushing the bikes across the fields. The sandy road were actually not that hard to ride on. Not as dusty as you might think and quite easy to ride on. Mostly packed sand. Every time we made a detour we managed to hit a thorn-zone! There were so many thorns in our tires that it was ridiculous! HAHAHAHHAAA I mean, the mother of a mine field for bikes! We pushed the bike through those areas and then scraped the thorns off with some twigs before we continued on the road. We met several locals going out to the fields to work. There are regular fields with crops growing on them all over the area between the temples. The plain also serves as a pasture for goats and cows. A real living cultural landscape. So, we cycled around on the sandy labyrinth. You could actually cross the complete plain in around 25 minute of easy riding if you go straight. We didn´t J. We hit the tarmac again and continued to New Bagan and Minkaba villages. In the mid water festival, we were open pray to all kids with water guns, scoops and buckets of water so we ended up cycling wet most of the time. Not that it was a problem since it was round 40C in the shadow. THERE WAS NO SHADOW THOUGH! No worries, the air is so dry that +27C in Scandinavia feels much more hot then +40C in Myanmar. At least we seemed to generate a lot of joy for the local kids. Stayed at some local restaurants along the way for a beer or two. We observed the locals being hit with tons of water to everybody’s enjoyment.

The beer stop in New Bagan was kind of cool. The Female Boss had all her children’s graduation photos and all vacation photos posted on the walls in the pub. And why not? She spent all day there so why hide it? There were no organised trips at the moment so she had the time to show us all the photos and explain every scene. We had a lot of laughs and then we continued to the Minkaba village. Boy did we get wet! Not only from all the local watering stations but also from all passing cars, busses, mopeds etc. The worst case was when a moped sneaked up behind you and poured ice cold water on your back from behind....GEEZAAS it was cold hahahhaa. I started to squirt some water back at the attacker from my own drinking bottle and that generated tons of laugh from all the passing attacker that got hit back J. Talk about bringing the customs to the localsJ. We sat down and had three beers in a shop with some chairs outside the main monument in Minkaba. It was a blast watching the locals repair mopeds, singing, getting water for their water guns/buckets, hawking, see the kids planning to shower someone with water etc. Like sitting in the front row in a theater. Sweet! We then rode back for lunch, passed our hotel, to the lunch outside the Tharaba gate to Sarababab II. Ordered some fish and stuff for 13000 chats. The food was so and so. Nothing special really. We had some American "backpacker wannabes” as company at the table beside us. Counted the word "like" like .... 9 times in one minute...”like, you know...like, it´s like spaced out here in Myanmar”. I guess they use “like” instead of the coma. AND YES! IF YOU DIDN`T WASH for a wek, have dirty clothes and if try to behave like a “backpacker” what do you order???? PIZZA OF COURSE! So did they.

We headed back to the hotel and relaxed at the pool. I´m not much for relaxing so I went on a walk on the river sand bank afternoon walk. Kind of like being in the desert but not really since we saw the river. The water in the river was way cooler they yesterday during my midday walk. Maybe it was raining up in the mountains? We sat down on sand dunes and watched the sun go down. Much better then sharing a temple sundown with 300 other "local people" and fat Americans in sandals walking around holy temples, smoking and spitting around.

We splashed out this evening. Fakk it! You only live once, I guess, since I´m a Roman Catholic. Had a lobster and a fisherman’s plate at the hotel for 60USD. That included 2 beers. Not really cheap but hell, how often do you eat lobster for 20 USD???? And show me a fisherman eating like I did that night...right....

Going to bed early...a whole day biking ahead of us!

A jourey back in time - a slow horse cart temple jumping day

tomaszo — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 07:28:00 GMT

Right, a day on a horse cart. The cart had only one axle, so the ride was doomed to be a bit like riding on a camel. The horse was a bit small and thin but never the less happy and agile. The start was early, 07:30 and the price: 17 000 Kyat.

We agreed on the itenary yesterday, together with the licensed guide, and this was it:
- Ananda temple + Ananda Ok Kyaung + Monastery
- Dhammayamgyi
- Sulammami
- Gubyaukkyi
- Mamuha
- Nat ta village monastery
- Nampaya
- Abeyadama
- Ngagayam
- Shwesamdaw

Quick breakfast on the beautiful terrace with the river and the far river bank still partly cover by the morning fog. The ride started slow. In fact, the horse drawn carts were slower then a easy bicycle ride. Equipped with a lot of beers and time we rode to some of the main temples we didn´t manage to see yesterday. Since I was the photographer on this trip, the horsey had to endure me jumping on/off all the time, on the far end of the cart. All 93-95kg of me :D. The cart was comfortable, with cloth shades and soft pillows but the rocky ride needed some time to adjust to.

A quick look in the most beautiful and grand Ananda, than a visit to the amazing wall paintings in the Ananda Ok Kyaung before all the busses with tourists come and off we went. We heard this strange laoud musicso we asked the driver to follow the noise. On the back side of the Ananda we had this amazing luck to see a massive procession of kids entering the monastery/nunnery. Probably because of the Water Festival and the holidays there were plenty of rich families in the procession to the Ananda temple. A HUGE cortege! All the boys with make up on horses and all the girls in decorated ox carts. You could clearly see that these families were not poor and the driver said they all came from Yangon. Compared to the children processions we saw in Yangon and Mandalay, this was the real deal. All bells and whistles! Amazing show! In fact, it was my most exciting memory from Myanmar. I felt like we moved in time about 600 years.

We continued to the different temples on the itenary. As soon as we entered a large temple, we sat down and enjoyed the shady, cool inside of every temple. We engaged in many funny conversations with the locals, we had our picture taken with tens of families and it was generally a very happy and tranquil ride. Riding around half the day in slow horse phase and watching temples is the shit in Bagan. Except the temples, there was however another jewel, the wooden monastery in the Nat ta village! An old wooden teak monastery more than 200 years old. Still serving as an active monastery. That day , some rich dude was funding the main meal at 12:00 and the whole monastery was decorated with red carpets and nice table cloths. We timed it, by chance, to see the monks eat. The carved roof in parts still had the original colours. The whole monastery was almost as beautiful as the royal temple in Mandalay. It felt at least as impressive that day.

From the Nat ta village, we had lunch at the same “all in Myanmar buffet meal” near the Tharaba gate. Good! Starting to live like a Buddhist monk! A meal at 12:00 and later just drinking (beer). Question, how come we paid 17 000 for the buffet yesterday and 10 000 today? We compared the check, I took a photo and the difference was one Coke, that´s it. Generally it´s much cheaper to eat then drink in Myanmar. The prices are low. But it still sucks that these friendly people make this kind of scams. Put 20 000 in the menu if you must and don´t give me different prices for the same service/items every day.

And how about the hawkers? I mean, c´mon! Even if I wanted to buy something I give up since they attack you as soon as you arrive. Please, lte me look at the stuff you sell and I´ll buy something for sure. But NO, not stopping there! They follow you around inside the temple and even follow the horse cart on mopeds and try to push the sand paintings and fake rubies & sapphires. Shite! It ruins the whole experience. How I missed the friendly hawkers in Cambodia. They seemed like angels in comparison. I´ve never seen so aggressive hawkers in Asia. Not even at Pearl market in Beijing! They certainly know how to destroy an experience. The hawkers in the Minkaba village were so aggressive that I got really pissed. Another annoying thing when walking bare foot around the outside of the temples....Acacia thorns. Ouch! PAIN!

