Myanmar: Breathtaking sunrises and hilltribe treks

Back in Thailand again after spending 15 days in one of the countries that I was so curious about: Myanmar. I have a lot to say about this country… don’t even know where to start. First of all the reason of my delayed travel story is the ridiculously slow wi-fi in Myanmar. Viewing a 10-second video on Facebook, streaming an episode of Penoza and even playing Candy Crush was impossible. I’m trying to take a little distance of my phone and social media while traveling but this was just complete torture! But I’m back in the world of online communication so finally able to update you all on my adventure….

My last blog post ended in Chiang Rai in the north of Thailand. Our plan was to leave the next morning to Sukhothai, closer to the border of Myanmar but due to too many glasses of Sam Song, Thailands finest rum, and hours of playing Yaniv (an Israelian card game) till he early hours we postponed the plan and decided to take a chill day instead.

The next morning we left early to Sukhothai, a small city south of Chiang Rai. After 8 hours in the bus and a walk of 5 kilometre, because we were too greedy to pay €1,50 for a taxi ride, we finally arrived.
There is not a lot to do in Sukhothai other than visiting the historical park of the city so that’s exactly what we did. We took a bus and rented bicycles to cruise around. In the evening we went to the night market close to our guesthouse. We found a small fun fair and, of course, a lot of delicious and cheap food as usual. I ordered a red curry with rice and was expecting a plate of rice with a creamy red sauce of red curry paste and coconut milk but instead there was no red to be found in my so-called red curry. When I told the waiter that he might have brought me the wrong plate because I ordered a RED curry he kindly explained to me that they never make it spicy for “our kind of people” because tourists aren’t able to eat the Thai spiciness. So that was where my creamy red coconut sauce went. On my turn I kindly explained to him that I’ve been eating Thai spicy food for the last 5 weeks so that this tourist was indeed able to eat a little of the Thai chillies. So from now on I guess I should ask for ‘spicy’ when I order my food.
The next evening we were walking outside for a little evening stroll when all of a sudden a green fire ball turned the whole sky bright green. We were quite sure it was something like a meteorite. A few days after I searched on the web to see if I could find any news articles about it. It was indeed a fireball that was visible in more cities in Thailand. So kind of cool that we were at the right place at the right time and were able to see it too.

After 2 days of being in Sukhothai we were ready for the second country of our South-East Asia adventure. It was finally time to go to Myanmar! Since Myanmar is not crazy touristic yet as Thailand, it was quite hard to find reliable information about the country, immigration and rules for border crossing. The country is changing a lot and quite rapidly as well. This causes the information online of other travellers that been in Myanmar to be outdated very quick. I wouldn’t even trust on my Lonely Planet even though it’s just published in September 2014. These mysteries make the country even more interesting and the trip more exciting and unpredictable.

We left early to the bus station to be sure to get to the border before the immigration offices would close. The road took us longer than expected so we got stuck in the border town of Thailand, Mae Sot. But the next morning it was really finally time to go to Myanmar. The Lonely Planet said shared taxis (pick-up trucks with seats in the back) operated between Mae Sot and the border bridge between Thailand and Myanmar from 6 AM and we were so excited that we were ready to go with our backpacks at 6 AM on the dot. We found a lot of shared taxis. The only problem was that all taxi drivers were not actually ready to start their workday yet and were all still sleeping in the back of their pick-up trucks. So you can say we were a tiny bit overenthusiastic. Luckily we found scooter taxis that brought us to the border for 50 bath per person.
At the immigration office on the Burmese side of the bridge we found a guy (actually he found us) that was willing to show us where to change money and buy bus tickets to go to Yangon, another city.

The differences between the Thai and the Burmese side of the bridge were huge. The facial features of Burmese people are completely different from the Thai (Burmese people look a lot like Indians), the monks wear Bordeaux ropes instead of orange ones in Thailand and the streets in Myanmar look so much dirtier than in Thailand. You wont find a lot of people smoking in Myanmar but most men chew on some kind of leaves mixed with red tobacco, lemon juice, milk and some other things which makes there mouths turn red. It looks kind of creepy as if their mouths are full of blood and the worst thing is that they spit all day, every day, every where! So the streets are full of red dried spots of spit which looked absolutely disgusting to me. Burmese men wear some kind of long skirts (mostly dark blue or burgundy). The woman on the other hand have a typical kind of fashion statement as well. A lot of woman and children wear some kind of creamy white stuff on their faces which varies from modest wipes on their cheeks to full white faces. I understood that it’s a combination of skin protection for the sun and their kind of make-up/foundation.

