Myanmar
(Formerly known as Burma)
The purpose of this page is to relate a few experiences from my holiday in Myanmar and to include a few pictures from it. Given there are many good pages on internet which feature pictures of Buddha images and Pagoda's, I will keep those to a minimum and provide links to others (though of course no page on Myanmar can ignore Buddhas and Pagodas completely).
After wasting much time with travel agents in Singapore trying to arrange a short vacation in Myanmar, I turned to the internet. I used the Alta Vista search engine and searched on my main requirements 'Yangon Mandalay Boat Tour'. The 'Boat' was included because I was determined to take a ride down the Irrawaddy River.
An early hit on the list of matching results was Diethelm Travel. I contacted their Bangkok office and within an hour had received a neat, clearly legible faxed itinerie, which matched my requirements perfectly. I made a reservation for myself and my travelling companion Don. We flew from Bangkok to Yangon on 2nd August 1999, returning to Bangkok on 9th August 1999. This page is not an advert for Diethelm Travel so I will say no more about them except to say the tour and their guides exceeded my high expectations. (I will include a link to them at the bottom of this page).
So where is Myanmar?
So what was the itinerie they suggested and we followed?
1 day sight seeing in Yangon (Rangoon)
2 days sight seeing in Mandalay
1 day Irrawaddy River trip Mandalay to Bagan
1 day sight seeing in Bagan
1 day sight seeing on Inlay Lake
1 day additional sight seeing in Yangon
Some of the sight seeing days outlined above included short flights between the major locations
Getting a visa from the Myanmar Embassy in Singapore was no problem. 24 hours, 3 photos, a small fee and some form filling was all that was required. A 28 day visa was issued. Diethelm travel furnished me with a letter which enabled us to get an 'E.V.T. (Package)' stamp with our visas. This excused us from having to change US$300 into Currency Vouchers at Yangon airport. (Apparently if you don't use up your currency vouchers you cannot redeem them when you leave). Since most things in Myanmar are very inexpensive, you would be hard pushed to spend US$300 in a week unless you were paying for accommodation and travel locally.
Day 1
I started by arriving at Don Muang airport (Bangkok) an hour later than intended due to heavy Monday morning traffic. While sitting for long periods in stationary traffic, I noticed the girls of Bangkok ride side saddle on the back of motorbikes, with their legs pointing to the left. Since the Thai's drive on the left, this means the legs point toward the pavement. I guessed this was a good thing, since with the advent of short skirts drivers going in the opposite direction might otherwise be somewhat distracted by the oncoming legs.
My Travelling companion Don seemed quite relaxed about me showing up so late, even though I had his ticket. After living a short while in S.E.Asia you get used to not worrying about such minor things.
The Thai Airways flight to Yangon was comfortable and we completed our customs and immigration forms shortly before our descent. August is considered off season for tourists due to the monsoons. Certainly the sky over Yangon was white in colour, being heavily laden with water vapour. The ground below was flat and very wet.
You are warned on your customs declaration that undeclared items will cost you a fine of three times the item's value. I debated whether to declare my hand-phone or not. I was glad I did, because on entry to customs at Yangon airport my bags were X-rayed and searched fairly thoroughly. My hand-phone which I had declared was impounded for the duration of my visit.
After being met by our guide and being introduced to our travelling companions Walter and Helen Wimmersberger from Switzerland, we were taken to our hotel to deposit our bags and freshen up. Then we were off to see pagodas and some craft shops.
Friendly Monk at Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon
Here in Myanmar, I noticed that unlike Thailand the traffic drove on the right. However I also noticed the girls riding side saddle still had their legs pointing to the left. So there was potentially a distraction for oncoming drivers. I asked our guide about this and he said that Myanmar had switched from driving on the left to the right in the mid 1960s, but the girls continued to ride the same way. Since I don't think we saw a single mini skirt in Myanmar, I guess it is not much of a problem. I also noticed that monks often travelled on the roofs of buses, presumably because they pay no fare.