We ended the day on a overcrowded Shwesamdaw paya, looking at the sunset, Most of teh tourist were photographying the govensment´s lookout tower :D suckers. The biggest show was not the sunset itself, since it was quite hazy and the last 20 minutes the sun was hidden behind clouds. No, in stead we looked at all the different tourists and how they experienced Bagan in so many different ways. Laughing, seriously, religious, commercial, “another tic on my list”, spontaneous, bored...all kinds of experiences on one1000+ years old stone pyramid representing the greatness of the humans. How we all can join forces and build something that great to honour a God we believe in. We don´t do much of those constructions nowadays. I guess our modern god, the money, does not require that stable places to worship. Show me a stock market building or a shopping mall that is 2000 years old. Sun down, time to go. It felt a bit like the sun set in Angor Wat. Everybody is talking about how great it is and everybody is just happy that it´s over and they leave.
On the way back I noticed that every location with more than three houses was preparing for the Water festival. It is starting tomorrow! I guess I better protect my camera in some way. I use a bike messenger bag so the bas is OK but it depends on the amount of water we get hit with. Being a foreigner, we will be open pray in every village and for every kid equipped with a water gun. They even built a stage just outside the hotel lobby. Prepare to get wet. Very wet!

In the evening, after a refreshing swim, we had a nice dinner at the hotel. 47usd Ouch! A huge bowl of shan noodles and teryaki butter fish with two beers. Very tasty, massive potions but c´mon..the price was a little bit off. Sitting at the terrace, overlooking the mighty, somewhat dry Aywarwady river, full stomach and waiting for a long drink. FAKK the 50 dollars! Life is good!

Chronologial temple hunting day on the Bagan plain with a local guide

tomaszo — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 05:59:00 GMT

The TEMPLE HUNTING DAY! The guide picked us up quite early, before it got hot. And hot it would become, +42C! We agreed on the itenary:

· Bulethi pagoda
· Nyaung Oo market
· Shwe Zi Gon pagoda
· Gu Byauk Kyi temple
· Wet Kyi Inn village
· Hti Lo Min Lo temple
· Anauk Phaw Saw village
· Pha Ya Thon Zu temple
· Ta yoke Pyay for the sunset.

We hired a car with AC with guide & driver for the whole day for 60 USD. Good tendency. The prices are getting lower. I don´t mind paying for a guide and a car but in a country without ATMs and without possibility to use credit cards it gets a bit uneasy sometimes.

The tour started with the older architecture and continued onwards 11th to 13 th century. We started up far away in Bulethi paya where we took a slow start and had a long talk with the guide while we sat on the top of the pagoda looking at sun rising slowly over the Bagan plain. The view was fantastic, the weather not yet hot so it was a perfect morning. The hawkers really can screw up the most beautiful site. They were already active selling sand paintings on top of the pagoda. We talked about politics, as always, and came to a conclusion that since Chinese eat everything, we could export military from Myanmar to China and also ex. communists from Poland so they could be eaten by the Chinese. I mean, both the commies and the military sucked and were not really wanted by the anyone except themselves. Parasites.

We then continued to Nyag U and the local market. Already filled with people selling and buying the crops, fish, meat and all kinds of strange things, most of which could be eaten. What a difference to visit a market with someone who knows the salesmen! The guide explained what crops are used in what way, what the different spices are and we spend around 2h looking and tasting the different foods. We buught some strange foods and generally had a good time. The sweet & spicy mango slices were very tasty! Had a lot of laughs with a lady selling rats. She called them mice but they were the mothers of all mice in that case. Already skinned and cleaned, they looked almost yummy. We also learned that the locals are a bit unhappy because the hotels buy all the prawns and river lobsters from the fishermen and local people can´t buy those products as easy as before. I bet. The river lobsters we ate in Cambodia were bloody superb! I could eat one every day!

So we went to the Swedagon pagoda. A gold pagoda crowded with local people, tourist, salesmen. A very busy place. It actually looked exactly like so many other pagodas so it was maybe not that interesting from the architectural point of view but they did leave one section without plaster and gold so that you could see the brick work underneath. I especially liked the old Nats in one of the side temple. The Nats were pre-Buddha so they were really interesting as part of the original Myanmar religion that survived the religious revolution.

I noticed a Korean photographers “mafia” equipped with all the possible Lowe-pro gadgets and bags and all the latest Nikons bodies with the latest lenses. Geezas! Is it really photography when your guide says to a monk to walk back and forth before a group of 6 photographers so they can get a nice shot? (In midday sun where the pics will be crap anyway, regardless of your Photoshop skills).

Enough with the Swedagon. Several busses with Italian tourists pulled up so we fled. Needed to stop for a short loo visit so we pulled up to an ITALIAN (?) place serving pizza. It was just an emergency stop for toilet (& beer for me) on the way but GEEEZAS! I mean common! You spend hundreds of dollars, hell thousands to come as far as Myanmar, and then you end up in a PIZZERIA?? And guess who sat there?! A pair of backpackers! The kind of backpackers who visit old temples and say “whoaaaw, could you feel that spirits, sunset” etc. bullcrap with meditation and all. That kind that don´t wash their clothes for a week and don´t take showers since it´s un-cool to bring western civilisation to remote regions. Right, that is why they order a fakking PIZZA! To NOT spread the "civilisation" around. I´ve been travelling across the world since I was 16 and believe me, there is always a place to take a shower and you can always wash your t-shirt somewhere. And no, I did not eat pizza in Myanmar. J

Went forward to Gu Byauk Kyi temple. A beautifully painted pagoda from 11th century. Some really old paintings that were so fragile and looked so detailed. If not for some German bloke that ordered some poor locals to cut the painted plaster in bits and rip it off the wall, it would be even better looking. Now there were several cut marks. It still looked kick ass!

Next stop, LUNCH! Wet Kyi Inn village, just outside the Tarabha gate again but in the third restaurant from counting from the old gate, the Golden Myanmar food place. HUGE buffet of Myanmar food attracted locals in masses and occasional tourists with their guides. A very popular place. Our guide said that since it´simportant to eat fresh meat in hot season, “it´s important to have fresh food for the stomach” they all ate there. And Boy did we get a selection of food! We paid 17000 (we paid 10 000 for the same selection the next day) for the buffet and 4 beers. OK price we thought.

Midday break at the hotel, until 16:00, for beer and swim and sunbathing. I was a bit restless so I went for a walk on the hot river sandbank. Hot as hell and dry as a desert. I found some old broken jars. I bet they were not ancient but just let me believe for a moment that they were from 11^th centuryJ. The bottom of the jar was very uneven so it was definitely not made by a machine.

The guide picked us up and we drove to New Bagan to see a local lackerware workshop. Bagan is famous for lackerware so the guide proudly showed us the shop in his home village. We saw the whole production cycle and bought some souvenirs that seemed to be of nice quality. The horse hair lackerware that was so flexible was great! Another amazing temple and then into the Anauk Phaw Saw village. Alocal agricultural village where we had a chance to walk around the households and see how people lived in a village on the Bagan plain. What a ride back to the 11^th century! No running water, no electricity, no horses. Just oxcarts, bamboo huts and peanuts. That was a real strange experience. To see the poverty but also the happiness and joy that the people had was something different. I would not trade with them but I did envy them their freedom and the way they all helped each other as a big community. The guide explained t us how the richer took care of the m poor ones and how the “modern” world is slowly changing the old way of life. We spend over an hour looking at the village life and learning how the villagers lived and worked. We left with a smile and I´m still thinking of the people we met there. I bet they are more happy the we are right now, without a car, without the internet, the PS3, the latest Android phone etc.

From there we visited the “triple” temple. Very cool temple that housed three Buddha images. And I was a bit fed up with the hawkers there. I´ve never seen hawkers sell their crap inside the temples! That was a bit too much. I know, they need to make a living but please, let us look at the inside of the temples in peace and show some respect. It is after all a holy place. Not OK. The triple temple had some amazing paintings inside and the sun setting gave the Buddha images a nice orange glow.