After we took a few minutes to let all the impressions sink in it was time to find bus tickets. We soon noticed that the guy that looked so helpful in the beginning was seeing us more as walking dollar bills for his buddies who offered us way overpriced bus tickets. They told us we could get tickets for “only” 25.000 kyat each but when we walked away the price dropped to 15.000 kyat.
Almost all prices in Myanmar (tickets for transportation, taxi’s and even food) are higher for foreigners. On bus tickets it says ‘FOREIGNER’ to set the fare and at restaurants there are Burmese and English menus available and I’m quite sure the prices aren’t the same on both menus. Other than in Thailand the prices at street food stalls are written in Burmese so when you ask the price they can just make something up and when they see that you think it’s to pricey and you’re ready to walk away the price drops immediately. 
But ok…the second price for the bus tickets to go to Yangon sounded fair so we decided to take them. The bus was supposed to leave at 9 AM. At quarter past nine we finally could take a seat in the 12 seated minivan and I thought we were ready to go but I never been so wrong in my life. After driving around the city for 3 hours to get gas, arranging something for our passports, changing vehicles and picking up more and more people we finally took off somewhere after 12 o’clock noon. Our new minivan had space for 12 people but we were stuffed in as sardines in a can with 18 people in total. After a thirteen-hour uncomfortable, bumpy and extremely sweaty ride we finally arrived in Yangon.

What can I say about Yangon… It’s a big dirty city. The traffic is crazy, people are blowing their horns all the time, trash everywhere, little kids pooing on the streets and the pollution again of course. The fact that it was about 37 degrees in the afternoon didn’t really helped a lot I must say.
On our last evening in Yangon we found a place with cocktails from 800 Kyat (€0,58) So yes…we were in cocktail heaven. After a couple of mojitos and piña coladas we didn’t worried too much anymore about the dirtiness of the city.
Yangon was the place where we got sick for the first time since we started our trip. After trying and eating everything on the streets of Thailand we got a little bit too comfortable with the street food I believe. After eating a cheap Burmese dish we both got so sick. I already felt a lot better after one day of misery but Lucas was out of order for a week so I can tell you we had quite enough of the Yangon experience.

Mandalay was our next stop. We got tickets and got ready for the 9 hour night bus ride. The big bus station was quite far out of town so a smaller bus picked us up to bring us to the bus station. The roads were full of traffic jams so five minutes before our bus to Mandalay would depart we were still stuck somewhere on the road and I started to panic a bit about whether we would be able to catch the bus or not. We were so lucky with the helpful and English speaking people sitting around me. A guy offered to call the bus company to ask if the connecting bus could wait for us and a girl asked me if we wanted to jump off the bus and follow her to do the last piece of road by foot so we did. It’s hard to describe what the traffic looked like. I got the feeling that the world was ending and every one tried to escape from what was coming. Rows of traffic which was hardly moving, horns blasting every where and people running trough the lines of cars and busses with their belongings on their backs (just like us). And in between this crazy chaos we had to find our bus while most busses had their destinations and numbers written in Burmese on the front. With help of other lost travellers we finally found our bus almost passing us by.
The (night) busses in Myanmar are quite luxurious. Seats are adjustable and everyone gets a free bottle of water and a set of a toothbrush, toothpaste and wet little towel as you get in an airplane. The A/C is standard on about minus 20 degrees but we got huge soft blankets to keep us warm. And as if we weren’t lucky enough that evening we could enjoy a Burmese karaoke DVD that was playing on the TV scree in the bus (sound on volume 10)…all night long.

As soon as I got out of the bus in Mandalay a handful of Burmese taxi drivers with red blooded teeth jumped on me to offer their taxi services. Luckily an English speaking girl that came out of the same bus asked me where I wanted to go and offered to drop us off in town for free. So lucky us again.

