INTRO AND OUTRO

This is the beginning of the blog, but I’ll put it at the end as well because the latest post is what people usually see first. To see from the beginning go to the bottom of the posts list on the right of the screen.

I’m writing this mainly for us as a record of our trip – it’s so easy to forget stuff, particularly these days. And it’s nice to be able to go back and remember some of the detail of thoughts and impressions, which fade over time.

But, as it’s online, other people may come across it when searching for something and I hope there may be some useful stuff there too. That’s why I’ve put posts with some comments about hotels, money and other stuff.

HOTELS

Yangon 

Clover City Centre – right in the heart of downtown but in a grubby street behind the top of the range Traders Hotel. Very handy for a drink there and in the rooftop bar in the Sakura Tower across the street. Smallish room but clean and comfortable . Helpful friendly staff. Breakfast so-so. A bit overpriced at £70 per night.

Alfa Hotel - Just north of downtown. A bit expensive at $100 a night. OK room. We had one on the 8^th floor facing north which gave us a view of the Shwedagon pagoda. There is an open air rooftop bar which affords great views in all directions.

Mount Kyaiktiyo

Golden Rock Hotel – nearly at the top of the mountain, but still a steep 45 minute walk up. Nice location, friendly helpful staff, decent sized room clean and comfortable. Dinner in the restaurant was good (there’s no real alternative) and breakfast OK. $55 per night.

Mawlamiyine

Cinderella Hotel – nice location in town centre – walkable everywhere. Big room with balcony, clean and comfortable. Way overstaffed and staff at breakfast wearing white gloves ! $35per night.

Hpa-An

Parami Hotel – town centre, but town is a bit run down. Big room but a bit shabby and aircon was erratic. Staff were friendly and breakfast was OK. $43 per night. I think a better choice would be the Hotel Zwegabin – a little way outside town but an attractive location, and there’s not much to be in town for anyway.

Yangon Airport 

Myanmar Life Hotel – about 5 minutes from the airport, very convenient for an early flight. Nice big room & good bathroom. Great swimming pool. Only downside was the restaurant – dingy and menus with no prices shown – when we asked we met with lack of interest and eventually the bill was about double what we would have expected – for not great food. Stay there and get a taxi somewhere nicer to eat. $70 per night.

Kalaw 

Natural Land Hotel - nice bungalows set in attractive gardens about 15 minutes walk from the town centre. Rooms were wood panelled and so a little dark. Lovely shaded little alcoves in the garden to have breakfast. $38 per night. We decided to stay an additional night – our room wasn’t available so we moved to a smaller one – it was fine - $25 per night.

Nyaung Shwe

Nandawunn Hotel – decent sized room but bathroom a bit dingy. A nice verandah with table and chairs outside. Staff lined up outside to greet arrivals – nice touch. Helpful staff organised a tuk-tuk for us at only a few minutes’ notice to take our bags to the boat. $28 per night.

Inle Lake 

Shwe Inn Tha Resort – individual cottages on stilts joined by walkways to the rest of the hotel. Lovely swimming pool with bar alongside. Main restaurant tired and dull, but there is a separate open air restaurant overlooking the lake. Much nicer. $127 per night through booking.com

Mandalay 

Emerald Land Hotel – lovely small place in quiet side street – nice rooms overlooking gardens and great pool area although water surprisingly cool. Not much around in the way of restaurants but dinner in the dining room was very good. Even had several wines on offer. $35 per night.

Mandalay View Inn - just one block from the southeast corner of the royal palace moat. A nice old villa turned into a guest house. Room OK but an odd bathroom arrangement where you had to walk across the shower area (wetroom) to get to the loo and basin. Also aircon not very effective. Tiny breakfast area & breakfast not great. But when we had an early start before breakfast started we found that staff had, unasked, put together a takeaway box for us. A nice thought. $55 per night.

Bagan 

Bagan Thande - a lovely place sent in lush gardens overlooking the Irawaddy. Decent sized room by the pool - $60 per night. Rooms with river view more expensive and probably not really worth it, as you can get the views from the lovely open air restaurant and bar area shaded by beautiful old trees alongside the river. But menu needs to be improved.

Ngapali Beach 

Thande Beach Resort - another lovely place set in well-tended and watered gardens alongside the beach. A huge front row beach view room was $150 a night and here it was well worth it. A nice verandah with chairs and table and many more beach loungers available both on a wooden deck and on the beach. Nice breakfast area overlooking the glorious beach. About 50 yards up the beach are a number of beach bars and restaurants serving fresh seafood.