Continued to the Ta yoke Pyay for the sunset. Quite crowded, even the guide was surprised. After all he grew up here and worked as a guide for living. Hetold us that he use to run off from school to hide in just that temple with his friends J. We looked at the Buddha inside and went up. Puffing and breathing heavily, sweating like a pig I made it up. Yes! And what do we see? The Korean NIKON MAFFIA on the way up in share panic! Hurry guys, the sun is setting!!!! With the tripods, backpacks, bags, light meters, lens cases, flash guns etc. I bet that you could equip 7 pro photographers and cover a whole war with that equipment! I´m being quite unfair since I also had 5 pro lenses in my bike courier bag. They were all quite amazed when I stared to rip out my lenses out of the bag. I guess I need to buy more lens cases and carry them in a bike courier bag J. Squeezed out some nice shots and enjoyed the sunset while listening to the Nikons shutter sounds.....

Back at the hotel the gudie asked us if we wanted to rent a horse cart for the next day. SURE WE WOULD! He helped us to select one just outside our hotel and we book the ride for the next day. The price was 17000 for a whole day. OK! We usually pay that for a dinner for two!

To sum up the day. the guide didn´t show us EVERY temple in Bagan. Nor was it the plan. He meant that most of them we could explore ourselves. He showed us the most important ones in chronological order, except the main one, the Ananda. From the early period and forward. We learned how the architecture changed and maybe more important, he showed us the CULTURAL LANDSCAPE of the Bagan plain. How people live today. And I´m guessing, for some of the people in the remote villages, the life did not change that much since the 13^th century. A priceless experience. An important lesson that I will remember for the rest of my life.

Shin Lu Soe Gyi at the Tarabha gate in Old Bagan

tomaszo — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 02:22:00 GMT

Our last day in Mandalay. We packed our stuff and didn´t even had the energy to swim in the pool. We were supposed to be picked up at 11:00 by our driver so we finished the stash of beers and sat on the sofas and watched the Mandalay hill. Thanking Gos we didn´t had to walk all the way up the hill again. We waved goodbye to our guide/blue Mazda driver and off we went to Mandalay international airport. Crazy traffic and crazy driving but we made in 1h, door to door. I got tonns of laughs at the airport because of my t-shirt. I bought a t-shirt at the Monsoon restaurant shop in yangon saying: Shin Lu Soe Gyi, Big Bad Man, but since a girl says that (hence the shin) it menas NAUGHTY BOY J. We waited for the chaotic check in where everybody seemd to be dragging our bags to different counters. It seems like they didn´t believe we can hand over the ticket and pull our bags ourselves. Since nothing in this world is free, the crew wanted a small donation for dragging the bags back and fourth...so we gave them some money for their HELP.

A short flight. 25 min later we landed in Bagan! 10 USD entry fee and off we went to our hotel. Red/white painted curbs and clean roads maintained for the visit of No1 looked a bit out of place but what impressed me most was the sheer amount of temples along the road to our hotel in Old Bagan. I mean...GODDAMIT! THOUSANDS of temples from the size of a tall human to massive huge ones easily compared to the ones around Angor Wat . Massive! I LOVED IT!!!

The drive to the Thiripyitsaya Sakura Hotel was quick. The guide that picked us up with the car was a happy young man so we had tons of laughs on Number 1´s cost J. Political leaders, always an easy target. We booked book the guide for the next day to look at the temples and went for a swim at the hotel pool. Nice river view, tranquil place with distant hills and pagodas on the horizon. Than a horde of some bloody kids came running shouting in Dutch and ruined the fun. So we deserted the pool and rented bicycles and went for a short trip around Old Bagan. A short bike ride took us past some amazing temples, a huge very closed archeological museum that looked misplaced, a small local village close to the old palace site where a water festiwal stage was being built and ... we were out on the other side. We crossed the Tarabha gate. I remembered the kind old English teacher and his love poem about the lover at the gate...Aww :D. So bloody romantic :D. Ah, the first encounter with the horse carts in Bagan! They looked nice. It later showed that sitting in a horse cart that has one axel is not that nice after all.

It was getting dark soon so we grabbed a meal at the Sarababab..or something, just outside the gate. The food was OK but nothing special. At least it was local – we comforted ourselves. The crispy duck was way too salt and the green chili fish was ... too watery. Did not eat there anymore.

While we sat there and ate I read the romantic description of the old gate in the LP guide. That no one passes without offering something to the Nats (old gods) first and that the gate is respected by all. I watched motorbikes wizzed through it like they were chased by the police, I saw bicycles ride by spitting the red betel nut saliva close to it, the horse carts just passed it like nothing happened, the trucks, busses and pick ups just speed right through it. I guess times change quickly.

I found a lackerware shop on the LP guide map in the village behind the restaurant so we tried to find it. We were soon followed by very kind young kids wanting to help us .. kind of...or it showed....they wanted to help us to buy their paintings. They were no so aggressive and we weren´t interested in paintings so they got a nice bike ride and an English lesson instead. We never found the lackerware shop in the end so we rode to the pagoda on the river bank, the Bu pagoda, to look at the sunset. Bought beer and headed back to the hotel. An empty pool to wash off the dust was exactly what we needed.

Photos: Mandalay

tomaszo — Sat, 9 Apr 2011 22:11:00 GMT

Botanical gardens in Pyu In Oo - old British hill station

tomaszo — Sat, 9 Apr 2011 01:44:00 GMT

We wanted to get out of Mandalay for a day. It´s not the best looking city in the world. On top of that, it was very hot and noisy. Also some strange wind blew in last evening and covered everything in fine red dust. So we read about those botanical gardens in an old colonial hill station. Cool gardens up in hills sounded just right.

We hired a car with AC to drive us to the Pyu In Oo for 90 USD. The same driver we had that drove us to U Bein and to airport. Don´t know when they wrote the LP guide but they claimed it´s feasible to get there in a car for 5000 Kyats. We pay 4000 kyat to ride around the city in a cab. Maybe a slow bus or a seat on a pick up truck for a local would cost 5000 Kyat? The drive itself to Pyu In Oo took almost 2h and the driver was flooring it most of the time. Mid ways came the serpentines. It was a struggle - a convoy of cars drove in to a water cooling depot on top of the mountain to hose of the engines and breaks. I´m not entirely sure it´s the best idea buy hey...when in Rome....you break your car! J

We passed the huge Military officers school on the way in. I think the driver told us that around 3000 officers are being trained there right now. That is A LOT of young officers! We later saw a few of them around the city, shopping and running around in their uniforms.

So, finally the old hill station Pyin In Oo. The driver parked us close to the market, the central market. The only difference between the goods on this one and other central markets was that this market had some really warm clothes to offer. Like fleece jackets and thick insulated jackets. We left after some minutes since we were not in the shopping mode right now. We made a detour and walked to the church and got to the Gold triangle cafe. A very clean and nice café located in a beautiful colonial building. They sold organic fair trade coffee so we bought a bag home. The cookies they sold were OK and the views of the street life and the old houses were excellent. We spent an hour or two there, just idling and talking to the locals. Saw some stressed Americans with LP guide making and entrance, drunk a coffee in 3 seconds, checked the Café of the “to do list” and run out again. That was fun J. I also talked to an old English teacher from the high school. Since I´m into preserving cultural habitats we spoke a lot on how the new fast food culture changes the life of today’s youth and the old Myanmar traditions. He told me of his passion for translating old texts. He could read all of the older texts but he could not understand all of it yet. He showed us how to decode dates in the old Myanmar calendar and gave me a poem about the Tabara gate in Bagan. A historic lowe story about two lovers made immortal with the status on the gate sides. Sweet old man!

Went back to our car. In the mean time the driver almost got a heart attack since we were gone for so long. I guess he was used with the kind of tourists that you need to hold in hand. Poor guy. We hugged and laughed and all was good again. Not my fault the old teacher liked us so much that he read several poems to us.

