The Border Crossing
After reading about the land crossings into Myanmar we decided that we would fly, so apart from boring you with details about waiting in the airport, there isn’t much to say about this border crossing except that it was very quick and very easy!

Yangon (Rangoon)
Our time in Yangon was short and sweet, we arrived from the airport and went to meet a friend in the city centre. After a quick discussion and a free breakfast we all decided that we’d had enough of big cities so caught the next bus down south to Kinpun.

Kinpun
Kinpun is the gateway town to ‘The Golden Rock’, a large bolder that balances on a cliffside which is covered in gold! After accepting that we actually are quite lazy we caught a pick-up truck to the start of the walk rather than walking for an extra 9km and got there, albeit very uncomfortably, in no time. The walk to the top of the small mountain was very picturesque and we met some lovely locals along the way, the rock itself was quite interesting but after looking at it for 5 minutes there wasn’t much else you could do and so we walked back down to where the bus would take us back to our guesthouse!

Bago
We left Kinpun in the morning and arrived a few hours later wondering why exactly we had decided to go to Bago. We had all agreed that there was so much to see in Myanmar that we didn’t want to waste time in places that had little to offer and so we booked an overnight bus that would take us to Kalaw and hired a tuk-tuk to take us on a quick tour of the sights!

We had decided on two sights for our tour, the Snake Monastery and Kha Khat Wain Kyaung Monastery. The Snake Monastery gets its name from the massive snake which is apparently the reincarnation of the deceased chief monk. We did our duty, we went and patted the snake to show our respects and then we headed up to the Stupa on top of the hill. We met some really funny kids at the top who followed us around for a while, attempted to have conversations with us and posed for some photographs!

Kha Khat Wain Kyaung Monastery was a little deserted as the monks we’re all in the main hall for their lessons, but it did give us a chance to have a wander around by ourselves, apart from the masses of robes that were hanging everywhere there wasn’t much to see and so we jumped back in the tuk-tuk to where our backpacks were before catching the bus.

Kalaw
The overnight bus we had booked took us as far as it promised and dropped us all off in a junction town where we had to find another bus to take us to Kalaw. Normally this would be straight forward but as it was only about 4.30am our options were quite limited! After a few coffee’s and some bargaining, we all got into a small minibus which was destined for Kalaw.

The town of Kalaw was really beautiful once you were out of the centre and we had a couple of nice walks, met some friendly monks and generally tried to stay warm (it was freezing up there, socks, gloves, blankets and jackets were called for!).

The main reason for going to Kalaw was to book on a 3 day trek to Inle Lake, 65km away. That part was easy and in a matter of minutes we had booked our trek for the grand price of $21 per person for all our food, accommodation and our guide!

Three Day Trek from Kalaw to Inle Lake
We knew the trek would be hard for us (given that we do no exercise!!) but it didn’t really sink in until we set off on the first morning and fully realised that we would be walking for about 8 hours a day on rough, dusty ground!

Day one was harder than we thought it was going to be but as the walk went on we saw more and more things that made the hard walking worth while. We went through forests, past small villages, walked along a railway line and through rice paddies; it was everything we had hoped for. Our first night was spent in a village surrounded by endless fields and the stars at night almost matched the ones from Tibet, it’s difficult to describe them, you’ll just have to imagine a pitch black sky filled completely with bright stars…

Day two started off well, we had breakfast and warmed our frozen feet and hands by a small campfire, and away we went up the hill. The only bad part of the trek (apart from the being absolutely knackered) was the dust, as we were walking the dust coating everything it could and within minutes we were filthy, not a great state to be in as the only shower we could have was an ice cold one which no-one really fancied! On the second day we passed more small villages and walked through some amazing scenery, the day did seem long though and we thought we’d never make it to the Monastery we were sleeping in but eventually we made it just before sunset, as soon as we got there we dropped our bags, had some food and swiftly jumped into our makeshift beds to get some well needed sleep!

The final day was the hardest, I think it was because we knew we would soon be at the lake and the endless walking would be over! As you can imagine we all had really sore feet and to make matters worse we took a short cut through a field of thorns – not good! Before we knew it we were at the boat dock near the lake and after a bite to eat we got into our longtail boat and were off across the lake. I can’t go into too much detail about the boat journey as I fell asleep quite early on, who would have thought 65km of walking would tire you out so much!!

All in all, the trek was hard work but completely worth it. We got to see local life in its truest form which seems like an impossible task in Asia and we all had a good laugh (especially when we someone slipped in the dust, a fairly common thing!), plus the exercise will have hopefully done us some good!

Inle Lake
The morning after the trek, not wanting to waste any time, we booked a longtail boat to take us to the ‘Floating Market’ and then onto Indein. The Lake looked absolutely beautiful in the late morning light and for what seemed like the first time in a while we just sat back and relaxed. The Floating Market was nothing more than a big souvenir shop by the side of a canal which was a disappointment but the journey there made up for it. Indein was also very different to what we had imagined but we were invited into a house for rice cakes which was good fun, especially as they didn’t speak English and our Burmese is extremely limited!

