Hmm what a shitty little hotel. Its the cheap one in the LP. It is cheap. It is nothing else. First impressions. Cool little mountain town. Had a good feeling about this. We got lost to begin with and then went for a walk around the Eastern suburbs of the town to take a look at the colonial buildings. They are really cool. There is a lot of money there. You can see here and Mandalay that there is some serious money in Myanmar for some people and some cool modernist architectural tastes. It was pleasant to go for a walk around there. They have lots of cool horse and carriages for taxis. They are so cool I almost voluntarily took a taxi. We had discovered Blue Mountain lychee at this point. Just a quick plug. Good stuff. More refreshing than sprite. We went for a walk to the gardens. LP says its 1km. They are wrong. Its probably 2 or 3. God Lana del Rey sucks to write too. So slow I crawl to half pace. Lets get going and crank on some Calle 13. Calma Pueblo. Anyway the gardens were Cannelle's highlight of Myanmar. They are super cool and a real contrast to everything that went before. They are so well organised they have women trimming the flowerbeds constantly. Immaculate does not do it justice. It was really cool to wander all of the gardens from one environment to another. Also there were almost no foreigners and just lots and lots of local people living normal lives. Hanging with friends, taking picnics and even a guy jamming the guitar with his friends. Still it was distinctly Myanmar. One thing you can see here is how important family is for everyone. Parents are often out looking after their smiling kids as they all play together, from the rich to the poor. Nice to see. We had a drink in one of the most stylishly designed cafes I have seen. While Cannelle was using the toilet the owner came to apologise for it being unsophisticated. I almost laughed in his face. Unsophisticated? I told him that Cannelle reckoned it was the best gardens she had ever been too and I thought his cafe was better than most equivalents in the west. They have a number of exotic birds and 'exotic' birds for westerners (swans and peacocks). The tower gives a good view over the park. We checked that the train was ok for the next day and ate dinner in the same place we had had breakfast. It was a really cool town and not many foreigners tend to go there. Maybe because the park entrance goes to the government. Oh Lonely Planet you spoiler of holidays. We saw a tiny lost puppy in the station, which the local kids had separated from its parents until it got lost. Once again they treat animals like shit here.
The bakery was closed in the morning. Bugger. Never mind. We met a German girl, who was working on her PHD in Vietnam and we boarded our train for Hsipaw via the famous Gokteik Viaduct. Grabbing some samosas before we boarded, we set off. The Gorge is very scenic and worth the train ride. Keep an eye out down below for the old rail tracks, the river and on the right a waterfall. We arrived in Hsipaw and headed to Mr Charles Guesthouse. Wow. Just wow. Fuck me. That was a monster guesthouse. Let me elaborate on what I call the Lonely Planet effect. I touched on this in Hpa-An, but now I can elaborate. Ok. Here is my theory. If you compare Hsipaw and Hpa-An they sound the same in the book and Mr Charles Guesthouse sounds very like Soe Brothers. Yet Hsipaw has become a 'highlight' and Hpa-An has not. If something makes the highlight list in a Lonely Planet, then you can guarantee whatever it was when the book was written, it will be drastically different when you arrive there. Shame really. Get to Hpa-An before it goes the same way. The guesthouse is immaculate but still Cannelle was eaten alive by bed bugs. If you had had to bet money, you would have bet it all on the hotel yesterday and not today being the culprit. I walked with the German to the viewpoint where a young monk seemingly keeps a log book of visitors. You get a nice view of the city.
