I took a trishaw out to the Mandaley bus station.  Boy, was I in for a shock when I saw the bus I was going to be riding in for the next 9+ hours!  (My previous buses had been standard passenger buses, nothing too interesting.)  This bus looked to be at least 20 years old.  The paint was coming off in huge chunks, but the weirdest part was that it was loaded with tons of bags holding grain etc.  The floor of the bus was 3 bags deep and the bags were stacked around each chair, so that you literally had to climb on top of the bags and crawl down the aisle, with just enough space to slither between the bags and the ceiling of the bus.  Each seat had walls of bags around them so you could hardly see the other passengers, and some people weren’t lucky enough to get seats so they perched on top of the bags the whole way.  Needless to say, it was a very uncomfortable ride.  The worst part was that we broke down at 2:00am, so our 9 hour ride was streched out to an 11 1/2 hour ride!

Here’s a picture of the bus:

I made it to Bagan and checked into the Eden Motel.  (Eden is great!  The staff are very friendly, and for $4 a night I get my own air conditioned room with a private bathroom and hot water, plus breakfast.  What a bargain!)  As I was having breakfast that morning, I ran into some Isreali guys that I had met at Inle Lake.  The 3 of us decided to rent a horse cart and go see the temples, stuppas, and pagodas of Bagan.  Bagan is an amazing place with 14,000 temples.  The oldest ones are about 1,000 years old.  I have no idea why they felt they needed to build so many temples, but it is definetly an amazing site.  In every direction you look, you can see tons of temples streching out to the horizon.  I was exhausted after the overnight bus and the day on the horse cart, so I went to bed at about 5:30pm and slept soundly til the next morning. 

The second day in Bagan I rented a bicycle and went out to see more of the temples.  It was very peaceful and fun in the morning.  I went to a few temples that had no tourists around, so was I was able to explore them alone with just my flashlight to see the statues and beautiful paintings on the walls and ceilings.  I sort of felt like an archeologist or something.  Very cool!  But by 10:00am all of the souveigner sellers were out.  They don not leave you allow.  They follow you around the temples, being friendly but annoying. Always asking the same questions, “Where do you come from?” “How old are you?” “Do you want to change money?” “Do you want to look at my paintings (or lacquerware or wood carvings)?”  I had to escape, so I went to a fancier hotel and used the pool for the afternoon.  Then I did a few more hours of biking before escaping to my aircoinditoned room.  I went to Aroma 2 (an Indian restraunt) for dinner.  It was fabulous and the owner was so sweet.  He was running between the tables making sure everyone was enjoying their meals.

For my third day in Bagan I had decided to go to Mt Popa, which is a holy mountain for the Nat religion.  (Nat was the first religion in Myanmar and it is more to do with spirits and nature.)  There were 3 Japanese people staying at my guesthouse who also wanted to go to, so we decided to rent a jeep together.  It was really fun hanging out with the Japanese people for the day!  I remembered a few words of Japanese, and being with them made me really start to look forward to my upcoming teaching job in Japan. 

On the way out to My Popa we stopped at this little stand by the the road where a farmer was showing people how he makes sesame oil, peanut oil, palm sugar, and palm wine.  It was actually very interesting! Mt Popa was pretty cool, but again we had to climb up the mountain barefoot, which was very gross here because the place was crawling in monkeys.  So there was monkey poo and pee all over the path.  Not something you really want to set in with bare feet!  The view from the top was very nice.  You could see all the way to the Irawaddy River.  I was totally sick of boring Myanmar food by this point, so I went to a great little Itailian place for dinner.  I wasn’t expecting much, but it turned out to be the best lasgana in Asia.  It was so good! 

Today I am just going to take it easy, and then I have a 3:00 overnight bus back to Yangon.  I’ve decided to change my flight so I can spend a few days in Bangkok before I head up to Laos.  There are some things I need to do for my Japan teaching job, plus I really want to see the doctor about this annoying cough I’ve had for the last 3 weeks.

On my second day in Mandaley I decided to brave the public transport and find my way to an ancient city called Inwa.  Inwa used to be the capital of Burma and has a lot of beautiful ruins.  (It kind of reminded my of Angkor Wat but on a much smaller scale.)  Public transportation is quite different here.  They have big pickup trucks with benches in the back that go around town.  The trick is to find the one that will actually take you to where you want to go, especially sine noone speaks any English and looked at me like I was crazy while I walked up to all of the drivers saying “Inwa, Inwa”.  I eventually found the right one and was on my way.  (The Burmese people I was squished into the truck stared at me for at least the first 15 minutes of the ride.  I think they were really surprised to see me, because most tourists use trishaws or private taxis.)