We looked around the small city centre and drove onwards. Next stop was the “Lucky” pagoda. Just another pagoda I guess. A big one. In the middle of nowhere. After that we visited the waterfalls. A very popular place with water powered merry go round, people swimming in the pools and having lunch at one of the many restaurants that lined the river and the falls. The shops sold a lot of local wine, pinapple wine, cherry wine etc. I was tempted to drink one but I decided that was a bit early still J. We drove onwards to the main attraction – the botanical garden. I took a good while to get to the gardens from the city centre. A 5 USD entrance fee. So the gardens were...OK. Not much more then that can be said. The aviary was ok. The orchid garden was boring, only whites ones in bloom. The bamboo forest was phenomenal! What a cool place! Afterwards I was a bit concerned about the fact that there could be a lot of snakes in the forest and we were just running around in the bamboo heaven playing Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. After all, I thought it would be more exotic but it was rather looking like an old English park. DUH! Old colonial British botanical garden....ring a bell? We also got a “pleasure” to listen to Myanmar ABBA covers during the whole visit since there was a concert or something in the park. Festival time – remember? Oh! And there are hundreds of carp fish in the ponds that you can feed!!! Funny stuff!

We chose the Feel restaurant, the same branch like the one in Yangon, the one we liked so much, as a lunch restaurant. Situated on the end of the lake, by the football fields, the location is great. The restaurant is huge and clean but does not serve food in the same way they do in Yangon. I guess they have less clients still to do that. They looked recently opened, and the food was excellent. The driver ordered a huge fruit dessert with ice cream. It was like 1/10 of his body size J. A real celebration! Along the road back to the town, we saw a lot of old colonial mansions. We said bye bye to Pyu In Oo after lunch. The driver stopped by an Indian bakery and bought some sweets for his children. AAAAw J Sweet guy! And he bought us some sweets too! Awwww nice! :D.

The road back to Mandalay down the serpentines with a driver that was in a hurry to get home was also an experience. We arrived in Mandalay in late afternoon. The sun was setting, the dust was whipped up by the traffic, the mopeds were noisy...we were back for sure.

A swim in the pool and we took the blue Mazda for dinner. To the Golden duck of course since it´s the kick ass place to visit. So up we go and guess wot ...they RUN OUT OF DUCK! Fakk! No duck?

Mandalay Hill and the sites around.

tomaszo — Fri, 8 Apr 2011 07:36:00 GMT

Lazy breakfast ended with us being invited t a wedding ceremony. called barmitzwa for a strange reason. I´m not jewish but hey, a wedding isn´t really a barmitzwa, is it? We felt a bit underdressed while all the ladies wore the traditional silk dresses with elegant designs. The guy was from Singapore but the bride was from Myanmar we heard. The officla celebration started so we left them and went for the big climb – The Mandaly Hill.

The plan was to see the Mandaly Hill, then the world’s largest book - the Kuthodaw Paya, then the teak wood monastery, the only original remaining building from the Kings palace - the Shwenandaw Kyaung. I thought we could rent a bike at the Mandalay Hill Resort fitness centre. They requested 6 USD for a half day for one bike. Yeah right. For 12 Usd I could bloody buy a bicycle. Went outside to our red teeth betel nut chewing blue Mazda driver that seem to live outside the hotel. I guess we were the only guests going outside the hotel on a un-organised tour. All the guest either did not speak a word of English and all the locals had their own cars or mopeds. Every time we requested a taxi a bell boy embarrassed asked is it “OK with small taxi?” He meant the blue Mazda. We made a deal for 7000 for a round trip to all the sites. A tour to the city or from the city was 4000 so 7000 seemed OK. I explained the itenary for the driver and he said he is “NOT go to the hill, too steep!”. It took me 3 minutes to tell him that we wanted to WALK UP and that he was supposed to wait for us. Actually, there is a tarmac road almst all the way to the top so it IS feasible to drive. We started 10:00. The lazy morning ended when we started to climb all the bloody stairs. Oh boy did we climb. We entered the Mandaly Hill from the entrance with the two lions. Looked relaxing. A shady walkway, up some stairs, then a platform with some merchants selling water and food and some other junk. Further up, another sales place with yet another set up of stairs afterwards. It never ended. Finally we reach the top. Took some photos of the panoramic view, enjoyed the Buddha image. A guy with some sorts of ID came up and said ticket, camera...he repeated “camera” a couple of times. I said, “Yes a kick ass camera” and showed him it could film in HD as well and then he left. I also told him that the stairs up here were punishment enough and that the government don´t need to charge us for the combo ticet during the hot season. That shut him up and he disappeared. To my amusement, I noticed that we were only 2/3rds up the hill, and we still had the most steep part left. I was sweating rivers already, hauling my Eos 7D with the battery pack, the xtra lenses and some other shite in my shoulder bag. We made it to the top. Spent like 10 minutes on the top, lost another litre of sweat and went down. Nice interval training in +42C.

We drove on to the world’s largest book. It was an impressive thing with hundreds (729) marble tablets, each one protected by a small pagoda. Amazing place, especially for a writer like me J. OK, I´m a technical writes and I use minimalistic style so I´d write the same on 13 tablets or so but hey, that was one huge book! I loved the place. Among the pages of the book, the star fruit trees were planted and a golden pagoda was erected in the middle. A very tranquil place. It demanded respect and it came naturally in a way. You lowered you voice while in there and there are only a few hawkers in the premises. Even they respect the place.

After the book we went o the teak monastery. Shwenandaw Kyaung. An amazing rather small building with beautiful carvings. I guess that is how far you can take the teak building technology. Top of the line. Nough said.

The driver proposed we visited the Sandamuni Paya on our way home, so we did that. Even more tablets here. 1774 marble slabs of commentaries to the Tripitaka. How is that for an Appendix to a book??? A nice place to visit since you are already there. It was built on the same place where prince Kanaung was killed. I was done sweating so we went back to the hotel for a swim.

In teh afternoon we took the blue Mazda to the “78 shopping mall” to see what they had to offer. Pretty much what they had in Yangon actually. We walked the 78th street back to the Palace and visited some other malls and cafes on our way. Seemed like the shopping street in Mandalay. The railroad station was really grand! Looked like an exclusive hotel. Fought the traffic and dust and we finally reached the palace moat. The whole city seemed to be covered in a dust cloud. I almost lost my voice from talking in the fumes and dust. We walked past the half finished stages being set up for the water festival. The extremely loud music from the stages and the traffic made it almost a torture. And NO, I´m NOT getting old. The decibel level actually made my ears hurt! I´m suddenly happy that I will NOT be here for the Water Festival Celebration. It´s like being sober at a rave party without ear plugs being washed down with a water hose from the fire department. I´m not sure it´s nice. (Later we were hosed down in both Bagan and around and on the boats at Inle lake and it was OK.)

We walked all the way to Ko´s thai restaurant. A thai restaurant we found in the LP. Ordered some papaya salad, catfish salad, tom yum gong and shite. The food was OK. SPICY was the word but the portions were quite small. I´d much rather spent the equivalent at the Golden duck just 3 streets away and have a much larger and more tasty meal. Oh, the dessert we got looked like fish eggs in milk and it tasted...similar. DON´T EAT THAT!

Could not get a taxi outside so we started walking towards the hotel. Managed to hail a blue Mazda outside the Golden duck, where else, and went home for 4000 Chats...yes...standard price.

The wedding in the garden was still going on, ended around 21:30. We later got to know that the wedding reception during the day was the old fashion traditional part and later at night the celebration was more informal and more like a western wedding. Including a wedding coordinator that was leading the party. They all looked to have fun. I hope they have a nice life.