Bangkok

Arize Hotel – good location just off Sukhumvit Road, close to a skytrain station. Small boutique type hotel, lobby themed like a nightclub. Room small but well equipped and comfortable. Good breakfast. Small swimming pool. TB 2825 per night (£64).

BS Residence – 5 minutes from Suvarnabhumi Airport. Free shuttle on demand to and from the airport. Small room but well equipped and comfortable. Very nice swimming pool. Breakfast so-so. Limited eating options nearby. TB 1180 per night (£27).

CONCLUSION

Overall a very varied and interesting trip. Myanmar is a very undeveloped country compared with the rest of south east asia. A huge proportion of the population still lives on the land and farms in traditional ways with virtually no mechanisation - and it’s hard to see that changing significantly for a very long time.

Their way of life is geared to that – the day seems to end at around 9 pm, shops and restaurants close around then and there’s little in the way of any entertainment or nightlife after that time. And the day begins shortly before dawn – you can usually hear chanting from the monasteries at that time. And I suppose it makes sense, if you don’t have electricity, to have your day largely determined by the daylight hours.

Buddhism is a huge part of most people’s everyday life, and provides a great part of their cultural and art heritage.

Many people we spoke to expressed an unrealistic amount of optimism in the future. Now that initial moves have been made towards democratic government  there is an expectation that there will be rapid and significant improvements in living standards. And much of the optimism is based on their admiration of Aung San Suu Kyi and their hopes that her party will win the next election and she will become president. Whether that happens or not I can’t see much change coming quickly for the majority of people – it will take several generations.

Because of the size of the country and the difficulty of travelling around – and the restrictions still placed on where foreigners may visit – we only went to a relatively small number of places that are pretty much a well-travelled route. OK, these are probably the main places for a first visit to the country anyway – but it would be interesting to get to more remote regions, particularly in the north where there are a number of national parks and wildlife reserves.

FOOD AND DRINK

Burmese cuisine seems to be largely mild curries – chicken, pork, beef – usually served with a variety of side dishes, some rice, a bowl of light soup – lentil or vegetable -  and various small dishes of condiments – garlic in soy sauce, chilli flakes, a gingery lemony sauce. The problem we have with it is that they seem to make the curries in large batches in the morning and then put it out on a counter and serve from it for the rest of the day. At lunchtime it may still be warm but later in the day it’s at room temperature – and just sitting there. And maybe the unused portion from yesterday has been added to the pot  - so we really didn’t fancy it much. We did try it a couple of times early on – and we found that the meat used wasn’t the greatest – lots of bone and gristle – so we decided to move on to other things.

Happily Chinese and Thai food is usually on offer alongside local dishes and this is usual prepared fresh and served hot so we have eaten quite well. Lots of fresh vegetables – steamed or stir fried.

There’s usually fish on the menus, either grilled or in curries, but transportation is poor so away from the sea it’s usually lake or river fish. We both find that a bit muddy-tasting so tend to avoid it.

A couple of other things we liked were both salads, one from grated green (presumably unripe ?) papaya with chopped peanuts and a citrus/chilli dressing, and the other from pickled tea leaves again with nuts and a spicy dressing.

There was usually some lovely fresh fruit with breakfast – juicy and sweet watermelon, the best papaya we’ve ever tasted, a delicately flavoured pineapple – quite different from the strong tasting ones from central America, and small but intensely flavoured bananas. We also saw mango trees but the fruit was never on offer – perhaps they’re out of season.

But when we got to Ngapali beach we pigged out on seafood – huge tiger prawns, squid, red snapper etc. It’s been the best food of the trip – a simple restaurant on the beach, toes in the sand, with a plate of grilled tiger prawns, some red snapper fillet, a beautifully dressed avocado and tomato salad and a plate of steamed vegetables delicately flavoured with ginger and lemongrass – yours for about £8 for two. 

Add another £12 if you want a chilled bottle of Red Mountain Sauvignon Blanc from near Inle Lake. We did.

And that was after watching the sun go down from the next door beach bar with a couple of mojitos and a couple of rum sours - £3 the lot during happy hour. It’s very inexpensive to live well here.

