Week 56 - Bangkok, Yangon, Mandalay (Thailand, Myanmar (Burma))

As we had to collect our passports from the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok at 3:30pm we hadn’t made any plans for the day. It has also been raining since 11pm the night before with a ferocious thunder storm so we didn’t have much desire to venture out. Instead of sightseeing we spent the day doing chores and we found a travel agency near the hostel that would change our Thai Bahts in to pristine US Dollars to take into Myanmar (Kyats are a closed currency that you can’t get outside of Myanmar and apparently the ATM’s there don’t accept foreign cards). After collecting our passports, shiny new Burmese visa in place, we headed for more Thai food for a late lunch. Other than popping out to get a haircut, we didn’t leave the hostel for the rest of the day and feasted on crisps in bed for dinner.

The next day we were up early for a 6:30am pick up for a trip to the Damnern Saduak floating market. As soon as we got in the van a storm hit and the rain was torrential. Luckily, 3 hours later, when we finally made it through the traffic and puddles to the market, the rain had stopped. The market was extremely touristy but good fun. When we got there we jumped in a paddle boat and were poled around the waterways to peer at the stalls with the proprietors hooking our boat and pulling us over to try to sell us hats and Buddha statues. We had a bit of time to wander around the markets on foot after the boat, before piling in to a motor boat for a bizarre trip down the waterways away from the market. It was a bit like if a tour bus took a route through deepest darkest Tottenham to show people the council estates and piles of rubbish. The boat dropped us off where, after a short wait, we were back in a minibus headed back to Bangkok. The bus dropped us at Khao San Road and after lunch we spent a bit of time wandering around the market before taking a tuktuk back to the hostel.

Damnern Saduak Floating Market.

On our last day in Bangkok we had another lay-in and headed out at noon to find the ferry pier for a boat ride along the Chao Phraya River to the Grand Palace, the former royal residence. Once we got to the the palace we saw the price of a ticket and the strict dress code and decided against going in. Wandering around instead we stumbled upon a Buddhist temple complex (after ducking into a museum when the rain started) with hardly any tourists and really friendly locals. The buildings were beautiful, very different from those in Korea and Taiwan, lots of white walls with gold roof details and statues. Back at the ferry pier we stopped by a little stall for lunch before catching the boat across the river. The boat dropped us at a market and from there we walked to another beautiful, small temple before catching motorbikes to Wat Arun, the Temple of the Dawn, an 82m high Khmer-style spire covered in tiny porcelain tiles. The buildings around the famous temple were just as spectacular as Wat Arun itself, we even stopped by a temple where a monk flicked some water at us and tied a bracelet around our wrists, it was very, very cool. When we bought our ticket for Wat Arun we climbed up some stupidly steep steps to the top of the tower for spectacular views across the river to the Grand Palace and the temples lining the river. After Wat Arun we caught the boat back to the pier near our hostel. Walking back we passed an Irish Bar and the thought of our first Magners in over a year drew us in. £6 a pint!!! Best £6 we’ve spent.

The Grand Palace (well the bit you can see without paying!), Bangkok.

The temple next to Wat Arun, Bangkok.

Me getting my bracelet from the monk, Bangkok.

We were up and on the tube by 8am the next day. At the end of the line, we found a bus to take us the rest of the way to Don Muang Airport. Our flight was delayed by an hour and a half and we landed in Yangon, Myanmar with only 30 minutes until we were due to meet a travel agent at our hotel. We rushed through immigration and took a taxi from the booth in arrivals. We were a little sceptical when we saw the entrance hall to our hotel, a really dirty, smelly stairwell with kids playing and old people sleeping in the corners, and were pleasantly surprised when we made it to the reception to find a decent guesthouse and really friendly staff. The tour agency rep had waited around for us and handed us our train tickets for the following night. Yangon, Myanmar’s former capital is pretty gritty but has a certain charm. The streets are filthy but every now and then you come across a spectacular temple or religious monument and there are British colonial buildings in states of disrepair scattered around. The people are also incredibly friendly, they all seem to want to say hello and practice their English (there is a lot of English spoken in Myanmar). 