Boat ride to Mingun, Sagaing and car to U Bein in Aramapura

tomaszo — Thu, 7 Apr 2011 06:04:00 GMT

Early morning, quick breakfast of the Mo Hin Ka soup, special spelling, and off we go. Soup at Kandawgyi was much better and served with boiled eggs but the buffet was impressive nevertheless. Off to the chartered boat at the jetty. Mrs Evil was entertaining us with old folk tales about ancient kings and the 1 hour boat ride passed quickly. She also told us about the lives of the “sand n*ggers” living on the river islands during the dry period. Actually she said SAND DIGGERS later but I bet she said the N-word a couple of times. Bear in mind that this is an older upper class lady and she clearly showed what she felt about the poor part of the “local people” J. Every attempt to sell us some postcards or other “sheit” from the “boat lady” was stopped dead by Mrs Evil. So,the SAND DIGGERS were digging sand for construction works in Mandalay. We arrived at Mingun, passing some meditation centres along the way. The meditation centre just before Mingun is home to one of the chief priest. He lives there and educates several thousands of monks. Before we walked to the shore, we heard the stories about wise ministers and the king building the biggest pagoda. The giant unfinished pagoda of Mingun in the haze looks huge.

Mingun itself is just a minimal farming village with the cracked huge rock/unfinished pagoda. The Mingun bell and the paya are all along the river bank.

First stop the pagoda by the river front. But before that I saw an old man in a ox cart with a taxi sign :D. We both laughed and since we had the guide with us we just avoided that means of transport. The villge is way to to hire an ox cart. You walk through it in 15 minutes. We walked to the cracked pagoda and up the stairs. GODDAMNIT it was HOT! I was sweating my ass off! 43C in the shade is not ideal climbing weather with heavy photo equipment bag. A horde of kids waited for us on the top, showing us where to go and where to take the best photo for a small reward. Nothing for free of course. The wiev from the top is quite amazing with the distant hills on the horizon, the village below and the palm trees across the fields looked very nice. The Irrawady river is really one big river. Mandatory beer stop after the climb. Exponsive beer! 4000 for 1 beer and 1 coke! There was a nice cool breeze on the ground but pure hell on top. Strange really. It should have been windy at the top. We went to the Myanmar "Taj Mahal" pagoda built by a king for a loving wife that died prematurely. That was actually nicer then the cracked one. After that we went to see the bell. That was the one huge bell! Impressive! Myanmar local people sure know how to cast bronze bells! We walked on the streets lined by aggressive salesmen. We would actually thinking of buying something but if they just left us alone so we could look at their wares in peace. No such chance so we were just annoyed and walked away. The walk to the ferry via a retirement home for elderly people was interesting. Since there is no tax in Myanmar many rich donate the cash for building homes for elders.

Back on boat for a pleasant 2h cruise to Sagaing, the modern capital of Buddism in Myanmar. A current Bagan. The whole area is littered with pagodas and more pagodas and monasteries and nunneries. We visited the “cave Buddha”, burnt our feet on the hot marble tiles. The area is so huge that it´s almost impossible to cover it all in one day without a guide or a transports of some sort. We spent several hours with a car driving us to the most important locations and it was still a rush! The views from the hills over the river and the bridges are amazing.

We ate something at a Chinese/Myanmar food joint – Saging Hill restaurant. 13500 Chats for food and drinks. Not tasty, not expensive and not worth visiting unless you need to but very clean. Good toilet!

We drove off in a car to U Bein bridge, or Aramapura. To road over the new bridge was fast and smooth. Visited a silk factory while we waited for the sun to set in Aramapura. Yet another silk factory, I know.......but the designs were different here in Myanmar! U Bein bridge – here we come! Walked the bridge 1.5km to other side. Crowded with tourists, some in more hurry then others, some sitting down, some running to catch that Kodak moment with monks on the bridge. Many local people tourists. A rowing boat was waiting for us on the other side, nr27! We saw that on the straw helmet of the rowing gay! We hurried up on the bridge so that we could avoid the 2 busses of Italians but it soon showed that they only had 15 minutes on the site :D so we were quickly eft alone with the locals and Myanmar tourists. Many kids and tourist had vacation because of the water festival/hot season. Since most of the sites are both famous and religious they also take to opportunity to visit the sites. The boat was 4000 Chat and that was actually NOTHING since a taxi i Mandalay costs at least 4000! More than twice the ride cost in Yangon and you get the shitty blue Mazda pick up and not a real car like in Yangon. Saw some guys trying to photograph the bridge from the land and I bet you 1000 bucks you get a better pics from the boat at sunrise where you can position yourself where you want. If you spend so much cash an effort of coming to U Bain, fakk, pay the 4000 and make it worth the effort!

From Aramapura we drove back to the hotel and went for a swim in the pool and then the Golden duck chinese restaurant along the east side of the palace. Ate a steady meal with fish and duck. GREAT PLACE! Could not make any pics since the battery died on me!!!!! GRRRRR! I warmed the battery in my armpit for a while and managed to squeze 2 photos out of it before it died. A meal half a duck cost around 10 000 but a normal dish is around 4000. The place is great and you get a nice view over the moat and the palace wall.

First noisy encounter with Mandalay

tomaszo — Wed, 6 Apr 2011 02:59:00 GMT

Left Yangon early...like 11:00 :). The hotel had some hot water tank maintenance scheduled and it resulted in a flood of old sewer water spill outside the lobby. The staff cleaned it up quickly but the staff sprayed 11 cans of Breeze in the lobby.

Funny thing, Myanmar drivers tend to answer the mobile phones just while waiting for the green light, not while driving. Safety precaution or legal issue?

The domestic airport terminal in Yangon was kind of cool. We all got a stickers, different colors depending on what flight/company we were using. Everybody seemed to understand the system except MR SPECIAL CHINESE GUY who run around the terminal like a beheaded chicken asking everybody everything ...in Chinese. Short flight and we arrived at Mandalay International. +37C. Sweet! The security check for the bags was made AFTER we exited the plane. Well, we had one BEFORE we boarded too....

We were greeted by the guide, and elderly lady. I guess a former school teacher or intelligence officer. Very hard on us, asked us a lot of question about the country. Her English was very good but I guess she was specially educated for the job as a spy or someone that was educated to torture people with hard questions J. We did have a lot of fun though and a lot of laughs. We booked her for a trip boat+car Mingun>Sagaing>U Bein (Amarapurna). Own private boat, guide for the whole day, no lunch, 156 USD for 2 persons. I can live with that.

So off to Mandalay we go. One hour in a car constantly using the horn. A clear difference between Yangon, where the motor bikes are forbidden. Mandalay´s “local people” seem to use the horn just because they own it. Fakk what noise that generates. The road from the airport was nice. Beautiful old alleys framed by very old Mulberry trees. We also crossed the highway to the new capital of "General or Number 1" as everybody called him with a smile. A three file tarmac highway with no traffic on it. I guess no one was allowed to go there J.

Up at 7 and Mrs EVIL was already waiting for us in the lobby!

We agreed on the itenary:

6th free time from Mrs Evil, we make Mandalay on our own

7th boat trip Mingun > Sagaing car to U Bein

8th free time from Mrs Evil, walk up to the Mandaly hill and all the trempleas around it like the worlds biggest book.

9th trip to the Waterfalls

10th 11:00 car to airport, and fly to Bagan. no boat ride since the low season and tourist boats are not running.

Checked in at the Mandalay Hill Resort hotel, sweet to have your name posted on the welcome sign, except that it was only my name, not the misses :D. The hotel and the service is superb. I really don´t get why people are complaining on the Tripadvisor. If they complain about this hotel I just wonder which hotels do they normally stay at. Only Hiltons or wot? I´d like to see that. I stayed at A LOT of hotels in my life in Europe and in Asia and this one is one of the better ones by far. The pool area is great, although the bar was unmanned due to the low season. The personnel is running around anyway so you just hail them for a drink. A beautiful park surrounding the hotel holding a spa and a huge outdoor dining area was also great. The teak small towers around the pool with comfy sofas looked and felt excellent. AND NO SNAKES IN THE POOL! Great!