TAXIS/CAR HIRE

This is very inexpensive compared with Europe. In most places a taxi ride of up to about 10 minutes will cost Kyats 3000 (around £2.30) and longer journeys rarely more than Kyats 5000. The exception is where airports are involved when the cost can go up to Kyats 8000 or 10000 – still only £7-8.

There are no meters so the fare is always quoted and agreed beforehand – and we get the impression that there is one rate for tourists and a much lower rate for locals.

Several times we have taken a car & driver for a whole day – this has cost usually Kyats 40,000 – just over £30. And a licenced guide with reasonable English cost a further $30.

A horse and buggy around Bagan with a driver for a whole day was Kyats 20,000. The driver told us that he didn’t own the buggy – he gave the K20,000 to the owner and received K1500 for his days work – just over £1. That quite shocked us and we gave him a decent tip. And yes, we were cynical enough to consider that that might have been his intention, but we decided on balance to accept what he said at face value.

A tuk-tuk around Hpa-An for a whole day was Kyats 30,000 .

ETHNIC MAKE-UP

There is a bewildering array of ethnic and tribal sub-sections within the country. We read that the government recognises 135 distinct groups. One group – the mainly muslim Rohingya people in Rakhine State are not included in this recognition and so are effectively “stateless”. This is one of the causes of the civil unrest which led to access to that area being restricted last year.

Various groups are associated with specific parts of the country and identify with varying styles of traditional dress. One group in has women with heavily tattooed faces, another has women fitted with neck-extended metal rings.

As in so many parts of the world, real or perceived grievances lead to agitation for autonomy for some of the ethnic groups. A relaxing of government control as democracy increases is likely to fuel this process which could lead to much instability.

BANGKOK

Once again Air Asia was spot on time – they really seem to have their act together. At Bangkok we arrived at Don Mueang Airport and needed to get to Suvarnabhumi airport for the BA flight home. Thoughtfully, there is a free shuttle bus between the two. Can you imagine Heathrow and Gatwick organising anything so public-spirited ?

So we arrived at the latter mid afternoon with our flight to LHR not leaving until after midnight. The solution was a hotel 5 minutes from the airport which offered a free shuttle each way and had a nice pool. We enjoyed a relaxing few hours there, had dinner around the corner and then headed back to the airport late evening. We told the hotel we were standing by for our flight and that if we didn’t get away we would be back – so they didn’t resell our room. Just as well because that’s exactly what happened. But it wasn’t all bad because as we arrived back a bit of channel flicking found a live broadcast of MUFC v Reading.

Next day we paid for another night so that we could again stay until late evening. The room was quite small but quite new and fitted out with everything you need.  The pool gave us somewhere to be all day – we didn’t really want to go back into the city – once you’ve started for home you just only want to get on with it.

So late evening we repeated our procedure of the night before. The flight was again pretty much full, but they offered us one jump seat, which we declined because we didn’t want to split up. After a bit they came back and said they now had two jump seats which we reluctantly accepted – over 12 hours without a proper seat is not an attractive proposition but we could see that the situation wasn’t likely to improve over the next few days so we thought we’d just bite the bullet. In the event, when we got to the gate they swapped our two jump seat boarding cards for two numbered seats - OK, not together, but by that time it was a real bonus. We had no idea how that had happened.

So we left Bangkok where it had been about 95F, after Yangon at about 103F, and arrived at LHR at 6am on a Monday where it was -1F and there was frost everywhere. Welcome home.

NGAPALI TO HOME

The trip home involved 3 separate flights. We had to go via Yangon to connect with our Air Asia flight to Bangkok and just in case there were any delays on the first leg we had an overnight in Yangon. We’d seen pretty much everything we wanted to there so we spent an hour or so in the afternoon having a look around Bogyoke Market, which was a crowded, busy, fascinating place – but it was significantly hotter in Yangon than it had been at the beach so we got very hot and sticky.

In the evening we decided to end the trip where we started and went back to the House of Memories restaurant. Again a lovely dinner.

NGAPALI BEACH

We had pushed the boat out a little and had an enormous room overlooking the beach. The bathroom area was bigger than some of the rooms we stayed in earlier in the trip.

The beach is basically a 3 mile palm-fringed crescent of white sand on the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal.

The sand is part tide-washed and part scrupulously cleaned by the various resorts along the bay. The water is beautifully clear and almost tepid – perfect for bathing and paddling.

There are not very many people about so the beach was practically empty most of the time.

