Travel Accounts; SEA 3

06-01 through 06-16

We decided not to spend too much money getting from Chiang Mai to Yangon as we’d gone a bit over budget in Thailand. I blame this mainly on the food and drink spending.
So, flying is out the window at roughly 4000 baht each (Chiang Mai-Bangkok-Yangon). The internet isn’t very helpful when you want to go from Chiang Mai to Yangon by land because the latest reports you can find are quite outdated and are dated around 2014-15 tops.

After consulting at a local travel agency/tourist guide centre we decided there would just be busses when we get to the bus station that will take us to where we want to go. We got up early, after drinking more than elephants at the watering hole, so about 10-ish, and started packing our things. At 12 we said goodbye to our good friends Jay and Mac, the local Thai fun machines that work at the Royal Guest house, and set off to the bus terminal.

Now we knew that there would be a bus going at 13:15 so we aimed to be there at 12:30, we decided against booking ahead because ‘hell it’ll never be sold out’. It was.
The only alternative offered was to take a bus lookalike to Tak and a minivan from there to Mae Sot, from here it would be a hop and a skip to the Myanmar border. The bus ride wasn’t all bad, we dozed a little, watched some of ‘The Americans’ and before we knew it we were at the bus station in Tak. All this only cost us 1100 baht in total. The trip form Tak to Mae Sot was another 150 each so definitely winning over flying so far.

When we asked how long the trip would take and they lied that it would be around 30 minutes. A solid two hours later we stumbled out of the van and into this dark and abandoned bus station/loading dock of some concrete building. We have no clue where we are.
We decided to walk back to what looked like the main road and try and hail a cab from there, just call a taxi, throw money at it and all your orientation problems will go extinct. There are no taxis driving around Mae Sot.
A kind security guard decided to help us out and after much gesturing and pointing we finally got him to use my phone and call a taxi service for us. 100 baht later we were at the hotel, sweet Jesus how nice is this hotel! Small bedroom, good water pressure on both the shower and the bum-gun small fridge with some water inside and air con, cost 440 a night.

Next morning we asked to be brought to the border at about 12, figured it would be another 3-4 hours to Hpa-an, the first pit stop in Myanmar on the way to Yangon where we’d spend the night, so we would have at least a couple of hours of daylight left when we got there.
Oh we tried to get some local grub before we left but basically they have no pictures of the food and the menus are in Thai, so even our best gesturing and pointing couldn’t get us the fried rice with chicken that we were aiming for.
The taxi to the border was another 100 baht and a hop and a skip later we were checking through customs and walking over that good ol’ pals bridge, it might be named Myanmar-Thai friendship bridge but I don’t know.

The people working at this passport pit stop were really nice and helpful, also really astounded by the sheer size of us. And our beauty, they actually mentioned how gorgeous we are, #dressed to impress, wearing sweaty T’s and shorts. After (physically) approving us to enter Myanmar they took us past the hordes of ‘Taxi-Taxi’s’ and explained many of these people aren’t licensed, some not even to drive, let alone provide taxi service. He pressed upon us not to pay more than 24000 kyat (800 baht) for the trip to Hpa-an and helped us negotiate to get us to that price, after this he repeated ‘don’t give him more’. Seems like a nice fellow and as this is still well below 4000 baht/each were smiling.

At about 1700 we arrived at Hpa-an, this is little more than a long street with mud on the side instead of sidewalks and two working ATM’s, one of these was out. We spent about an hour looking for the second one. The Hotel we stayed at was quite pricey at 50000 kyat, would’ve been 40000 but we’re foreigners, can white people call racism?
After exploring a bit we ate dinner at the hotel restaurant and watched some weird Burmese remake of the Jason Statham movie ‘The Transporter’, it was funny because it didn’t exactly happen the way the American movie goes and mainly scenes where stuff would have exploded were taken out, must be a budget problem, this must also have caused the lack of Jason Statham.
We stayed in bed this night and watched some movies on the satellite TV provided in our room. Guess what movie was on; ‘The Transporter’. We watched a bit of this, mainly to see how it is supposed to go, laughed, then put on ‘Ant-Man’ and watched half of ‘The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy’ this one mainly for educational purposes given our current position.
There wasn’t any WiFi at the hotel so we were also kind of forced to converse with one another. Yack. This by the way also stopped us from preparing for our big entrée into Yangon, no hotel booked, no clue where the bus would drop us, nothing.