The lobby is fantastic I wonder where one of the guys saw the paint falling off. We were upgraded to a better room with the view on the Mandalay hill. SWEEEEET!

Took a quick 1h refreshing swim in the pool, we were alone :) nice. We then grabbed a taxi to go to the Tu Tu restaurant recommended by the guide.

-“Is a little taxi OK said the bell boy?”

- “well..yeah....? I guess?”

So up comes a little blue/white Mazda pick up with no shocks in the back axel. You sit on the bench and the only damping is made by the tires hahahhahahahaaaaa faakkk me! The funny part was that they are more expensive then a AC taxi in Yangon! 2-3000 to the city, 4000 at night. Tried several ones, all offered the same price. They all claimed that it was expensive due to the high gas cost. And sure, we saw some huge lines with several hundred people cueing for gas. On top of that the blue Mazdas are nowhere to be find when you need them since 90% drive motorbikes! We learned to book a return trip soon so the cab was waiting for us while we went exploring and eating.

We took the cab to the new Tu Tu restaurant. Great food, we paid 10800 for3 dishes, water and coke, the rest of the green is included. Superb. No beer at Tu Tu and that sucked royal ass L. We continued to the palace moat and met some Norwegian guy with a Thai wife to whom we recommended the Tu Tu. They ate at the BB grill restaurant and that was horrible they said. When you see the map the palace area doesn´t look that large but tone side is 4km and it´s a long walk around the area. We walked the two KM to the start of the Lonely Planet walk tour of Mandalay in rush hour, climbing over the water festival stages being built. Oh, the platforms were built in TEAK hahahha SICK! So, regarding the walk, Don´t do it!

Visited one pagoda (check) and walked the hell walk around noisy mopeds, crazy pre-festival crowd etc. to the central Zao. HELL ON EARTH. They were already preparing for the festival. A sea of people selling thai/chinese clothes and a LOT of nazi t-shirts. Strange :) also a lot of people ride with moped/mc helmets with nazi signs. I guess they like Hitler here. All the shops had discounts on teh street before the festival so the streets around the market were actually not functioning for communication anymore.

We squeezed along the stalls to the canal where we found a vegetable/fruit market. The canal is a stinky soar since the water is low and isn´t really worth visiting. It has nothing similar with a sweet small village food market. It´s just a huge messy noisy sweaty exercise.

Tried to find a ridiculous blue Mazda taxi to drive us to the “grill street”. The whole west (or east?)side of the palace is lined with grills stands. Tried one place first, but after visiting the toilet we change to another one. The first one on the street. I ordered some Chan ribs, whole grilled fish and 6 beers for like 10600. We had a staff of 6 persons surrounding us constantly killing mosquito. They brought anti mosquito incense, anti mosquito UCV light sand and they brought a battery driven electric mesh tennis racket that they waved around and fried mosquito with. Hahhaa wtf! We also tried and had a lot of fun! We must have looked like 1 million dollars to them. (Mind you that I always dress like a “normal being” wearing old converse, shorts and t-shirt! There were some other tourists at the restaurant but they were not called “BIG BOSS” and did not get that attention :D.

Again, the price level was higher then similar in Yangon on 19th street. BAD Tendency! What if a taxi costs 6000 in rural areas, a dinner 40000 and a beer 20000 hahhaha shit! AND NO ATMS! CASH ONLY! What you bring is what you have!

Took a taxi to a supermarket and back home for a swim and a drink. 2 long drinks and one beer 2 USD..OUCH! On the bright side, we had some live music, AC and comfy seats. No plastic chairs, no mosquito and no warm beer. We managed to make a skype call!!! Video wasn´t working but voice call worked! (During the rest of the trip the internet was in mode “SORRY NO HAVE. MAYBE TOMORROW MAYBE”)

Photos: Yangon

tomaszo — Tue, 5 Apr 2011 21:50:00 GMT

Last lazy day in Yangon

tomaszo — Tue, 5 Apr 2011 01:35:00 GMT

Woke up at 06:00 to sounds of a disco? WTF! No, it was the busy Kandawgyi lake walk with a sound system full on. The walk was filled with walking/running "local people" as our guide used to say. At 07:15 new batch of the fat/less fat/well trained Myanmar people started to run or walk to the sounds of Lady Gaga or whoever.

So what do we do today? We´ve seen most of the sites and the “must see” stuff by now. So we slept in and woke up past the hotel breakfast time. We decided to give the Monsson one more chance for an early lunch. It was closed shut around 19:00 the day before so we were reluctant to go but what the hell. The sign on the door says open till 21:00. Located in a beautiful colonial building they served very nice food. They even had pizzas and other junk food on the menu. So the Monsoon: nice food, nice decor and a nice shop on the top floor. The downside was that they played some covers of ABBA, and it ended with Spanish version of FERNANDO. FAKK ME! I almost killed my self slowly. Wonder who agave them that shit CD. The Mohinge soup and the biff were excellent. Bought a t-shirt with local texts (Shin Lu Soe Gi – Naughty boy). That should bring some smiles from the ladies. And it did :D.

After lunch we walked around the merchant street in the midday heat to the Scott/Bagyoke market. Stopped at some cafés on the way, to cool down. Did ot find any proper bookstore where it was supposed to be but managed to buy some old Burmese folks tales on merchant street. Strolled around and haggled on the market, Geezas how low can you get? I had to use every trick in the book to get the lower prices! Complaining about my wife stealing all my money, that I´m hot and I´m suffering from the heat, that I have blue eyes (works wonders in China) etc. Ended up buying some souvenirs for friends and nice Chan ceremonial knife for myself.

Took a cab back to the lake and bought the 2usd ticket for the walk around the lake. Midday heat tired and sweating rivers, it wasn´t really a nice thing to do. Even the pseudo Royal barge, the Karaweik, looked best from our hotel pool. We did stay at the hotel just 4 meters from the walk :D so the best way to experience the walk is to lay in the pool with a cold beer and watch people walking around on it.

In the afternoon we went shopping at the Dagon centre. No much to say about that. Bought me a pair of new Converse and then we walked to the 19^th street where we had a great meal again! Around 12000 chats for whole grilled fish filled with some spicy paste and some beers.

Yangon round with a 90 USD guide

tomaszo — Mon, 4 Apr 2011 00:59:00 GMT

The breakfast buffet at the Kandawgyi Palace Hotel was out of this world. Local Myanmar specialties, Chinese buffet with all kinds of food, Indian dishes, a fruit buffet, a pastry section that could feed an elephant and two chefs standing by to fry omelettes and chapattis. Crazy! The best buffet I've tested so far in any Asian hotel, by far!

Today we booked a guide, Joe, for 90 USD. The whole day with air cond car, guide and lunch. The itinerary was quite impressive:
- Kaba Aye pagoda
- The bigt marble Buddha image
- White elephant
- Monastery and nunnery
- Jade shop – tourist trap
- Reclining Buddha image - Chaukhtatgyi paya
- lunch
- rest
- St Anna church
- Chinatown
- Shwedigon pagoda