We made it to Inwa alright and then I had basically tried every form of transportation possible.  First was walking, then that pick up truck, then I took a bicycle trishaw, next was a short ferry to Inwa, and once I arrived in Inwa I took a horse cart followed by a canoe trip.  As soon as I stepped foot in Inwa, I felt like I had gone back in time about 100 years.  I didn’t see a car or anything kind of modern machine or tool.  People were riding around in horse carts and making bamboo roofing for their houses using big knifes and weaving it by hand.  I got there at a good time, because there weren’t any other tourists there either, which made it even better.

We rode for a few kilometers in the horse cart and then came to a lake with old Buddhist ruins on islands around the lake.  It was really beautiful.  I hired a canoe guy to take me around the lake and out to an old teak monastery in the middle of the lake.  The monastery was beautiful, but after seeing 5-6 old teak monasterys it was becoming less exciting.  There were some novice monks (little boys about 8-13 years old) having school classes there, which was fun to see.  After the canoe ride, I took the horse cart to another temple ruin and wandered around.  It was nice, but there were about 10 girls following me around trying to sell me “jade” necklaces and other things.  It got a bit annoying, so I made my way back to Mandaley.

That evening I went to an awesome chappatti stall on the side of the road for dinner.  I had some chappatti, briyani rice, a bunch of veggie side, a soda, and a coffe and it cost me about 90 cents!  Then I went to the Moustache Brothers show.  Their history and background story turned out to be much more interesting than the show itself.  In Myanmar it is illegal to protest or oppose the government, but in 1996 one of the brothers, Par Par Lay stood up infront of a large crowd and made a joke about how corrupt the government was.  He was put in jail for 7 years.  He is out now and the brothers are still putting on their show.  They aren’t sure why they haven’t been arrested again, but they have so many tourists visit them everyday, that they think the government might get some bad international press if they were to arrest them.  The show they do was supposed to be a comedy routine, but turned out to be mostly dancing.  (I had been to a fabulous dancing show the day before, so wasn’t too impressed with this one.)  But it was still interesting to go there and see the brothers.

The next day, I took a boat ride out to another one of the ancient cities called Migun.  It was nice, but there were so many Italian tourists everywhere that I got annoyed with the whole thing pretty fast.  The main site is a massive half finished stuppa that was partially ruined during an earthquake 10 years ago. (It basically looks like a huge square box made of bricks.)  Since this is a scared/religious site, so are not allowed to where your shoes while you climb it.  (I had thought that climbing the stairs on Mandaley Hill barefoot was rough, but this was something else!)  You have to climb up rough stairs and in some spots just rocks, pebbles, and dirt to get to the top, which is boiling hot!  Being barefoot on sorching bricks isn’t too fun, so people are running between piles of leaves that local boys are selling tourists to keep there feet cool.  The view was amazing, but it would have been much more enjoyable if we could have worn our shoes.

I also saw the 2nd biggest bell in the world and another ancient pagoda/temple thing.  Then had some lunch (of course fried rice with veggies) and took an oxen cart back to the boat.  It wasn’t a long distance to walk, but how often am I going to have a chance to ride in a wagon with wooden wheels that is pulled by 2 oxen? I fell asleep on the boat ride back and then chilled out and had some more chappattis before my overnight minibus trip.  Next stop is Bagan, which is an old city with more than 14,000 temples.

I spent the rest of my time at Inle Lake just relaxing, and then it was time again for another dreaded night bus.  This one was only supposed to be about 9 hours (meaning that we arrived in Mandaley at 4:00am, augh!).  This bus was much less more cramped than the first one I took.  I had no leg room and was sitting next to a Myanmar man who kept trying to strech out his legs into my (already limited) space.  At about midnight, the nice lady sitting next to me showed me that I could fold out a jump seat thing in the aisle.  That was 1000x’s better.  I actually slept for a few hours and was ready to haggle with the taxi drivers when we pulled into Mandaley at 4:00am.

I had made reservations at Royal Guest House a few days before, so they had a room ready for me by 6:00am, and I got to have a few much needed hours of sleep before exploring the city.  I made it down to breakfast at 9:02am, but apparently it finished at 9:00, so I wasn’t allowed to eat.  (They are definetly less accomodating here than at Aquaris Inn where I had just been.  The people there had been so friendly and waited on you hand and foot.)  Anyways, I went to a Nepali restraunt and had some chai for breakfast, when a trishaw driver came up and offered to take me around Mandaley for the day.  I agreed and off we went.