At the southern end is a large fishing village with lots of activity morning and evening as the boats come and go. Hundreds of people turn out to help with unloading and handling the catch – which seems to be predominantly small fish which are laid out to dry on acres of blue netting. We understood that they are later processed into fishmeal. The fishing is done at night and every evening we could see a line of bright lights stretching along the horizon.

The hotel served breakfast on a deck overlooking the beach which was a lovely leisurely start to each day. But in the evening we preferred to walk a short way along the beach to a group of beach bars and restaurants where we could refresh ourselves after a hard day’s idling with happy hour as the sun went down, and then move on to a simple but fresh and tasty seafood dinner.

When we arrived with four full days ahead of us we were a bit concerned that we’d overdone it and that we might go a bit stir-crazy with nothing much to do for all that time. But it turned out that we quite enjoyed the laziness of it all – long breakfast, long paddle up or down the beach, bit of a swim before a long lunch, relaxing afternoon lounging about reading in the shade, another swim, another paddle and then happy hour and dinner. We slept like babies after all that exertion.

On the beach at low tide we noticed some disturbances in the sand...

 On closer inspection we could see that they were separate groups of patterns of tiny balls of sand

 And that they were caused by these little fellers.........

A bit of googling showed that they were called sand bubbler crabs - they scour each grain of sand for microscopic bits of food and then discard the grains in a small ball. Why they arrange these in the patterns we have no idea.

BAGAN TO NGAPALI BEACH

Our plan had been to travel from Bagan to Sittwe and up the river to Mrauk U but, following recent civil unrest there, foreigners were currently prohibited from travelling in that region.

As a plan B we decided to treat ourselves to a few days on the beach at Ngapali. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a direct flight and so we had to travel via Yagon to get a connecting flight. But it all went smoothly enough and after a final early breakfast overlooking the Irrawaddy we were at the beach by early afternoon.

MOUNT POPA

On the way our guide stopped at a place where locally grown peanuts were being ground to produce oil – the mechanism looked mediaeval and was powered by an ox plodding in a circle. 

At the same place they were collecting palm sugar juice and from that producing a fermented drink which was then distilled into a pure spirit and combined with honey to become a sort of liqueur. We saw the various stages happening – again completely ramshackle equipment – and were able to taste the products.

Another stop was to take a walk through a farming village – it felt like Europe must have been 500 years ago. Houses in small compounds with chickens, pigs, dogs and oxen wandering about. Dirts roads and paths, no electricity or running water. Lots of children running around. But there were fruit trees, palm trees, well-tended fields with obviously fertile soil so overall the environment looked quite pleasant, although life is probably quite hard.

The monument at Mount Popa itself is quite a sight – an enormous volcanic plug with a pagoda on the top. It’s quite a climb up but worth it for the views. This particular place is a major place for believers in the Nats. On the way up there are many shrines devoted to them and it was useful to have our guide tell us about them and how they fit into the overall Buddhist beliefs.

 And afterwards we went for lunch  to the Mount Popa resort hotel nearby, carefully located so that the restaurant offers a spectacular view back to the rock.

One thing we noticed with locals generally is that they often don’t pronounced the final consonant when they are speaking English – so “monk” sounds like “mun” and and “hotel” sounds like “hoteh”. This is OK, but I confess I was confused for a moment when the guide was telling us about the Buddha, before he commenced his serious meditation, spending a lot of his time “hore-riding” with his friends in the forest……………

BAGAN

The hotel was lovely – small groups of cottages with small verandas set in lush, beautifully maintained gardens. 

One of the main buildings had originally been designed and built to accommodate the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, who visited in 1922. 

The restaurant area overlooked the Irawaddy and was shaded by a group of wonderful old acacia trees. 

And this was the view from our verandah............

During dinner on the first night there was a musician playing soft local music on a sort of bamboo xylophone – very pleasant, but this later gave way to a display of traditional marionettes, dancing to traditional music. It went on quite a while, and we enjoyed it but were happy when it ended, and then we heard the terrifying words from the announcer….”we hope you enjoyed the first of our ten traditional dances…… “. We lost the will to live after about three………………………

Bagan is unique. We had never heard of it until we started planning this trip, but I don’t know why it isn’t much better known. It’s a vast plain with trees and farmland – but dotted with thousands upon thousands of monuments from the modest house-sized ones to enormous cathedral-scale ones. They were built between the 9^th and 11^th centuries, apparently building was started by a monarch newly converted to Buddhism who wanted to gain some fast merit. Some are plain brick, some stone, some rendered, some restored, others crumbling. You can wander about at will – a bike is a good way to get about. And many of them have stairs, either outside or inside, so that you have access to the higher levels which afford fantastic views over the area. And everywhere you look are monuments rising above the trees. It’s an astonishing sight.