WE created the itinerary based on the things we've already seen so that was excluded. We started with exchanging the money. We went to the same place but today I got 850 to 1 USD. Our guide also changed his own dollars there so the place seems popular. The place was a small room in a labyrinth of bamboo shacks with tin roofs. An old Chinese lady sitting on the floor with a electrical money counting machine and gave out stacks of Chats in exchange for Dollars. What a place bhahahahahha like picked out from a B-movie. Great stuff!
First we went to the Kaba Aye pagoda - world peace pagoda. Supposedly all the Buddhist countries’ monks gathered in this place some time ago and had some get together singing Kum Ba Ya or something. The Myanmar Buddhism is supposed to be the purest and most holy version of the Buddhism and encouraged people to not wait for the coming of Buddha but live as close to his teaching every day OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT...I don´t remember the details but we were in Buddhist hard core heaven in Myanmar. Around the main Buddha image in the pagoda, there were statues of Buddha from all the Buddhist countries. Very nice to see how much they vary. Not single one was similar to the other country´s style. They also made a huge 3D map of all Buddhist countries and you could throw money at the map if you wanted to.
After that we drove to see the biggest marble Buddha image. Outside the image there were stall of salesmen selling everything like food, clothes, umbrellas, donkeys etc. A bit strange but we learned later that this is how it is all over the country. Every temple is a "super marker of junk". The statue itself was very nice, on a hill, like all the other Buddha. This one was glassed in so that the birds and bats don´t shit on the Buddha. The lackerware roof was impressive. We learned why the stupas have the shape that they have. One of the kings hesitated about the shape so he asked a monk. The monk folded the banyan tree leaf and said, make it like this, hence the shape.
From the marble Buddha it was a short ride to see the three "white" elephants. Why did we have to see that? They were supposed to be holy in a way and only recently it was OK to photograph them. We saw 3 elephants from a designated watching podium, some 25 meter away. The elephants scratched their heads against huge wooden poles and just stood there. They were kind of pink in colour, like pigs and were chained to thick poles. They were only brought to this place an hour or two a day. Rest of the day they were free to run around in a nearby forest. I´m not sure elephants run but anyway...not really worth looking at them if you are not a hard core Myanmar Royal House fanatic.
Next stop was the monastery and nunnery. That was interesting! Up to 1500 little monks were living together in the monastery. We arrived just as they had their lunch so we saw their prayer before the meal and saw where they ate. They eat and learn in the same huge room. There was a volunteer teacher walking after us and telling some stuff to our guide. We made a small donation, which is really not mandatory, like 2000 chats but the teacher seemed pissed of and wanted more. For what I don't know so we left him and went to the nunnery just down the road. The girls accommodations were much more simple but here too we matched their pre-lunch prayer. Their singing was so much nicer than the boys :).
On our way back to the city and we stopped in a Jade workshop. I guess most tourist have to to get the guides a commission. It was semi-interesting to see the production process and something tells me that most of the work is done in a factory outside the workshop. The prices they charged were out of this world. I bought some natural medicine supposed to cure everything :) and that was it. Kanok it´s called.
Next stop - the Chaukhtatgyi paya. The reclining Buddha image. A HUGE BUDDHA IMAGE! I mean it. Just the feet were like 8 meters high! There is a small tablet with all the Buddha body parts measurements. Every body part is measured. As one of the few or the only Buddha image, this one had glass eyes. The inscriptions on the feet were very nice. There is a small watch tower close to the Buddha feet where you can climb up and watch the whole image from a little higher up. The whole place had a special aura about it. Really nice place to visit. Oh, you could have your name on the wall for one year if you make a donation. Many people do. Even saw some Russian names on the wall. Well, they do need all the help they can get so let´s hope the donation was accepted by more than the monk.
Lunch time. We got an option to lunch with at a "tourist restaurant" or a "local restaurant". We choose the later of course. I guess the guide occasionally has some backpacker guests that like to eat pizzas while abroad. (Actually the only time we ever saw anybody ordering pizzas or burgers in Myanmar were backpackers so they are spreading that culinary shit culture around the world it seems).
The guide picked the lunch restaurant. FEEL, on the 124 Pyihataungsu Yeik Thar Street. A place packed with locals and a massive selection of Myanmar dishes. A really huge selection of Myanmar curries and salads. We ordered some fish and mutton curries and some salads. DO NOT try the bitter leaf and avoid the red chilies. Had a chili contest with the guide...we ended up sweating like pigs from the heat of the chilis. I ordered so many beers and so many extras just to try the food that we felt stupid and ended up paying for the lunch. No biggy and we felt sorry for the guide. The food was excellent!
After lunch we headed back to the hotel for a refreshing swim in the hotel pool and some rest. Rest in this case means beet at the pool. Another snake fell from the palm tree into the pool! Probably was chasing for small birds or eggs in the nests. I was getting used to that now.
Enough resting. The afternoon started with a visit to the biggest Catholic Church in Yangon. The St Anna church. A really nice red/white/green church in gothic style. It was located in a part of the city where most of the huge colonial mansions were situated. A short stop in the church and off we went to see the river. Since the port occupies most of the river front, there is only a small section in the Yangon old town that allows you to see the river front. Close to the Strand hotel, the river view was not really as beautiful as you would expect. The ferry terminal is a short section of the river bank that is not walled in by a metal fence. A lot of people come here, to the ferry terminal to feed the seagulls. We watched some monks feed seagulls with chick peas. Falafel loving birds J. You could also take the ferry to the other side of the Irrawady river if you are fed up with Yangon city.
After the river view trip, a very short one, we took a walk around the Chinatown. The streets lined with vendors selling all sorts of veggies, fruits and all kind of ready to eat food. Everything from stinky tofu to grilled rats was on the menu. And guess what. It started to rain. We are talking tropical rain! It rained frogs. All the vendors along the streets had already their umbrellas up to as protection from the sun so we had to snake our way along the broken pavements and opens sewer holes while bending way to much in order to fit under the umbrellas. We got a tip about the 19th street in Chinatown. Supposed to be a great place to eat grilled food and drink beer. Always important to know where the water holes are.
Shwedagon pagoda - the final sight on the itinerary. We had to pay the 5USD entrance fee to get in. I told the guide that when we´ll arrive at the Shwedagon it will be sunny again, and it was. The golden pagoda was flooded with sun rays from the setting sun. We actually took the elevator(!) to the top since we parked the car just under the elevator entrance. That´s something new, to take an elevator to the church instead of walking up all those stairs. At the top, to see all that gold in the holiest of the temples in the country really impressed. Walked on cool wet marble instead of skipping on hot sun baked marble. The pagoda is not just one huge pagoda on the top but rather many small pagodas around the big one surrounded by many building for different purposes, like housing bells and smaller shrines. One cool thing was to see the photos of the "umbrella" that crowns the top. It´s being exchanged with even intervals and there is a small photo gallery showing all the jewellery and the huge diamond that is mounted in the umbrella. We also saw some small kids being prepared to enter a monastery or nunnery, all dressed up with their proud families celebrating the occasion. The kids go to the monastery for a week or a year whatever they like but all kids are going. It´s a very important moment in a kids life and it´s celebrated by the whole villages in the countryside. (We saw that later).
Enough with all the pagodas! We asked the guide to drop us off at a shopping mall, since the market was closed today. Taco win centre and Sein gay har shopping mall was the goal. The malls were modern with escalators and very high tech-toilets. The toilets were spotless! Electronic soap dispenser and photocells for water in the sink. The music at the entrance was deafening. Even the guards at the doors sat with the hands covering their ears. The annoying thing was that the personnel attack the customers once you enter the shop :D. You could not look around before at least 5 clerks showed up. Not so aggressive as on Silk Market in Beijing but never the less, once you enter the store, they are on you like a leech! Regarding the goods, well, basically the same stuff as at the markets, maybe a little better. Most of the stuff was a direct import from Thailand or China.
Hailed a cab. As soon as it gets dark, all the taxis cost 2000, minimum. During a day it´s possible to catch a ride for 1000-1500 chat. We took the cab to the Monsoon restaurant, closed. I mean really closed and it was supposed to be open until 22:00. Took the cab to another, even that one looked very dark & closed. We jumped off the cab and walked to around Chinatown and ... got lost! Hahahah suckers! And believe me, yes, you can get lost in a grid oriented city. At night with a few street lights and tired as hell. We managed to get back to 19th street, to the beer & barbecue street. What a great place, what a CHEAP place! Bought a couple of beers and a whole grilled fish for 8000 chats. We sat on plastic chairs, in a narrow street lined with grills and pubs, between two 8 story buildings and had a very good time. Old Chinese men happy to see a guy wash down 6 beers - wot! I'm Polish! And it was hot! I was carrying 8kg of photo equipment in my bag all day long on +42C. The local guys drink rum in beer glasses. The sous chef from the Shangri la in Dubai sat at our table and we had a lot of laughs. We got the feeling that the rest of the city seem to sleep as soon as the sun goes down. Except the 19th street! It´s the place to go!
Was it worth taking the guide? Well, yes, in that time we would never managed to see all that stuff by ourselves and we only had two days in Yangon. We told him what we already have seen so the itinerary was created from that in mind. We also got a chance to talk some shit, like getting to know that he had two girlfriends and the driver had just gotten married. You can guess who was laughing most of the time!
OH, My SonyEricsson Bluetooth watch was supposed to manage 3 ATM. Around 3 meters if you don't hit the glass under water. Well, mine got filled with water in a 1,5m pool. :D. Priceless.