I don’t have a lot to say about Mandalay. Partly because Lucas was still feeling miserable so we weren’t able to do a lot but also because there just wasn’t much to do in this city. Besides that I felt extremely uncomfortable walking outside especially by myself. People were staring and pointing at us, poking each other and then laugh about us for some reason. As if they never had seen foreigners before. So weird. In Mandalay I noticed how many children were actually working in Myanmar. Some of the waiters and cleaners in restaurants and hotels look like their not even 14 years old. I hadn’t seen anything like that in Thailand.
After a few days we decided to take the night train to Bagan, a city which is famous for it’s ancient city full of ruined temples and pagodas.
The train ride was as shaky as the trips we took by road in Myanmar so far. The train was very old and even made the sound of an old steam locomotive every 5 minutes (a little bit annoying since we were trying to sleep a bit). The guys sitting in our wagon smoking cigarettes all night didn’t made the journey more comfortable, but hey…. we paid 1800 kyat in stead of 10000 that we would have paid for the bus. The taxi we took from the train station to the centre of Bagan got pulled over on the way. We had to pay $20 each to be able to enter the city what is obviously again a major rip off by the government since only foreigners need to pay this fee.

Bagan is famous of its breath taking sunrises and sunsets so I wanted to see this with my own eyes of course. We got up at five in the morning, rented an e-bike (electronic scooter), got us breakfast to go and went of looking for a nice place to see the sunrise. We found a pagoda we could climb up to see the sun rising. The key holder of the pagoda sitting at the entrance with a flashlight showed us the way up trough the narrow staircases. On top of the pagoda we found out we weren’t the only ones with this idea. A handful of tourists arrived already before us but that was fine. The sunrise was indeed breath taking. As soon as the sun was starting to rise the sky filled itself with hot air balloons and the fog over the pagodas gave the whole scenery a mysterious touch.

After a few days of Bagan it was time for the next stop. We took a minivan to Kalaw which was not ridiculously full this time. We did have a flat tire on the way but it wasn’t the first time it happened during our trip so we weren’t really surprised.
Now this was the most fun part of my trip in Myanmar. We booked a 3-day trekking tour from Kalaw to Inle Lake. We would walk a distance of 65 kilometre in three days through forests, over mountains and along authentic villages. The first two days we walked about 6 hours each and the last day about 4 hours. Our trekking group consisted of 8 people plus our guide mister Min-Min. The trek was kind of though as it was about 30 degrees in the afternoons and the hills were quite steep often but it was a great experience. The first night we slept and ate at a local village. Our beds were thin mattresses on the floor with big blankets on top and the “shower” was a huge bucket of freezing water that we could use to pour over ourselves with a small bowl. And I can tell you that the nights and early mornings in the mountains weren’t as hot as the afternoons. Our guide Min-Min was Nepalese and he cooked the best Nepali food for us during the trek. The second night we slept at a monastery (a place where monks live). Our beds looked the same as the first night and the shower as well. I believe only very young monks lived at this monastery as I saw little boys in burgundy tinted ropes running around everywhere. It was a super nice and I think a once in a lifetime experience. After 3 days of walking we arrived at Inle Lake. My legs were so tired, my ass was hurting and I was more than ready for a nice bed and a hot shower.

Myanmar was different from what I expected but I don’t regret any second spending in that country. But after two weeks I was so ready to get back to Thailand. Compare to Myanmar everything just looks so easy there. I don’t have the feeling that I’m being ripped off every time I pay for something and a lot more people speak English and that makes everything so much easier.

The bus schedules are a big mystery in Myanmar so we just took the first bus from Inle Lake to Bago and hoped we didn’t had to spend a night anywhere on the way because of getting stuck somewhere. Luckily the whole trip went smoothly. We could jump from one bus into another all the way to Chiang Rai. Well… almost all the way. The last bus to Chiang Rai was supposed to drop us off at the bus station at the town centre which is on walking distance from all the hostels and guesthouses. Instead of that the bus dropped us at another bus station 5 kilometre from the town centre and we had to pay 80 bath more for a tuk-tuk to drop us where we wanted to be. Both to stubborn we started walking with our 15 kilo backpacks. After dodging a handful of aggressive street dogs and walking about a kilometre a guy with his dog on a tiny scooter stopped next to us and offered us a ride. At first I thought he was joking as three people, a dog, 2 huge backpacks and 2 smaller backpacks seemed quite impossible to fit on his little scooter. But we were exhausted after 35 hours of hopping on and off busses so we decided to give it a try. Miraculously it worked and the guy dropped us nearly at our hostel. Lucky us again!

So now we are in Chiang Rai for a few days to wash all off our clothes and backpacks and take a good rest before we leave to the third country of our trip.
Next blog post will be from Laos!