Our first stop when we headed out to explore was the Sule Paya Stupa, a 2,000 year old golden temple around which the British redesigned the city layout, turning it into the primary traffic roundabout. We were very impressed as it was our first Burmese temple and the sheer amount of gold is incredible. After a few minutes a local came up to us to tell us a bit of the history of the site, show us around a little museum and help us find our birth day corners. Depending on what day you are born you go a different fountain and pour sacred water over the buddha standing in your corner and your animal while giving prayer and making wishes, Rhys is a guinea pig, i’m a dragon. He ended up asking for money as he was a student and we felt obliged to give him something. Having just had to make a donation to leave our shoes at the door we were starting to feel like we were going to get played at every corner - sad really because then you start to suspect it of everyone even when people are just being friendly - like the cab driver giving us bottles of water on the way from the airport and a guy teaching us some Burmese and taking us to our train carriage for our journey to Mandalay. 

At around 5pm we jumped in a taxi to the Shwedagon Paya Temple. As there was a festival of light that night it was jam packed with locals which made it all the more appealing. We got swept up with the crowds and after taking off our shoes headed up through one fo the four entrance corridors to the main platform. It was breathtaking, so much gold and glitz in one place and so different to temples we’ve seen elsewhere. The pagoda/stupa stands 105m high and has been added to by various kings and queens since it was first built over 2,500 years ago, to enshrine four relics; the staff of Kakusandha, the water filter of Koṇāgamana, a piece of the robe of Kassapa and eight strands of hair from Gautama, the historical Buddha. The crown of the stupa is topped with a massive 76 carat diamond (although you can’t see that from the ground) and it’s studded with thousands of rubies and smaller diamonds just to top off all the gold plate. The site is quite large with a further 82 buildings surrounding the main stupa and in the twilight it all looked quite magical, especially with all the candles and incense being lit for the festival. After an hour of sitting people watching we headed back down and jumped in a taxi to take us back to our guesthouse, popping out only briefly to buy some samosas from a street stall nearby. 

Shwedagon Paya, Yangon.

The crowds at Shwedagon Paya, Yangon.

Our train wasn’t until 5pm the following day so we had most of the day to while away exploring Yangon. After stopping by the tourist office to pick up a map we decided to head to the Bogyoke Aung San Market, primarily a tourist market with over 2,000 shops selling all manner of Myanmar handicrafts from wooden puppets to lacquerware, gemstones and longis. We nearly bought a painting but talked ourselves out of it since we’d have to carry it and we’re not sure how easy it is to use ATM’s here once our cash reserves run out. We stopped in the food court for a curry lunch just as the rain started. We ended up wandering around for another hour or so at a bit of a lose end trying to keep under the shelter before deciding we’d just head back to the guesthouse to wait for our train. Luckily the Arsenal game was on TV (they’re always watching premier league repeats here) so the time passed quickly and before we knew it we were in a taxi headed to the train station. We were befriended by a Myanmar man who put us on the train and wished us well and had the police guards come visit to make sure we knew they were around should we need them. We had a four bed cabin and shared with a quiet guy who pretty much just slept. As the train pulled out of the station we poured a celebratory drink which Rhys then practically threw everywhere once we hit the bumps. I’ve never been on a train like it, it was so crazily bumpy I can’t even describe it. Eating dinner was interesting and sleeping was practically impossible. Once the sun had gone down (after the most beautiful sunset over the bright green rice paddies) we weren’t left with much to do but try to sleep, reading was impossible. No joke, lying in bed I think a couple times I flew a good few inches above the mattress and being on the top bunk, that put me uncomfortably close to a big fat spider who I ended up jamming in his hole with a bit of paper. Although very basic, it was well worth it for the experience. Waking up at 6:30am and opening the window to see the fields passing by and a golden stupa or two in the distance, with local kids waving at you and men and women walking to their fields along the tracks, was just brilliant as were the fireflies in the cabin and the smell of wooden cooking fires wafting through the trains from the villages we passed on route.