On the final day at Inle Lake we decided to catch up on some jobs so spent most of the day in our room, we did have a wander around in the evening and found a great pasta restaurant which was a nice surprise, not what you expect in quite a small place in the middle of Myanmar!

Pyin U Lwin
We had planned to walk to a nearby waterfall but on the journey to get to Pyin U Lwin (another horrible night bus and then a shared taxi, about 13 hours in total) we barely managed to get any sleep and so as soon as we had a room we all decided to go to bed for a short nap, which of course turned into nearly a whole day nap!

As soon as we all woke up we wandered down to the local market to get some food and came across baskets of strawberries and so for a whopping £0.50p we got 4 small baskets for dessert! After our brief wander we decided to move on to the next stop, Hsipaw.

Hsipaw
After yet another gruelling bus journey sat on boxes we arrived in Hsipaw with the idea of going straight to a place called Namhsan, only 80km away – only the journey there takes about 6 hours due to the extremely bad road conditions! Unfortunately we had missed the daily jeep so had no other choice but to stay over and wait for the next one. The town itself was quite nice to walk around and eventually we found somewhere good to eat, a chapatti stand, grabbed some food and went back to our room to watch some films!

Namhsan
The jeep we had booked a seat on turned up 5 hours late and the seat turned out to be a plastic stool, how they fit 14 people into a small jeep still puzzles me! The journey up started off well and we thought we would be there in no time, hours passed and we got more and more covered in dust, and soon we realised given our speed of roughly 5 miles an hour, we would be sat in the jeep for quite some time. The sun drifted behind the mountains and the only thing we could see was fires in the distance, we passed through small towns, and at each one we hoped it would be the last, and after four towns ours appeared! Needless to say the journey had exhausted us and we had a very early night, fast asleep by 8.30pm!

We spent the whole of the following day walking around the town, which turned out to be much bigger than we had originally thought, stopping for tea every now and again and attempting to chat with the local villagers.

The funniest moment was when we passed a primary school out on lunch break and within seconds we were swarmed by about 150 children all waving and yelling at us which was quite an experience!

On what was supposed to be our last day in Namhsan we walked to a group of stupas and went to a small monastery. Apart from there being about one hundred stupas grouped together there isn’t much more we can say about them, the pictures do a better job than me!

The monastery was another funny experience of being swarmed by small monks and children, again the pictures show more than I can put into words!

We had wanted to leave Namhsan on the 27th January but found out no transport was leaving there until the following day, this put out our plan a little but wasn’t of big concern. We then found out the jeep we had booked onto wasn’t leaving when planned and may or may not go the following day – this could go on for days… Eventually, and luckily, we found a truck which was heading to where we wanted to go and booked on, for the 28th!

Late afternoon on the 27th someone informed us that there would be no jeep after all, that was unless we wanted to hire the whole thing, which we didn’t, so we had a small problem! Luckily we found a bus that was passing through Hsipaw and was willing to take us with them for a small fee – problem solved. As far as funny bus journeys go this has to top them we think, the bus was filled, quite literally, with bags of tea that smelt like donkies, which we had to clamber over in order to find somewhere to lie down… After random stops and an average speed of 10 miles per hour, we arrived in Hsipaw at roughly 6pm; the pictures sum it up!

Mandalay
We arrived in Mandalay after a gruelling 12 hour train journey on wooden seats completely worn out. After a couple of attempts we found somewhere that had rooms available and went straight to bed!

The following day, also my 22nd birthday, we went to part of the ancient cities – Mingun. For the first time in Burma the weather decided to cover everything in a blanket of haze and so not many pictures were taken! We did meet some friendly monks who escorted us around a couple of sites, for a small fee of course, and within 3 hours we had seen what we had wanted to see, and so jumped back onto the boat and headed back to Mandalay.

For the remainder of the day we just wandered around the side streets of the town, meeting a few locals and getting a music performance from an old guy with a Mandolin! As it was my birthday we all decided to try and get some nice food in the evening and found a really good Thai place serving the best food we have had in a month!
All in all, a really nice relaxing birthday and a good day in Mandalay, but time was ticking and we had to get to our next destination, Bagan.

Bagan
In the three days that we were in Bagan we only really did anything of slight interest on the last full day. We booked a horse cart to take us around some temples but it turned out that all of the temples had shops selling souvenirs outside and the horse cart wasn’t as comfortable as it looked! We did manage to get one good photo for you though…

The following morning we went to a great covered walkway and got a few good snaps too!

Yangon
We did absolutely nothing in Yangon as Jon was quite ill, our time was split between sleeping and eating! We did find an amazing Italian restaurant which is worthy of a mention, for the first time in what seems like forever we had ‘real’ food which wasn’t resting in a vat of grease – very nice!

Our time in Burma has come to an end and for the most part it was fantastic, the most interesting place that we have been for a few months, the lack of internet for a month kind of drove us crazy but apart from that it was a great experience…