At 8:00 we were back in the good old tin can transportation service, now with added torture features for a ‘this-is-how-it’s-gonna-be-for-every-bus-trip-in-Myanmar’ time only! Zero legroom, Zero chance of sleeping, Loud Burmese music blasting through the PA system throughout the trip, and last but not least! Weird Burmese music videos!
The weirdest was supposedly a love song where a loving couple is portrayed and the female character starts to go blind. The gentleman, being a true gentleman, cheats on her and leaves her. But here comes the twist! She wakes up from surgery and finds out she has new eyes! The next shot shows the gentleman wearing big black sunglasses and holding a walking stick, LOOKING at a photograph of them together. This made so little sense I cried a little inside. We were in this moving machine of pain and discomfort for about 6-7 hours before entering the Yangon bus terminal. This is not close to the city centre at all, taxis asked between 30.000 and 50.000 but we got it down to 20.000, the local kid sharing a ride only paid 3.000, got to love this country so far!

So we arrived at the hotel, a sweet little place reminding me of sleeping over at Grandma’s house at around 17:00pm. All in all we spent 5.368 baht and two days getting here, so definitely cheaper than flying. Another real reason to travel by land is the beautiful countryside between Chiang Mai and Yangon, you can literally see it change from typical Thai scenery to something you’ve never seen before. If you ever plan a trip from Thailand to Myanmar I would recommend this route, it’s really easy, the local people are SO willing to help you and will patiently stare in amazement as you gesture and point your way to understanding each other. People will generally gesture and stare at amazement even as you walk by, it adds a bit of charm to any trip.

06-05 through 06-16

06-05

So, first day waking up in Yangon, there is a feint smell of mould and dust in the room, not enough to make you queasy, but just enough to decide you want to sleep somewhere else. We booted up the old Macbook and found a cheap inn within walking distance.

Okay we totally underestimated the distance considering the intense heat.

After 90 minutes schlepping the heavy backpacks up from 52nd to 12th street we were good and sweaty, as well as thoroughly convinced we had done our work out for the day. This hostel wasn’t half bad, it’s clean and centrally located. Fair enough value for money wise. After settling in we decided to do some exploring, we walked around in the city to look for an ATM that would finally work as the first three of them declined our cards for some reason. I gotta be honest, this town is pretty smelly. There’s mud, rats, garbage, and red saliva everywhere. Were a bit skittish about eating street-food as the entire stock of ingredients seems to just be out in the sun all day. We ate at some little restaurant and the food was so-so, I hope Myanmar gets better as we go.

06-06

Convinced that Yangon must have something worth while we aimed big and hoped to be blown away, lets go see the Shwedagon pagoda, if this isn’t good, nothing will be. It was not too far away from our hostel, roughly 45 minutes walking to go there, including some aimless wondering because we got lost. This doesn’t seem impressive in such a big city, but all we had to do was walk in a straight line. For some reason after 30 minutes I reasoned that we must’ve done something wrong because it didn’t look that far away on the map. We took a right turn, this was exactly what we did wrong, we just didn’t know it yet.
The pagoda is really impressive; the walk up to it is quite the climb and serves its humbling purpose quite well. After the climbing the many stairs we had to sit down a bit to gather energy to further withstand the intense heat emitted from all around you. The sun above gently radiates your skin with the subtle heat of a steel furnace. The stone pavement you are sadistically asked to walk upon barefoot slowly cooks your feet to medium rare, and as soon as you get close to any gold plate covered statue you suddenly realize it’s actually a space heater, this must be why Myanmar is so damned hot year round, these things are everywhere. Supposedly there is 50 tons of gold plate spread all over this huge bell shaped statue, to say the sheer size is only equal to its beauty would still not do it justice. Good job pagoda, you’ve managed to impress us, Myanmar isn’t half bad so far.

06-07

We got up at 6:30; the taxi to take us to the bus station would depart at 7:00. We left early because when we got to Yangon the taxi from the bus station to the city centre took about two hours, this time we were there in 30 minutes. Crap.
The bus to Mandalay would not leave for another 2 hours and as much as I hate to admit this; I was stoked because now I got to finish reading my book, The Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. The bus would supposedly take 10 hours and we should be in Mandalay by 19:30, however by 16:30 we slowed way down as we rolled into Mandalay ‘bus station’, might have just been a ditch but it had people waiting to offer taxi rides so we’re not one to judge. The one we went with was a young twenty something named Shin, he offered to take us to all the sights of Mandalay for 35.000 kyat (about $35), because we had no clue as to what we could do and he said he’d take us to all of the things, and because we’re lazy by nature, we accepted.