We went on foot the first day to get a feel for the scale of it. We got an early start  - it was still quite hazy - and  just walked out of the hotel and immediately came across a huge variety of types and styles. It was quite hard work though, a lot of walking and climbing in the hot sun, so at lunchtime we went back to the hotel and spent a lazy afternoon by the pool. At around 4pm we went out again and found a huge monument where we could climb four levels up to give a great vantage point for watching the sunset.

The next day we needed to go further afield so we got a horse and buggy for the day – many more monuments and a lovely, more relaxing, day.

It's probably the most photogenic place we've ever been, changing all the time with the different light conditions during the day, and we took hundreds of pics - here are a few, probably too many , but what can you do........?

On the third day we felt that we’d seen enough monuments so we got a car and driver and guide to go on an excursion to Mt Popa about 90 minutes away.

DRIVING & TRAFFIC

Traffic drives on the right hand side but a high proportion of vehicles are right hand drive which makes things unnecessarily difficult. There is fairly heavy traffic in Yangon at certain times of day – although nothing like a western city. In other places traffic is usually very light. Most cars seem to be concentrated in Yangon – you really see relatively few elsewhere., although there are plenty of tuktuks, pickups, trucks, buses etc. And of course motor bikes and scooters – of which there are thousands. Although surprisingly, they are not allowed in Yangon.

Roads are generally single carriageway and not great quality – the tarmac at the edges is generally crumbling so the carriageway is narrowing. There are rarely any pavements for pedestrians.

Local public transport generally means a tuktuk or pickup which is hideously overloaded with people crammed into the back, baggage piled on the top, and more people sitting on top of the bags, and a few people hanging onto the back and sides.

MANDALAY TO BAGAN

Next morning was an early start as the boat was leaving the jetty at 7.00 am. We were too early for breakfast at the hotel but were pleasantly surprised when the staff provided, unasked, two polystyrene boxes to take with us.

On the way to the river we went along the southern side of the palace moat and were surprised to see many, many local people out exercising, jogging, stretching etc. – if it was the same on the other 3 sides it would run to thousands of people.

The boat was nice – we had an allocated seat in an airconditioned cabin but, like most people we spent the entire trip on deck watching the scenery go by.

This was just as the some was coming up......

A little while after setting off we started on our breakfast boxes a little fruit and a small pastry,and a sandwich made with two slices of toast with strawberry jam. A first bite showed that they didn’t realise the niceties of the English breakfast – they had thoughtfully also put a fried egg in the sandwich.

There were two immediate consequences of this. The first was a really weird taste sensation of crunchy toast, savoury egg yolk and white, and very sweet strawberry jam.  The second will be familiar to afficionados of the “Perishers” cartoon strip which used to be in the Daily Mirror decades ago (maybe still is – I haven’t seen a Mirror for many years ?), who will remember Marlon’s inch-thick ketchup sandwiches and the outcome of the first bite. Well, I wasn’t expecting my toast to contain egg yolk………happily, I was that day wearing an orange t-shirt so the result wasn’t overly conspicuous.

The Irawaddy is very wide in places but in the dry season the navigable channel is erratic so we zigzagged cautiously along in places. At two points we nosed into the bank – at what seemed to be quite a remote spot -  and a narrow plank was let out to the shore. One man got off and another got on. I didn’t pay much attention at the time - I was too busy watching this lady who was very keen to sell her produce........

But when it happened again later I realised that they must be making a change in river pilot.

These three were watching the process closely.........

It was a very pleasant day, watching life on the river bank as we passed, fishing villages, people bathing or doing laundry, lots of kids waving. 

And also the other traffic on the river – most freight seems to be on flat-bottomed barges pushed by tugboats. Most of these had a small boat about 150 yards in front with two guys with long poles taking continuous depth-soundings.

We arrived at Bagan at around 6pm – so a long trip – but no problem getting a taxi to the hotel. We did have to stop on the way at a checkpoint though – every foreigner entering the Bagan Archaeological Zone must pay a government fee of $10. And they make random checks at various monuments to enforce this.