Travel Diary Burma: From Yangon To Mandalay

We took an early flight with Air Asia from Bangkok to Yangon and got picked up by our guesthouse. The room was nice with aircon and a warm shower, the last for the coming three days (little did we know…) We started the day exploring the city and trying to get some of the local currency Kyat. We have heard beforehand that your best bet is on the black market, but twice the dealers tried to trick us. Third time lucky we got our first 970,000 kyat (100 US$).

Be kind to tourists signs can be found everywhere around the country

The heat that day was unbelievable. We went to the train station to buy our tickets for the Golden Rock and had to wait nearly for an hour for our tickets. The sellers got us into their office and we had to sit down and wait. My bet is that they were fascinated by us as they still haven’t many tourists in Yangon. Everywhere on the street I received lots of stares because of my hair 🙂
Yangon itself wasn’t spectacular and we were glad to leave early the next day. The train ride was an adventure itself. First it is REALLY slow and second it is so bumpy that we were all jumping around like crazy. A lot of fun.

Train ride

We arrived in Kyaiktio after five hours and took a pick up truck to town. We hadn’t bothered to book any accommodation and got approached at the bus stop by two hotel owners. We choose the cheaper option, a double room with fan and a bathroom with a cold shower. Unfortunately the whole room smelled like paint which we realized once the rain settled in. Not the best, but doable for a night.

No proper streets

 

Our plan was to walk up to the rock, but as it was already three o’clock and we had to walk for around 5 hours we opted for the truck and decided to walk down the hill.
Transport is an adventure every time in Burma. We were seated with approx. 50 other tourists (most Asian) and drove up the windy road in full speed.

50 other tourists and us on the way to the Golden Rock

At the top we were able to take some pictures before the rain settled in. The golden Rock itself is really spectacular. It sits half on the cliff and looks like it will fall off every second. It contains a hair of Buddha and just men are allowed to go the last 200m to the rock and touch it.

The beautiful Golden Rock

The rain didn’t stop and we had to get the truck back down. After five minutes they stopped and we all had to get out of the truck. It was pissing down with rain and we were standing in the middle of nowhere, no idea what was about to happen. No one was answering our questions, so we had to wait for half an hour.  A truck came and picked up all the Asian tourists so that it was just Ryan, me and three other Europeans. Thank God another truck arrived five minutes later and took us down. It was raining, there was no light, the street was curvy and the driver was going down the hill with full speed…

Thank God we arrived safely and were able to take the bus to Bago the next morning. We arrived around lunchtime and booked a tour around the town. We had around five hours before our train departed (so the plan…)

exams about the Buddha language

 

The tour was great:

Bago’s lying Buddha

 

We were sitting on the back of scooters, visited pagodas, the traditional Burmese temples, monasteries, a big Buddha, a cigar factory and even saw a 120 year old holy snake which was massive.

The 120 years old holy snake

In the cigar factory one of the women applied the traditional Burmese sunscreen on my face. They take a piece of wood and rub it against a stone with some water till it creates a white paste.

with the traditional sunscreen

We returned to the train station, as our plan was to get the overnight train to Mandalay. Buying a ticket wasn’t as easy as you may think. As the train left in Yangon no one knew if there would be any sleepers available before the train departed Yangon. We could have taken the cheaper bus but the overnight train ride was on top of our list and we had to wait. There are no computers for booking. One man was sitting in front of five telephones, which connected him to all the train stations. Lucky enough we got our tickets at five just to find out that the train wouldn’t arrive before seven. Waiting wasn’t too bad as all the locals were really nice to us and we had great chats with them.

hanging out with the locals

We shared our four-bed department with three monks, which was an interesting start of the journey as they were really nice and eager to talk. Unfortunately they got kicked out of the department by a Burmese family, which must have paid more for the tickets. Ryan and I had the two bottom beds booked but the family refused to give us Ryan’s bed and he had to sleep in the upper bed. The train ride itself was interesting. We didn’t sleep a lot as the train horn was blowing nonstop and the tracks were really bumpy again. Poor Ryan was up in the air by 10 cm more then once. Nevertheless, it was a great adventure we don’t want to miss as you see beautiful landscapes and village life at its best.

Beautiful landscape on the way to Mandalay

After 14 hours we arrived in Mandalay, tired, without accommodation and once again rain pouring down at us…