Early in the evening we returned to our hotel and Don and I retired to the bar to sample the beer. The choices were Tiger beer, Myanmar beer, Mandalay beer and Skol. Having sampled all of them, we stuck to the Mandalay beer, which at least had some flavour. Since there was no sign of any night life in the hotel, we had our dinner (which was an excellent international buffet) and then asked the concierge if there were any bars worth visiting. We took the hotel taxi to the Equatorial hotel and had a couple more beers in the bar / disco there before returning to our hotel and retiring for the night.
Days 2 & 3
We got up early and headed to Yangon airport for the flight to Mandalay on Yangon Airways (all our internal flight were on Yangon Airways. The aircraft were clean and seemed to be well maintained).
The flight took about an hour and we were again met by a guide, taken to the hotel and embarked on more site seeing of Pagodas and craft shops. Don't get me wrong, these were very interesting and were the main reason for coming, but as I said before there are plenty of descriptions of these on other peoples pages, so I won't drone on about them on this page.
Among the many places we visited were a silk factory and a family terracotta pot making business. Both were very interesting, but the pots were a little too large to buy as souvenirs.
Mandalay Silk Weaver
Again our hotel was a bit light on the night life side (in fact, like the previous night, it was non existent). However we persuaded the concierge to take us to a Karaoke establishment, where we were asked if we would like a private room. We agreed to the private room and were shown into a small cubicle with a piece of thin rag, posing as a curtain, strung across it's entrance. There was a round table covered by a well used table cloth, eight plastic chairs, mildew on the walls which looked like they were last painted about 20 years before, a wobbly ceiling fan and to round things off, a well used spittoon in the corner on the floor. Judging by the state of the floor and adjacent wall, not many the previous spitters had been very accurate.
Initially our company was limited to our driver, a dozen or so mosquitoes and two geckos (called Jin Joks in Thailand (small light brown translucent lizard like creatures, with big black eyes, which are found in most tropical Asian countries)). Then the girls started to drift in. They could speak virtually no English, but sat down beside us and drank beer at a rate which put Don and myself to shame. After a couple of beers I needed the 'Gents'. I piched my way around the rain puddles in the car park to the facility. The toilet bowl was the squat type and from it's deep mahogony colour was obviously very ancient and frequently used. It should really have been in a museum and I was glad it was only my bladder which needed relief.
Back in our 'private' room, the girls were very friendly and occasionally leant over tickled our chins and said 'Coochie, Coochie, Coochie', before returning to their glasses for another gargantuan swig of amber liquid. After 3 hours, plus much laughter and beer we paid our bill and left. Given that Don, myself, our driver and five girls had consumed so much in our 'private room' we were amazed that the total bill was less than the equivalent of US$20. We noted afterwards that there had been no Karaoke, which was strange since this was supposed to be a Karaoke establishment.
We must have enjoyed ourselves though, because we returned the next night for more beer and 'Coochie, Coochie, Coochie' conversation.
Day 4
We got up at 4:00am and headed to the River and an eight hour boat trip down the Irrawaddy (shown on some maps as Ayerawaddy) River. The river at this time of year, floods neighbouring land and appears to be very, very wide. However most of it is very shallow being only a foot or two deep. So expert pilots are brought on board at intervals on the journey, to help the boat find the course of the real river among the flooded fields. We stopped 3 times en route to drop off and pick up pilots, passengers and goods. Local villagers crowded next to the boat at each stop selling, bananas, pineapple, chicken thighs etc, to the passengers.
We arrived at Bagan early in the afternoon and again were met by a guide who took us to our hotel. We spent the evening on a Pagoda waiting for the sunset and being stunned by the hundreds of temples and stupas which crowded the landscape.