In the morning we had intended to go hiking but the rain was incessant. The German had to go, but we decided to go in the afternoon. At this point there were no overnight treks as it was considered too dangerous. So we sat discussing EU politics. She reckoned that the Germans would sacrifice their own national interest to keep the EU together. Interesting. She also said that if someone was going to kill her neighbour she would not intervene as you have no right. I said that their life trumps their right to property. She disagreed and said the right to life does not trump sovereignty. No wonder Europeans have trouble understanding Anglo foreign policy. Its moral for us. She left and we hiked to the waterfall and got lost twice. The hotel map is not great. Let me help you. You can walk really easily to the waterfall. When you get to the crossroads enter the graveyard straight ahead. The split is later. Stay on the left and walk continuously up and round a hill to the right. You will find a bunch of rubbish at the top of the hill. Here take a left and then its just straight. Yes that thing in the distance that looks like a waterfall but doesn't move is in fact the waterfall. Its justly weirdly streamed. Head for that. Its a really cool walk and the waterfall itself is really pretty and different when you get close to it. We met a couple of Kiwi girls who had been teaching in Cambodia. Somehow they had managed not to pay for Bagan. Not sure how, but more on that later. We decided to head to the hot springs as well. This one I will have to ask anyone reading to enlighten me with just exactly where they are. We walked the river path and found the final village with the water mills and the dam. They seemed to suggest it was over the dam, so we waded the river and scrambled up the hill. Fuck all. Just a field. Maybe back down. Nope. Just a river. Dam was blocked. On the way back I spied a path off to the left before the dam. Maybe it was there but I can't say for certain. Good luck if you try and send me the details. We grabbed dinner with the Kiwis and a Dutch guy and it seemed we missed out in Kalaw. After congratulating ourselves because the guide at Inle Lake had said it was so touristy, we were hearing account after account of how cool the trek is from Kalaw to the lake. Oh well, ytou can't win them all. The hotel had tried its hardest to prevent us from booking the bus with no aircon for 500 less to Mandalay.
Eventually we triumphed, but upon seeing the buses in the morning I wish we hadn't. Its not worth the difference. Just take the aircon one. Both of us had had nasty stomach cramps in the night and I had the runs. Shit. Just what you want for a 6 hour bus ride. We would have to survive it and that is the apt verb for this bus. Cannelle was hurting. We arrived and the taxi drivers wanted extortionate money for us to take one. Fuck them we walked 10 blocks to Peacock Lodge. Full. Shit. Luckily a local gave us a free ride all the way to Nylon hotel, continuing our string of countries where we hitchhike by accident. People must take pity on us. We went to a western cafe for stomach safe food and randomly bumped into Iban, who had worked with Cannelle for Axis and Globe. Small world. In the middle of Mandalay in Myanmar of all places. We decided to walk to the art studio of the couchsurfer Sophia. She was super nice and the building was super cool. She gave us a tour of their paintings (all impressive), they all played instruments (5 siblings), they taught art, sculpture and music. The sculpture teacher had been kicked out of the government university for subversion and they were still watched by the local neighbourhood informants. She gave us a copy of their writing as well. Really nice people. She even introduced me to acupuncture as I had two needles inserted beneath my knees to help stomach pains. It worked wonders. I really should work on my Chinese medicine, though Cannelle declined to be punctured. The sculpture on their property front had been banned and was the reason why the teacher had lost his job, but it was considered ok on private property. She showed us a local paper where the teacher had been arrested for a protest. She said that it was true that press freedom had really opened up in the last year. She also confirmed that most people were optimistic for the future and more surprisingly that most people in Myanmar liked their current President. He was very popular, but the people just below him were considered to be the problem and the danger to reform. The party not the head. After a really cool evening we walked back and got another home made ice cream.
In the morning we grabbed the bus to Bagan. We had changed our flights for Monday. Cannelle had wanted Sunday, but I was not sure if Bagan could be done in a day. We shall see. We were running low on money by this point. Ok we had $500 that I did not want to break. We had changed $100 more in Mandalay and would do the final $30 here. All the hotels were full. Apparently the country is becoming so popular that in low season there is a shortage of hotels and in high season it is ridiculous. We booked our bus for Yangon, found a decent hotel and went to Black Bamboo. It is the most average, overpriced food I have ever had. Nothing bad, so painfully average and given the small fortune we paid it is seriously, seriously overrated and I wouldn't recommend it. We arranged with our hotel to take the bikes at 5am for sunrise and to avoid the sun and for a pack breakfast to take with us.