Frist we went to one of the main sites of Mandaley, a pagoda with a gold buddha inside where tons of people flock everyday to rub gold leaf onto the statue.  (Actually only guys are allowed to touch the statute or even come close to it, which was a bit annoying.)  We went to an old teak monastery with lots of elaborate wood carving on it, and then visited some shops (a gold leaf making shop, an umbrella making shop, and a wood craving place).  It is extremely hot in Mandaley, so we took a few hours off to have an afternoon seista and then went to some more sites (another monastery and another pagoda/stuppa thing).

The final site we went to was Mandaley Hill.  You are required to take your shoes off at the bottom, so I had to climb up a mountain bare foot.  It was more than a kilometer to the top, and my feet were totally black by the time we got to the sceanic view for sunset.  It was an amazing view though, you could see all of the city and into the rice paddies on the other side.  My driver and I climbed back down and then went to a very local Indian place for dinner.  They didn’t have menus and the family that owned/ran it didn’t speak any English, so I put my faith in the driver and ate whatever he ordered.  (I hadn’t been too impressed with the food so far in Myanmar, but the beef curry we had was probably the best thing I’d eaten in weeks.  Yum! Good call trishaw man.)

Then we went to a Burmese traditional dance show.  Only 3 travellers showed up for the show, but there must have been about 20 performers there.  They put so much effort into it and with the ticket price being so cheap (about $4.50 a person) they only made about $15 for the show!  There was an 8 piece orchastera with very interesting instruments accompaning it.  One man had about 30 different sized bongo drums in a circle around him and another guy had a similar set up with gongs.  (Talk about multi tasking!)  The dancing was amazing, you could tell they put alot of time into training and perfecting it. Plus there were 3 MC’s talking about the background and plot of each of the dances.    It was a great night!

My driver took me back to the guest house and I gave him an extra tip.  He had pedalled me all around the streets of Mandaley for about 12 hours that day.

My second day in Inle I went on a boat tour of Inle Lake.  I hired a boat with two Aussie ladies who are staying at my guesthouse.  They are in their late 50’s or early 60’s and are very nice.  I’ve been spending most of my time at Inle haging out with them.  So anyways, we rented a longtail boat, a driver, and a guide for $10 total for the day.  (I’m loving Myanmar!  This place is so cheap!)  We went out to the lake at 9am and didn’t get back until 4pm.  First we went to the floating market, which was basically a ton of tiny boats filled with jewelry and souveniers that would grab on to the side of our boat and try to get us to buy things.  It was chaotic, but I ended up buying a few nice necklaces.  Then we visited a weaving place where long neck women do weaving.  (Long neck women have those bands around their necks that strech them out.  It looks extremely painful!)  We stopped at a few more tourist factorys (silver and silk) and then went to a Buddhist temple, before another meal of …fried rice with veggies (of course)!

My favorite part of the trip was the afternoon.  We drove through the floating garden where people have made farms basically in the middle of the lake.  They use water plants as the base and then seaweed as a fertilizer, and plant tomatoes on the small rows.  The farmers have to take little row boats between the lanes of tomatoes.  How incredible!  The traditional way for them to stear their boat is with their feet.  They stand at the front edge of the boat and pull the oar around in a circle using their foot and calf.  It was amazing to see! We also went to a place called Inda where we saw very old ruins and stuppas.  It looked like a scene from Indian Jones or something.  The final stop of the day was Jumping Cat Monastary.  It was such a cheesy tourist place.  The monks (or someone) had taught cats to jump through a hoop.  How corny!

When we got back to Aquaris I chilled out and then went for a lovely Indian dinner at Aroma.  It was fabulous but really spicy!

The following day me and the Aussie ladies decided to do a self guided trek.  The trek was supposed to be about 5 hours and we got a map from our guesthouse and set off.  The first 1 1/2 hours went by smoothly.  Then we realized that the map was useless.  It wasn’t drawn at all to scale and it didn’t show any of the other trails, so we had to guess at which way to go all of the time.  I had been coming down with a really bad cough and dicided to turn back after 2 hours, since it seemed like we would never make it to the cave or villages we were supposed to be seeing.  I made it back to town and had a yummy lunch and then another fantastic massage.

Tomorrow I will be setting off for Mandaley on another overnight bus.  This time it’s only supposed to be 9 hours, but who knows.  I don’t think I will have much chance to use the Internet, since the government has banned a lot of sites (hotmail included) and the dail up connections are so slow and always get lost in the middle of doing anything.

Sunday was an insanely long travel day!  About 20 hours on a bus!  I left the guesthouse at about 11am and headed for the bus station.  After a lunch of chicken fired rice (with the only chicken in it being little chicken bones that I almost choked on) I boarded the bus.  I was expecting a beaten up old bus, but was in for a good surprise.  The bus looked relatively new and there was actually a decent amount of leg room.  Yeah!  The only problem was that the driver seemed like he was never going to stop for a toliet break.  After about 8 hours of driving we finally pulled into a restraunt and we all ran for the bathroom.  I had a really yummy dinner of rice, soup, and about 8 kinds of veggie side dishes.  (All for $1!)  The bus ride went by as quickly as a 20 hour bus ride can go by.  They actually played two movies in English (with Chinese subtitles, that I doubt anyone on the bus could read).  I think there were only 2 of us (me and a Burmese man) who could speak English, so they were solely for our entertainment.