If there was any night life in Bagan, we didn't find it and frankly we didn't need it after our 4:00am start. By now we had discovered that local food offered to us wherever we went was either 'Chinese' (consisting of stir fried vegetables and sweet and sour pork) or 'Local Burmese' (consisting of curried chicken, curried pork, curried fish and vegetables). The curry was too mild for our S.E.Asianised palates, so we used to order raw chilis in fermented fish sauce (Thai style) to spice things up a bit. Although the food throughout our tour was good and none of us suffered any ill effects, frankly the lack of variety got a little boring. The food at our hotel in Bagan was no exception. But the people running the restaurant earned bonus points by serving us some homemade fruit wine, which was excellent and ensured we slept soundly.
Day 5
More temples and stupas in Bagan. We also visited a craft shop where I bought 4 bronze figures. Given there were several of each and their low price they were clearly modern reproductions. That is fine by me. It is a shame so many people want to plunder the country of it's ancient treasures. On this day we also visited several temples where the Buddha images and terracotta panels had been severely damaged by treasure hunters. The skies in Bagan were clearer and bluer than they had been in Yangon or Mandalay and we started to develop suntans. At about 6:00pm we climbed another pagoda to watch the sunset.
Don and I are now 'stupafied'
Later the same evening, some entertainment was laid on and we enjoyed a meal while watching traditional dance and a marionette show.
Later we sat on the veranda of Don's hotel cabin drinking Mandalay beer and looking at a nearby stupa. We named this 'Don's personal Stupa'.
Just visible : the tip of Don's personal stupa
Day 6
Another early start for the flight to Heho, near Inlay Lake. We neared Heho, but had to turn back due to poor visibility. We eventually arrived about 2 hours late, but had time for a quick boat ride. Among other things, we saw several boats with school children, in their uniforms, returning home after school.
After dinner there was more traditional dancing laid on in our hotel grounds. Of course more Mandaly beer was also consumed. To date we had not tracked down a source of 'Dagon beer' though we had seen plenty of adverts for it.
Day 7
A longer boat ride on Inlay Lake, which was fascinating with it's temples on stilts, leg rowers and tomato cultivation (tomato plants are grown on floating islands of weeds and soil, which are anchored to the lake bed with long bamboo poles). Here the monks collect food from the locals by boat.
Later we returned to Heho to fly to Yangon. Even though the flight was internal, as usual we had to go through customs. Since Heho had no X-ray machine, most bags were checked thoroughly and my bronze statues were all unwrapped and carefully inspected.
Back in Yangon we were met by our original guide. We checked into the same hotel as on our first day. Our sympathetic guide allowed us to spend one hour in a craft market and agreed to for-go more visits to temples and stupas in favour of drinking beer. It was at this time we at last tracked down Dagon beer. After a jug of that we switched quickly back to Mandalay beer. That evening after the International buffet, Don and I made our way to the Sedona hotel in Yangon to sample the bar / disco there.
Day 8
We checked out of the hotel and returned to Yangon airport, where I retrieved my handphone from customs. The Thai Airways lounge at Yangon airport was surprisingly good, given how few flights go to Yangon. We were soon in the air and en route back to Bangkok.
In summary
It was a great holiday. The people of Myanmar are very friendly. Most are very poor and you are continuously surrounded by children trying to sell you things. There were also a few beggars though most were trying to make money by conducting some kind of business. This was not a great detraction and a small amount of money was rewarded with a big smile. It is not a holiday for children, but would be difficult to beat if you like Buddhist culture and enjoy sight seeing. From my previous comments you will realise you do not go to Myanmar for the night life.
Would I recommend it? Yes definitely. It would be great for couples or groups of adults deeply interested in architecture, religion and culture. From the state of our bowels I would say the standard of hygeine was good and all our hotel rooms were clean.
I would finally point out that I travelled in August which is the wet season. We were constantly told that the best time to go is Oct - Dec. We may just have been lucky, but it only rained twice during our tour and that was in the evenings after the days outdoor activities were complete. Most of the flooding we saw was a result of rain further up country draining away down the Irrawaddy.
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Go to Myanmar Photo Exhibition
Go to another Myanmar Photo Exhibition