We were up at 5am. We decided to see how many temples we could visit in one day. We went down via the airport and then came in from the East. We visited all the main temples there and only got hassled once, which was by a woman trying to get us to her village. We cycled across the Southern Plain and ended up at one giant temple (I forget names) where you can walk across the whole rooftop and we could see all the other temples, impressively scattered across the plains. Here we crossed the first two tourists, who were two people from Vietnam. They were the only tourists that we met in the first 4 hours. It was really cool to travel all across Bagan and meet noone. Even at the beautiful one in the middle and the large one which is so mysterious and Scwesandaw Paya, we met only 3 tourists. We managed to get to Old Bagan by only 9am. The first vendors only started to set up their stalls at 7am. They even seemed surprised to see us. Around 9am the heat gets searing and by 10am we had visited all of the temples. I can only assume people need many days here because so many tourists go out after breakfast and visit 2 or 3 temples a day. If you head out before sunrise you get 4-5 hours with no heat and can see most things. Cannelle's bike chain snapped half way round, but it was encased in some metal casing and so a simple operation cost us money to replace it. We had lunch in the veggie place in LP and were so poor we had to share some rice. We got chatting with an old French couple in Old Bagan and found out that Routard has no agenda against the government paid places and so that is why they are probably so full of French people. We chatted with some young German guys briefly. One of the temples in Old Bagan had a swing so we swung on that for ages irritating the stupid sand painting selling kids. Bagan and Inle Lake are by far the most touristy and vendor full places in Myanmar. We went back and rested. Bagan was cool and the pagodas were much better than anywhere else in Myanmar, though the buddhas were still super crap. Just before sunset we headed out again to a local place to climb up and watch it. We bumped into the Germans again and watched the sunset (which is nice but not outstanding). Afterwards we headed to a place called Weatherspoons. It was run by a super nice local guy. I had guessed he had been to the UK given the name. He has comments from customers written all over his walls and the food is awesome. Great burgers, great chips, great pasta. Everything is imported, it is very cheap and it is by far the best place we ate in in Myanmar. Even the local food and curries were excellent. I would highly recommend this place.
The next day we grabbed breakfast and had nothing to do as we had been everywhere and couldn't afford any more bikes anyway. There were a bunch of morons at breakfast. At least they were all bunched together. We got lunch at Weatherspoons again and then chatted with an old English woman, who lived in Australia and had been born in Myanmar. She had lived in Mawlamyine and confirmed that Mandalay, Yangon and there had been much more beautiful when she was younger and that the place had gone to shit. She said she cried when she saw her old junior school. There was also a super posh English/Swiss couple in super designer clothes with more pairs of sunglasses than brain cells. There was even a weird old Belgian couple that told us you could get wi fi in a cafe. I said we didn't have a computer and they said that neither did they. Weird. Ok anyway we took the night bus back to Yangon, thinking that Bagan was nice and worth visiting, but nothing amazing. If the Kiwis were right and it was much better than Angkor Wat we were going to be disappointed. In the bus we played guess the cover song as every Myanmar song was seemingly a cover, but most of them were Celine Dion and that helped Cannelle to win as English people don't listen to Celine Dion.
When did we arrive in Yangon? Yes you guessed it. 4am. So we waited for sunrise and took a taxi to Chery Guesthouse. They were full. So was the next one. Next two were too expensive. Next one was shitty. Next one was a drug den. Next one would have a room but would not give us breakfast today instead of tomorrow. Finally we got to Golden Smile Inn. They were lovely, had a cheap room and swapped the breakfast to that day. Great back up if you can't get Cherry Guesthouse. I did some writing and we generally chilled out. There was a free European film festival so we went to that. It was Iron Lady again, which we had watched in Paris but knew was good and Vitus for today. Vitus is a Swiss film and really, really good. Very original. Seek it out if you can find it. I got to practice a bit of my German but they had English subtitles. All the rich and well dressed were out for Myanmar and it was different to see that side of the city. The English is massively better than Thailand. Especially as we are back in Thailand now. You have to stand to respect the flag which is a little weird and uncomfortable, but also quite funny. Spurs won again in the evening, beating Villa 2-0. We were on the rise. New Orleans finally won as well. At last.
We were up early for the taxi after not really doing much. Grabbed a taxi, left the extra kyats for charity, were chuffed to find out/remember (I may have read it somewhere) that we don't have to pay the $10 exit fee now. It was a shitty flight, but we were back in Thailand. Myanmar had been an interesting place to travel in and if we had to name highlights we would say Pyin Oo Lwin, Hpa-An and Inwa/Mandalay.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment