Week 57 - Mandalay, Bagan, Nyaungshwe (Myanmar (Burma))

We were up before breakfast to head to the ferry port. We got great seats on deck on the front of the boat and settled in for the 10 hour journey. The boat was pretty empty and there were only tourists on board. After breakfast we watched the world pass by, there were pagodas dotted about, little bamboo houses, fisherman and lots of tug boats pushing huge barges with hauls of teak. It was mostly agricultural land lining the banks but in some places there were strips of golden sand, where there were towns there was thick mud covered in rubbish as far as the eye could see. We pulled up at a couple of stops along the way where people came onboard to sell samosas and cloth. It wasn’t the most exciting journey but was very peaceful and far better than taking a bumpy bus (Even if it was also far more expensive).

View from the ferry on the way from Mandalay to Bagan.

Once in Nyaung U, we jumped on a rickshaw to take us to our hotel, New Park. After arranging for the rickshaw riders brother to pick us up in the morning we headed out for dinner. The choice of restaurants in the street near our hotel was amazing, it felt like a real backpacker area with lots of cafes with chairs spilling out on to the dirt street, all lit by lanterns. There weren’t that many backpackers about though. In general the tourism in Myanmar seems to be made up of package tourists on coach trips or older people (mostly French) and, as much of the country isn’t open to tourists yet or requires expensive permits and flights to access, all the tourists congregate in a few areas, Bagan and Inle being two of the main ones. It definitely isn’t anything like Thailand, there were only 1m tourists here last year and 1.8m expected this year compared to about 28m a year in Thailand and 3.8m in Laos (bear in mind Myanmar is the biggest country in Southeast Asia), but we’re seeing more tourists than we expected. It is nice though that locals are still curious and wave and smile at you when they see you in the street. The big influx of tourists since the boycott was dropped, has meant that demand for accommodation and transport completely outstrips supply in high season, we’ve been lucky as we’re just outside peak season and have had no problems.

The next day, we were collected from our hotel by Naing Naing, the rickshaw drivers brother, with his horse and cart. We spent 10 hours trunderling down the roads and sandy tracks visiting the main pagodas, monasteries and stupas. The Bagan plain covers 67 square kilometres and is scattered with more than 2,000 Buddhist structures, mostly built between 1084 and 1300. It’s a truely crazy place, everywhere you turn there is another pagoda, some are huge, the tallest was 61m high, others are tiny little buildings the size of kilns. At each one you leave your shoes by the door and explore. Some have beautiful wall paintings, some still have their original buddha statues (after the 1975 earthquake there has been a lot of restoration in the area and a lot of buddhas have been replaced), at some you can buy gold leaves to apply on Buddha statues, some are in ruins and overgrown and surrounded with brambles, at some the plaster has come off revealing the red bricks beneath and others are still coated in gold. Our favourites were the ones you could climb on with views over the plain and those that looked like fairytale castles with lots of spires. I couldn’t even begin to name the ones we visited. Our driver was brilliant and we covered a lot of ground and visited a lot of places with him giving us little tidbits of information along the way. 

The Bagan Plain.

Applying gold leaf to a Buddha statue, Bagan.

Everyone is so nice we’re rubbish at saying no, by the end of the day i’d bought a bracelet, Rhys had a miniature elephant and we both had our faces painted with thanaka. Everywhere you go in Myanmar you see people (mostly women) with their faces covered in this cream coloured ‘mud’ that comes from bark when mixed with water on a stone slab, sometimes they do nice little patterns but more often they just slap it on any old way and leave it to dry. It supposedly protects from the sun and pollution and keeps your skin soft. The locals all thought it was hilarious and were pointing us out to their friends, they thought it was brilliant. The trip ended at a small pagoda where we watched sun set, we’d heard the main temples get overrun by tour groups and were thankful to be away from the crowds. Sadly it’s not really the season for sunsets (it’s too cloudy) but it was pretty all the same and a great way to end the day. 

Rhys and a friendly monk, overlooking Bagan.

Sunset over Bagan.

Back at the hotel, after washing off all the dust from the day, we headed out to Weather Spoons. I think only Brits will appreciate the name but it was enough to draw us in, Rhys even had a fish finger sandwich. We got talking to the owner and he was telling us how he worked in a Wetherspoons in Bristol in the UK when he was doing his hot air balloon training and bought some of the recipes back to Bagan with him. It was really interesting to talk to him, all the political changes recently have made it ok for people to talk about the government without fear and the locals really are keen to tell you about it. Everyone who has spoken to us has shown so much hope for the 2015 Election. 

We had a lazy start the next day. After breakfast we wandered to the main street near the hotel and found somewhere renting electric bikes (I got a speedy sports one!). By the end of the day we were considering how much they’d cost at home they were so much fun, although a little scary on sand. They go at quite a speed and are pretty heavy (and therefore easy to drop...). We spent a couple of hours in the morning shooting around to see and climb some of the smaller temples we’d missed the previous day before heading back to our hotel for an afternoon siesta. While we were out we got coaxed in to a women’s house to try some doughnut type things they were cooking for the monks for a festival the following day and felt pretty bad when we didn’t want to buy any of her laquerware. After our siesta, we headed out again for a few more temples and to see if sunset was going to be a showstopper. We sat around for a bit before deciding sunset wasn’t worth it and headed back to give our bikes back. We found a little bar on the main road where lots of locals were drinking and settled in for the night, Rhys invited an English girl, Rebecca over to join us and we whiled away the evening.

Rhys on his electric bike, Bagan.

We had an early bus to Kalaw the following day and were up waiting for our transfer to the bus station at 7am. Our bus was fully booked with people sitting on plastic chairs in the aisles and the road was pretty bumpy, we were glad we didn’t chose to take a night bus. After a few stops along the way to stretch our legs and buy drinks we made it to Kalaw at 3pm in the pouring rain and checked in to the Pine Breeze Hotel. By far the nicest hotel we stayed at, the room was huge with super comfy beds and a balcony. After dropping off our bags we borrowed umbrellas and wandered into town to find Sam’s Family Trekking, a guide that had come with high recommendations. While waiting for him to finish talking with other backpackers we ordered dinner and had amazing super cheap curry and unlimited tea. By the time he came to chat with us we’d decided that the 3 day hike we’d intended to do was going to be absolutely no fun in the rain and on top of that Rhys was still poorly. Instead we discussed day hikes and decided we’d wait until the morning to see what the weather was doing. Back at the hotel Rhys watched TV and I had a very early night.

It had been raining all night and was showing no signs of stopping. Although the treks sounded amazing we decided that the rain would just make them miserable and we’d just be trekking for the sake of trekking. Instead we spent the day in our lovely hotel room, grateful we’d paid a little more than normal for a nice place. We popped out to find the train station and to have a quick wander through the market in the rain and again later for dinner, when we had a feast with different curries, tea leaf salad, soup, chapati and rice and bottomless tea all for £4, bargain.

We had a lazy start with a huge pancake breakfast on the roof terrace before catching a taxi to the train station only to find out that there had been a landslide and the trains weren’t running. We ended up walking back into town and luckily found a truck straight away to take us to Shwenyaung. Now the locals call these trucks buses but they’re more like pick-ups with the truck bed full of plastic egg boxes that you sit on cross legged, they cost the same price as the trains although they did get us there in half the time. I’m not sure how often the trucks run but one guy said he’d been waiting for hours so I think we were really lucky. The truck dropped us off at Shwenyaung and along with the other two westerners, we jumped in a shared taxi the rest of the way to Nyaungshwe. Again, we’d pre-booked our accommodation so checked straight in and headed out to explore the main street and book a bus ticket to Yangon. After a stop for iced coffee and samosas we headed back to chill at the hotel. That night we met up with Fabian, who we had arrived with and sat outdoors in a little cocktail bar on the main road for dinner and drinks.

By 6am the next morning we were up and on a long narrow boat with Fabian and the other guy from our taxi, for a trip out on to the lake. It was very calm and serene at that time of the morning and I don’t think many other tourists were out of bed so it felt like we had the lake to ourselves. The first part of the trip was through a wide part of the lake, our boat was surrounded by beautiful rolling green hills with clouds sitting in the valleys and the lake was dotted with fisherman who use a special leg rowing technique and throw big circular nets into the water. After that, our boat headed into little channels between the clumps of lotus leaves and reeds, chugging past the traditional stilt villages of the Intha people, the sound of our outboard motor almost deafening. 

Fisherman, early morning on Inle Lake.

We made many stops during our 8 hour trip including three workshops that refreshingly didn’t end with a heavy sell that always makes you feel so awkward. The first workshop was a silver smith, the second, a lotus fibre weaver in In Paw Khone, with about 10 looms all clacking away making various cloths. The third workshop was a cheroot making workshop in The Lay where the smell of honey and banana used in the herbal cigars was pretty enticing. We stopped to talk to some women of the Padaung tribe who wear dozens of heavy brass rings on their necks and at a market where there were the usual tourist souvenir stalls but also plenty of colourful fruit, veg, fish and meat stalls aimed at the locals. We visited Phaung Daw Oo Paya, a pagoda that houses five Buddhas that have had so much gold leaf applied that you can’t even tell what the statues are. 

Market day in a village on the banks of Inle Lake.

The brass neck rings of the Padang tribe, Inle Lake.

The most southerly stop we made was at Indein where a short walk up hill, there was a cluster of tired looking stupas that were nevertheless appealing for their remoteness (we had them to ourselves), their hillside position and the tinkling of their bells in the breeze. Our final stop, after passing through the ‘floating gardens’- rows and rows of tomato plants that are grown in the lake, was at the Leaping Cat Monastery. I’d already read that the cats are no longer trained to leap through hoops but we were a bit disappointed in the small number of cats actually there. We arrived back in town at about 2pm and other than one downpour that left us all a bit damp, we had been really lucky with the weather.

Reed house on stilts, Inle Lake.

The stupas at Indein, Inle Lake.

Back in town we stopped by the French Bakery for chocolate cake and iced coffee and then headed back to the room to chill before dinner when we returned to the French Bakery for sandwiches.