Finally in Yangon, the first day in Myanmar

tomaszo — Sun, 3 Apr 2011 02:13:00 GMT

Fog. A simple phenomenon that stops aircrafts from landing. It shouldn’t really with all the Doppler radars, auto pilots and all the other high tech crap we invent daily but here we are. Stranded for 1,5 hours, waiting on the Bangkok airport concrete for the fog to lift in Yangon. WHADDUP WEATHER? First the rain storms during the dry season in Thailand and now fog in Yangon? It was supposed to be dry, dusty and hot. Finally we arrived. A bit stressed about the immigration check. The visa I got was denied in London. Tips: Never write that your profession is a technical writer when you apply for a visa to a dictatorship country. Anyway, Union of Myanmar welcomed us with a smooth passport control and customs check. The heat outside the arrival hall was not crushing. In fact, I was surprised that there was so much green in the city. Streets walled by trees, blooming bushes and well maintained parks. What a difference to the Cambodian inhumane heat and dryness, when we visited last April!

Exchanged some dollars to Chat on the way. Actually, the taxi driver went in and changed it himself. Rip-off or not, we needed local money and really, how much can we loose on the black market rate, 3-4 dollars? We got shitload of MONEY! Like several centimetres of money! Felt rich for a moment. Got 800 chats for 1 dollar. OK rate we thought. The rate is changing daily anyway.

We stayed at the Kandawgyi Palace Hotel. A former British boat club, later a museum and now a beautiful hotel by the Royal lake. The only one in town with a teak roof, so they say. Room was very large with a lake view. Hey! Wot?? No Air Cond? I was just about to call the reception when I read.... Well yes... teh instruction. I guess we should always read the instructions. After all, I write them for the living! AC went on after a couple of minutes, as written in the instruction! Good I didn´t make a fool of myself and called the reception for malfunctioning.

The garden around the pool was well maintained and in full bloom. The wild life, as far as you can experience it inside an Asian city, was also very active. Example: a snake fell into the swimming pool from a palm tree! TWICE! The crows were quick to chase him. Probably a nice snack for a crow but they were for sure a meter long! Maybe the snakes had a habit of eating young cows in their nests so the crows were hatin´. The birds stealing food from your plates while eating outside - check. The mosquito farm outside the hotel is a great thing. The royal Karaweik barge looks great from the pool chair in the sunset. However, the mosquito farm does generate a lot of mosquito bites in the afternoon.

We took a cab to the city centre in the middle of a baking hot day. The Myanmar alphabet is out of this world with more then 9 vowels or so we were happy to see the street signs in English. Jet lagged to death, we were desperately trying to avoid going to sleep in mid day. We normally take a walk by ourselves the first day in a new location and rent a guide the next day to show us the real gems. It´s more fun to get the feeling for the city by yourself. A walk tour recommended by LP was a great start to get a feeling for the city. We strolled around the downtown Yangon watching the most of the impressive colonial buildings. A lot of the buildings and old villas are now abandoned since the Government with "No 1" moved the capital to a completely new city, 5h drive outside Yangon. Maybe he wanted to do what the old kings did? They all seemed to move the capital around now and then. Or maybe they found it easier to control the crowds from another location. Anyway, great colonial architecture being refurbished. Some buildings are decaying but most look astonishing. IF you like old buildings that is.

I also saw a Subary WRX parked on one of the streets. White. Loooved it! (Yes, I drive a SUBARU). One interesting thing was the lack of litter. No plastic bottles or bags. Had a bad experience with that before in Cambodia. We did find some ECO-trash though. Banana leaf baskets and some small bamboo packages. When you see some ecologic litter on the side of the road, it does not upset you in the same way of plastic bags or other modern crap left behind on the road side.

A pit stop at the Stand Hotel was recommended but we were actually disappointed. The lobby looks great, the service is excellent and the hotel is for sure top of the line but the bar where we sat was not at all impressive. A long Island Icea Tea later, we headed on to the China town, along the river front. Unfortunately the Yangon port is an active port so you can´t walk along the river like in Phonm Pehn. (A lot of comparisons to Cambodia, sorry for that). The open sewers!!! and cracked pavement makes the walking around the city a real adventure. A dinner at Golden duck restaurant was delicious. Ordered half a duck and boy did I get half a duck! Really half a duck, chopped right down the middle, head and all. 30000 for half a duck and shrimps and beer. I bet they ripped us off like hell but the duck was superb and worth the money. Didn´t feel so rich anymore. The centimetres high cash stack lost some height.

Walked across the down town in the direction of Scotts market, or Bogyoke Aung San Marketand passed an amazing Indian Kali temple beside a Jewish synagogue beside a mosque and beside a Chinese temple. What a glorious mix of religions. We also saw a lot of sleeping dogs. The dogs in Myanmar are veeeeeeeeeery lazy, laying in the heat of the day hardly moving. And that was the same story all over the country. The dogs were hardly moving, They were all of the same race and mostly the same colour. And 99% of them were sleeping.

Managed to fight our way through two market and then we gave up. We weren’t in a mood for shopping right now anyway. Just outside the market we could see the round trip railroad. It was on our agenda but after seeing the tracks, we skipped that run. The train runs around the city but you can´t really see much. Mostly bushes and trees and some stations so we skipped that thought when we saw the train from a bridge over the rail from Bagyoke. Cool bridge btw, people on the bridge were selling freshly butchered chickens, fresh fish and fruit. Just like that. My Mrs got ripped off and bought a Pomelo for 2000!!! Bhahahhaa

Back to the hotel for a refreshing swim and a forced long sleep. Funny think happened at the pool. A snake fell from the tree into the pool. Mrs almost died hahahhaaa. It was probably climbing up the palm tree to get some small birds from the nest when it fell into the pool. Not so nice to swim around with a green one meter snake so the snake left the pool very quickly.

The flight to Bangkok - 10 hours of agony

tomaszo — Sun, 3 Apr 2011 01:48:00 GMT

The flight was as it always is. 10 hours of agony. Oh! BTW had a nasty moment with one of the stewardesses coz I wanted two cans or beers, one for me, one for the Misses. I mean, common! It´s not like we fly charter! And I´m like 93kg, Light Heavyweight according to UFC weight class. Doesn’t it look like I can squeeze two cans of beer? Besides, I´m POLISH! We invented drinking alcohol. I think I can manage a beer or two. Anyway, we arrived Bangkok early morning. Strolled around the main shopping lane for an hour while we waited for the plane to Yangon. Bought a t-shirt since the one I wore during the flight didn´t smell like daisies anymore. A quick pseudo shower at the airport toilet and I was fresh again. Then we started to look for the E2A departure terminal. Fakk was that far away or what! It took us almost 25 minutes of fast walking from the main shopping lane. GEEZAS we had to walk! Saw a great fight between a Chinese mother and her teen daughter :D. I guess she had attitude and the Chinese are like the Polish, RESPECT THE ELDERS! And what´s up with the Asians smacking each other on the heads all the time? Well, that was entertaining.