06-08

Had breakfast at the hotel, wasn’t too bad, wasn’t really good either. Shin picked us up at 9:00, and the first stop was a temple near the place where all the statues are made. The temple itself wasn’t much different from most, though it was the first time they made me wear one of those cool long skirts, felt better than ill ever admit. After this temple we visited a monastery where around a thousand monks reside and at 10:00 they all get their last meal of the day. I didn’t make this up; apparently they only eat first and second breakfast and then nothing. I’d never be a good monk. The hundreds of monks lining up at a time was a sight to behold; the children line up first ranked by their level of monkhood, then the adolescents and adults come last. Somehow certain tourists didn’t get the memo regarding common courtesy and respect to local culture and were standing in the way of this line of monks. Puck and I scoffed loudly hoping they’d hear and somehow understand that they were being extremely rude. No such luck but finally one of the monks kindly escorted them to the sidewalk.
After witnessing a very controlled and impressive ritual concerning food, one that someone like me can’t help but be in awe of, we drove for about 30 minutes to an amazing site. Guess what, more temples.
I don’t know about you guys but I’m finding it hard to be even the slightest bit interested in all the temples we visit. I think my temple quota has been met, and will remain so for another couple of years at least. Because of this I won’t bore you with more descriptions for a while, other than ‘we saw a temple, it was gorgeous’.
Anyway; we saw a bunch of temples all afternoon, they were gorgeous.
We got dropped back at the hotel at around 16:00, had some of the local delights, watched a movie in our room and called it a night.

06-09

Waking up in this hotel is really quite nice, considering we had to get up at ungodly hours to be in time for breakfast serving. Breakfast was included in the room price meaning we HAD to have it. The breakfast itself wasn’t all that good, like I said, but us being us we suffered through it because we goddamned paid for it. As we hadn’t seen much of Mandalay except for all of the sights we decide to take a friendly stroll. We brought a map and walked around the royal palace. The grounds of the palace are about as large as the city of Mandalay itself, though it feels like a hell of a lot larger when you get kisses from the Myanmar sun on your back. And let me tell you, the Myanmar sun likes it rough. We looked at the map when we were about half way and found out that there’s a zoo on the north side of the palace, Puck insisted on walking there, I hate her so much sometimes. After schlepping our half molten corpses around for another ten miles we finally got at to the zoo. Now I know this might have been less than ten miles, it might have even been as little as ten minutes, but goddamn this heat.
The zoo was really nice, a lot of curious creatures and majestic mammals. More walking was involved than I liked but on the up side; monkeys.
Being quite tired from the arduous journey we decided to take a tuk-tuk back to the hotel. As the one tuk-tuk driver there asked this ridiculous amount of money for a very short trip we decided to go on an adventure and hop in the back of a ‘some guy’s truck-tuk’. This was cheap and actually worked out way better than expected.
When we got back to the hotel we arranged the trip to Bagan, had dinner and watched a movie.

06-10/12

The trip to Bagan was a weird one. The map shows that it’s about a quarter of the way it takes to get from Yangon to Mandalay, “not bad”, we thought. After being on the bus for about a good hour or two we expected that we must be closing in on Bagan. The bus slowed down and came to a stop near a local food place. A large variety of snacks, drinks and full on meals were on offer but not a great deal of trust was placed in them on our part. We settled on some ‘home made’ chips and a bottle of water. I tried to get the driver to point out on the map where we were by pointing in between Mandalay and Bagan and making the question mark face, I think it just confused him as he pointed at a completely off-route spot. We got back on the bus, watched some Community and patiently waited to get to Bagan. After another two hours we got a not so nice surprise as I found out the driver hadn’t been confused at all. We just took a major detour and instead of taking the straightforward 120km connection between Mandalay and Bagan, we had been picking up people, mail and other items in a 100km radius before finally going to Bagan. It took us about six hours. Not cool.

We were in Bagan for three days; we saw about three crap loads of temples, they were all gorgeous. It rained for most of the time so that fancy hotel we booked especially because it had a swimming pool was a bust. The weirdest thing that happened was that at one of the big temples a group of about 20 local women wanted to take a photo with us. Instead of a large group shot they ended up taking turns two at a time and circulating cameras. It took forever. Unfortunately not long enough to think of charging money per picture before it all ended though.

06-13

The trip from Bagan to our next stop; Bago, near Yangon, we thought would take about 7 hours as it is less distance to cover than it was from Yangon to Mandalay. Yet again the map turns out to offer not truths but lies. It took us a total of 13(!) hours to cross the 564km that our friends at Google maps tell us should take 7 hours and 24 minutes. Apart from the trip taking long and being horrendous in general it took us past Bago to Aumingular bus station, this is the same muddy place we arrived when going to Yangon. When we got there we still needed to take taxi to Bago, another hour and half of near death experiences, yay.

Bago seems to be very similar to Hpa-An, it’s basically a one street town with no sidewalks but the traffic intensity to match most high ways. We found a nice little place that sold local food and 50ct beers, had some dinner there and called it a day.

06-14

The main reason for being in Bago was to visit Golden Rock, the map of lies shows it to be 18km away, the truth of infrastructure made it a 3 hour bus trip. HOW !??
All outrage aside; the bus takes 3 hours to get to the foot of the mountain where a truck awaits you, this truck doesn’t go up until it’s stacked to the rafters with people parcels. After racking up 40 tourists, locals, prime ministers etc. they finally endeavor the trip up the mountain that should take another hour. We were advised to take a guided tour because when you get back from the mountain you arrive an hour after the last bus has already departed. So your basically stuck having to take a motorbike deathtrap, oh sorry, ‘taxi’ to the nearest town. How this isn’t already Bago still baffles me. From there it’s another bus back to town. Guess how much this little nugget of transportation glory sets you back, no really guess. I bet it’s more than you imagined, this 8 hours of there and back again costs you about $100. Time to bring back the outrage?

We decided against being awed by this golden rock, instead settled for the minor awe the arduous journey inspired in our hearts and wallets.

Instead of schlepping ourselves over to Golden Rock we thought we’d take some bicycles from the hotel and look at the many other sights to be seen in Bago. Starting at a miniature model of the Shwedagon pagoda where we paid the mandatory $10 archeological zoning fee. The bike ride over to this pagoda was already pretty unpleasant and even though we were supposed to ‘easily find’ many of the treasures Bago has to offer, this proved quite difficult. As cars, tuk-tuks, trucks, motorbikes, and full on 18-wheelers pass u by they do this courtesy honk. Scares you damned near off your seat. Like I said, not pleasant.

We brought the bikes back and had some dinner at the same little restaurant as it was deemed safe after the first encounter.

4:00am; the chicken betrayed me. This was the start of a very long and grueling challenge to convince any food or fluids to stay my friend and pass naturally. I’ll save you the gruesome details of what followed but as misery likes company just imagine this; a double sided continuous enema that lasts from 4:00am till 17:00pm.

06-15

At around 17:00pm I start to feel better, I have a sip of coke and try to sleep some more. We still had to pack our bags because the taxi to take us to Yangon airport is picking us up at 5:00am, this cost me all of the little strength that was left in me.

06-16

The alarm goes at 4:30am, we grab our bags and struggle with them over towards reception. Two young fellows look very dazed and confused as we wake them up asking about our taxi. This unsettled us to a point of worrying weather this taxi we booked to be here at 5:00am 3 days in advance was such a good idea. We got them to wake up the general manager and make a few calls. At 5:15am this cranky taxi driver came round and took us to the airport. He drove faster than anyone should and seemed to make up rules of the road as he went along. Madly honking and overtaking on whatever side offered more room, all the while being on the phone with one hand and counting money with the other. I reasoned that if we were to survive this taxi we sure as hell weren’t going to crash with either of the two planes we were going to take, statistics wouldn’t allow it.

Both flights weren’t very eventful, we made it to Siem Reap by 14:30 and had arranged for a tuk-tuk to be waiting for us to pick us up. Arriving into Siem Reap we start to feel a lot better; it was like the misery from Myanmar was swept away and replaced with a sense of joy in anticipation of the new adventures to come.

Around 16:00 our apatite started to come back and we were keen on trying the local cuisine. We stopped at a little restaurant with a menu the size of a phone book. Unacquainted with Cambodian food we ordered the basic red curry and a pumpkin curry both were extremely delicious. About half way through the dishes we felt this unpleasant yet familiar feeling, something that usually only happens after completing at least two of these quantities. We were getting full. The bug we encountered in Myanmar not only took all I held dear at the time but much like chemical warfare it infected generations to come. Distraught and sad we left the restaurant with over half of the food we paid for still on the table.
On the way toward the old market I remembered seeing a curious phenomenon; a pizza tuk-tuk. This is exactly what you hope it is; it’s a wood fired oven attached to a tuk-tuk. They roll up the dough as you sit and stack it with fresh ingredients. I thought if anything would awaken my lost appetite, this would do it. Onwards!

I was right; it did awaken my appetite, I was able to eat 3 whole slices. I cried a little inside, feeling like a shadow of my former self.

Defeated and unhappy we bought a bottle of water, watched a movie in our room and got an early night in. In my dreams I thought of a world where we’d be able to eat adult portions again. And that maybe one day I’d find that pizza tuk-tuk again, swearing I’d eat at least one whole pizza then.