Sunset from the train to Mandalay.

We arrived in Mandalay about an hour after schedule at 9:30am and headed straight to our hotel. We’d splashed out and got a decent room and they let us check in early. After washing the layers of grime off from the journey we climbed in to bed for a quick nap and to watch a bit of TV. At lunch time we headed out and wandered up through a hectic cloth market to a western cafe for lunch then skirted around the southern wall of the palace (now nothing more than a huge military base) debating whether the ripples in the moat were crocodiles or big slow fish. As Rhys was feeling a bit under the weather we headed back to the hotel to chill out, arranging a day out for the following day with a random man on the street on the way and booking our ferry ticket for the trip to Bagan. Mandalay is definitely cleaner than Yangon with plenty of Chinese investment, but lacks some of the charm. It is a relatively new city, founded in 1857 by King Mindon to show the British who were camped out in Yangon that the Burmese kingdom was still a mighty force. 

Our random man, Salmon picked us up from our hotel at 8am along with his friend and two motorbikes and we headed to our first stop of the day, Mahamuni Paya, the most important Buddhist site in the city. It’s a large temple complex with a 3.8 metre tall Buddha statue at the centre. Men can enter the alcove where the Buddha sits and cover it in gold leaves. There are also some Hindu figures taken from Angkor Wat. Once out of the temple we rode through an area of stone carvers and stopped by a marble workshop to watch people carving and polishing beautiful statues from giant pieces of white marble, although we ended up buying a tiny jade bowl it wasn’t a hard sell. The next stop was at another workshop, this time to show us how they make the huge bronze Buddha statues. One they were working on was about 6m high and would cost about $2,000 - $3,000 to buy, bargain! 

Next we headed to Amarapura, the journey alone being worth the trip with locals waving to us as we went past, with their cook fires and bamboo shacks lining the pothole ridden roads. Amarapura was the capital of Burma between 1783 and 1857 before it was moved to Mandalay. We stopped at U Bein’s Bridge, the longest teak bridge in the world at 1.2km long and over 200 years old, and spent 30 minutes watching the boats, the fisherman and the duck herders. Back on the bikes and our next stop was at the Mahaganayon Kyaung monastery where hundreds of monks queued to go in to lunch. It was a bit intrusive and quite touristy but fun to see all the same. 

View from U Bein Bridge, Amarapura.

Fisherman near U Bein Bridge, Amarapura.

Lunchtime for the monks, Mahaganayon Kyaung monastery.

Next, we headed to Sagaing, another old capital city, to climb Sagaing Hill. After a very hot and sticky climb up the covered stairway we reached the first temple, Soon U Ponya Shin Paya with views of the Ayeyarwady River and the surrounding stupa studded hills. Back on the bikes, we headed to the boat dock for the short trip to Inwa. Before crossing the water we ate a Myanmar feast with bowls of curry, soup, beans, fishy stuff and plates of peanuts and green vegetables. The boat only took 5 minutes to Inwa, yet another old capital city and then we jumped straight on a horse carriage for a 2 hour circuit along very muddy and bumpy tracks. It was a shame because 2 of the 5 places we stopped required the Mandalay tourist ticket to enter and we didn’t want to buy one (it was quite expensive at $10 each and all the money goes to the government, something we’re trying to limit, especially since we took the government owned train to Mandalay). We did stop at some beautiful, ruined stupas at Yedanasini Paya strewn across the grassy fields, a watch tower, and a very atmospheric ruined monastery, along the way we managed to buy a bronze mask, glad Karen is visiting us shortly so we don’t have to lug it around for long. The plan was to return to the U Bein Bridge for sunset but it had turned pretty cloudy so we figured it would be a waste of time, especially as Rhys was still feeling unwell. Instead we stopped at one final temple before heading back to the hotel.

Our horse and cart, Inwa.

Abandoned Buddha, Inwa.