We arrived in Inle at about 7:00am, and I headed to Aquaris Hotel with 4 other backpackers.  (Aquaris had been recommended to be by a guy in Yangoon, and he was right.  it was fabulous!)  The rooms were just average, but very clean.  What made the guesthouse fabulous was the staff.  They were so thoughtful and waited of me like I was a princess.  They served a fanatsitc breakfast every morning (for free) and also had afternoon snacks of banana with honey and tea waiting for us when we came back from our outings.  How sweet!  They had even set up a little bed for me in the lobby, so I could relax until my room was free.

The first day after a short rest, I rented a bicycle and headed off towards the hot springs.  I had been told it would be about 1 1/2 hours, but it turned out to be about a 5 hour roundtrip journey, due to the bumpy pothole roads and antique bicycle.  I met up with an Austrian guy who had shared a taxi with me, and we set off.  The hot springs were closed for construction, so we went further down the road to see a stuppa that also had a nice view of Inle Lake.  It was quite pretty and the two of us had a nice little chat with the monk who lived at the stuppa.  Then we headed back towards town, stopping for some lunch at a small roadside stand.  I had fried rice with veggies (which I seem to be eating on a daily basis, since there isn’t much variety in food here in Myanmar). After we had eaten, a little girl offered to put the traditional Burmese bark makeup on me.  (All of the women, children, and some of the men seem to wear this.  It is a pale yellow cover and they just cover their faces in it.  Ushually the women put large squares of it on their cheeks.  It is make up and also for sun protection.)  The girl and her mother put it on me and the girl made it extra pretty by drawing flowers on my cheeks with the makeup.

The people in Myanmar are some of the friendliest people I have ever met.  They all say hello ad smile when you pass them on the street.  Plus they go so far out of their way to help you with directions too.

I dropped off the bicycle and had a massage in my room at the guesthouse.  ($2.50 for an hour long massage.  I think I’ll be having these almost everyday!)  Then had pizza for dinner (I know I’m horrible, but I couldn’t handle another meal of fried rice).  And went to bed at 8:30.

After spending a few days relaxing at Jenn’s apartment in Bangkok, I set off for Myanmar very early in the morning (4:30).  My flight went very smoothly and I arrived without a problem.  It was funny to discover that Burma has made up it’s own time zone!  They are 30 minutes behind Thailand, instead of the normally hourly differences that every other country in the world has.

I met up with a French girl at the airport who was planning on staying at the same guesthouse as me, so we shared a taxi into town together.  We ended up hanging out with each other for the rest of the day.  Checking into the guesthouse was quite a pain!  we told them that we wanted the cheapest twin room they had (the French girl and I were going to share a room for the night in order to save a little bit of money).  They took us up 9 flights of stairs with our huge bags on our backs. (9!!) We took one of the rooms and dropped off our stuff, then went down to the desk to pay. The lady told us that it was going to be $12 instead of the $7 that we were orginally quoted.  We took her that wasn’t acceptable, so she offered us a room on the second floor (meaning we had to climb all of those stairs again to get our bags).  We took the second floor room, but while we were filling out the paperwork a girl came in and asked for a room.  She was given our first room for $6, without even asking for a discount!  (What an annoying receptionist!)

We spend the rest of the day walking all over Yangoon.  We went to the big stuppa (sorry I forgot the name, will look it up later).  A stuppa is basically a huge golden spiky temple thing that contains some kind of relic or the remains of an important person.  This one is said to contain 8 of Buddha’s hairs.  Then we wandered around the streets which were quite crazy.  Yangoon looks alot like Bangkok.  The streets are dirty and smelly and full of people.  There were tons of street markets and hundreds of betel nut sellers.  (Betel nut is sort of a mild drug- like tabacco.  People put a leaf wrapped up with betel nut, lime, and sometimes tabacco into their mouths and chew of it.  Then they spit tons of blood red gunk all over the ground.  It stains their teeth and mouths a red-brown color.  Nasty habit!)

The French girl and I went to some of the more posh places in Yangoon.  We had tea at the Sakura Tower to see a nice view of the city and then we had a reflexology massage at Central Hotel.  After that we had Indian for dinner and then some how managed to find our way back to the guest house in the dark with hardly any street lights, and no road signs.  I fell asleep by 9:00.  What a long day!