Lucie & Rhys´s Honeymoon Adventure: Week 58 - Nyaungshwe (Inle Lake), Yangon, Bangkok (Myanmar (Burma), Thailand)

We had to check out of our hotel at Inle Lake before heading to the sports field where we rented bikes. We took the track out of town, over the bridge and headed down to the lake past stilt houses and floating tomato fields. We intended to stop at the hotsprings but it was really expensive so we kept going, heading further south until we found a little pier and a guy with a long boat to take us across the lake. Just as our boat headed into one of the reed channels a boat coming the other way speeded past us and sent a tidal wave sweeping over the boat drenching us and our camera, no lasting damage luckily. We pulled up by a pier on the other side and lifted our bikes out of the boat before heading off to a forest monastery (up a very steep road) then on to a vineyard, the Red Mountain Estate, only the second vineyard in Burma, selling wines from 2010, managed by a french guy. We had a free tour before paying a bargain £1.25 for 4 samples of different wines. After lunch at the vineyard, with views over the valley and to the lake we grabbed our bikes and headed back in to town in time for our pick up and transfer to Shwenyaung junction to meet the overnight bus to Yangon.

Stilt house, Inle Lake

Rhys ad the bikes in a long boat crossing Inle Lake

The road was pretty windy and despite the comfy lazy boy seats and the box of cakes they handed out we didn’t get much sleep. The Yangon bus station is quite a way out of town so we jumped in a cab and headed to our guesthouse where they let us check in and we got straight in to bed for a couple of hours nap. For lunch we wandered to the Bogyoke market where we ended up buying an oil painting that we’d spotted on our first trip to Yangon. That evening we decided to treat ourselves to happy hour cocktails at The Strand, a British colonial building that is one of the poshest hotels in Myanmar. It was such a contrast to the dirty streets outside and once they started bringing out bar snacks we were in our element. We were sensible and didn’t stay out late as we had a 6am taxi to the airport the next day.

The flight back to Bangkok was painless and we ended up picking up some stragglers at the airport and there were 5 of us on the bus to the Skytrain heading to Khao San Road. We had booked into a 16 bed dorm for Karen’s first 3 nights and had decided to break her into dorm living slowly and chose somewhere where the beds were all enclosed in these little cupboards with their own TV and sliding doors. We had a couple of chores and then headed back to the hostel to wait for Karen. A couple of hours after she was due to arrive, after we’d been checking the computer non-stop to see if we had any messages, finally a message came through to say she was on Khao San Road, couldn’t find the hostel and needed a drink (the directions even had photo instructions!). We ran out and tracked her down and brought her back to check in to her top bunk cupboard. We’d picked up some 80p rum in Myanmar and ended up sitting in the hostel drinking and catching up since there was a good common area and decent crowd. Tired from the journey, Karen took herself off to bed around midnight and we headed out to Khao San Road to watch the football with a bucket of vodka red bull.

We had a bit of a lie in the next day, I was feeling pretty ropey, before heading out to the Chatuchak weekend market. We wandered around the thousands of stalls, Karen bought some beautiful elephant trousers for temples and stopped for lunch before heading back to the hostel. After dropping Rhys off, me and Karen headed out to find a massage place (parlour makes it sound dirty). Around Khao San Road chairs line the streets spilling out of massage places where for a couple of pounds you can choose from a number of different massages. We went for 1/2 hour foot and 1/2 hour head, shoulders and back. I was laughing so much at Karen squirming, while the woman poked her feet with plastic sticks, that tears were rolling down my face. After we were done being pummeled from toe to groin (a foot massage?!?!) they took us into the back room where we laid on mattresses on the floors while the women straddled us, pushed our legs into positions they were never made to be in, then sent us on our way. It was all a little confusing, a little relaxing, a little painful and just all a bit unexpected. That night we ate street food then watched the Spurs game in a bar just off Khao San. On the way back to the hostel we stopped by a deep fried bug cart and bought a pick-a-mix of bugs, from wormy things to crickets. Karen and Rhys had a bug eating competition and washed it all down with copious amounts of rum.

Another early start and I was given the ‘wake Karen’ duty, not easy when she’d only had 4 hours sleep. By 7am we were on a minibus for the 3 hour drive to an elephant camp. About an hour away we hopped out of the minibus and transferred into a private car. Once at the elephant camp me and Rhys climbed aboard an elephant and Karen clambered on top of hers. We only went off for a short walk and a paddle in the river, our elephant eating everything it could find along the way, before we changed in to our bikinis and joined another elephant down by the river for bath time. We climbed on top of him and spent the next hour being squirted and holding on to his ears playing ‘rodeo’ where he threw his head back and forth until we flew off, elephants are surprisingly graceful for such big, heavy animals. Back in the car we made a quick lunch stop before heading to Tiger Temple. We’d heard mixed reviews about the tigers, about how there are all drugged and dozy but it seemed to us to be a load of rubbish, they’re just happy, content tigers with no fear of humans as, the ones you can touch anyway, are hand reared. There are plenty of other tigers that you can’t go near because they don’t have the right temperament or relationship with humans. We had a great time and even paid extra for a ‘special’ photo shoot, a quick game of rock-paper-scissors to decide who got to craddle the tigers head and Karen came away with a snazzy fake tiger tooth necklace to prove how brave she was! On the way back to Bangkok we stopped at the bridge over the River Kwai for a leg stretch then spent the last hour of the journey watching the most bizarre music video ever.

Elephant riding, near Bangkok.

Elephant bathing, near Bangkok.

Karen cuddling a tiger Tiger Temple, near Bangkok.

Rhys and a tiger tiger, Tiger Temple, near Bangkok.

We checked out of our hostel the next morning before heading off to find a tuktuk to the Grand Palace. The driver tried to tell us it wasn’t open until the afternoon so he could take us on a little tour of some shops but we headed over to the area anyhow and foudn out he was lying. After buying our tickets we were told Karen needed to buy a longer sleeve top and Rhys had to don some very fetching elephant pants (that he then wore for the next 24 hours). The palace was very beautiful and worth the £10 entry, lots of gold and painted tiles and sparkly bits. After a hour or so we grabbed lunch in the market by the river then walked over to Wat Pho, a huge reclining Buddha in another beautiful, peaceful complex, a real oasis of calm in a crazy city. Back at Khao San we stopped for beer and buckets, Rhys ate a fried scorpion and then it was time to pick up our bags to head to the train station. We had an overnight train to Trang, 16 hours away, having old Karen it was 12 hours. The train was perfectly comfy, we had bunk beds along a corridor with curtains and sheets. After a few drinks and some new eyebrows for Karen it was time to sleep.