‘’If you want to go, you should go now’’, that’s what I heard about Myanmar. Apparently it was still authentic, not touristic and full of friendly people. During my travels in South-East Asia, Myanmar was just mentioned a couple of times by fellow travellers, but everything I heard sounded very optimistic. I considered this a new, cool challenge. So when I decided I wanted to go back to Asia, I flew to Yangon, South Myanmar.

I had to acclimatize quite a bit. Locals were obviously not used to tourists yet, so they stare. A lot. There is heaps of rubbish in the streets and I was surprised by the poverty in certain areas. What I found very interesting and a bit odd, was the way they separate locals and ‘foreigners’ in Myanmar.

‘’Foreigners can’t drive motorbike’’ by law.
‘’Foreigners have to pay entrance fee’’ in a temple.
‘’Foreigners pay higher prices than locals’’ for the bus.

It’s something I haven’t seen anywhere else. In Europe, we call this racism. In Myanmar, you just have to accept it. Other than that, I loved this country so much and I’m so happy I’ve been here while it’s still so real and untouched.

Boys
On my first day I walked towards the train station to go to the ‘circle train’. This train runs through the whole city, so it was a good way to see Yangon. Besides, I was looking for a bus which could bring me to my next destination. This little local dude on the station started talking to me and helped me find it, and then I got stuck with him for at least an hour. What he wanted? Love advice! I will spare you the details, but what started with a cup of tea on plastic stairs on the side of the road, ended with me installing Tinder on his phone. 🙂

When I finally decided that it was time to go and continued my journey towards the train, another guy tapped me on my shoulder. ‘’Hey, I saw you at the hostel this morning. Are you going to the circle train as well?’’

I was. And now I had someone to go with. I introduced myself to Rob and I actually found it really nice to be with someone else in this ‘new’ country. Besides, the circle train was kind of hidden and as it turned out: it wasn’t even a circle. At the moment there were constructions so we could just travel from A to B and from B back to A. Yangon is a perfect starting point to travel Myanmar, but the city itself, was not my favourite. Not a surprise, considered my love for smaller towns.

Mawlamyine
My next destination was Mawlamyine, where Rob would go too. I wanted to spend some time in a place where not many backpackers go, so I ended up here. In the middle of nowhere. In the middle of the night. The night bus dropped me off at 2 AM and the hostel was locked. When I knocked on the door, a girl appeared and she opened up for me. She wasn’t working in the hostel, she was an Australian traveller with the same problem. She arrived in the middle of the night, a couple of minutes before me and had knocked on the door until someone had woken up to open the door for her. But there was no staff and there were no couches to sleep on. The only thing we could do was wait and sleep on the floor next to each other. At 6 AM a woman appeared and gave us a bed immediately. She felt so bad for us that she didn’t even charge us for that night.

During the day I rented a motorbike and drove through the beautiful countryside of Myanmar. The surroundings of Mawlamyine were amazing. I went to one of the biggest Buddha’s I had ever seen and I drove to an island with little villages, ruines and pagoda’s. I didn’t see any other tourists during my drive. All the locals shouted ‘helloooo’ and waved. Some girls chilling on the road stopped me to make a selfie with me. I ate for 40 cents in some local place along the road. They didn’t even have a menu. I was amazed by the friendliness and really enjoyed the difference with the other Asian countries I had seen so far.

Hpa An
When I went to Hpa An I took the 3 hour local bus. Being the only tourist in the bus, I got squeezed between the Burmese, the bags of potatoes, bunches of coriander, rice, oranges and God knows what else.  Anyways, I got there. I had to be patient, but I got there.

On my first day I drove to some caves and a nice lake on my motorbike and in the evening I picked up Rob to go check out some places together. Mount Zwegabin was also on my To Do-list in Hpa An, but because of the heat and the required early start, I couldn’t get myself to do it. (After Mount Batur in Bali I decided never to climb a mountain again in the middle of the night without my morning coffee) Instead we did a small hike, in the middle of the day. Nice and warm. The hike ended with these ladders made of bamboo sticks, attached to each other with tie rips. When I arrived to that last bit, I grabbed one of the ladders and wiggled it a bit to see how stable… or unstable, it would be. Not very steady of course, but I decided that it would be quite a cool death if I would fall of these bambooladders, so I started climbing. Luckily the ladders are made for stupid humans to climb them, and bamboo is surprisingly strong. I made it to the top, and there was no one else but me. So I enjoyed a wee right on top of a mountain and stared at the view in peace.

Bago
I was supposed to leave on day 3, but I was actually having a really good time. I had two new roommates with whom I wanted to hang out a bit more, and if I stayed another day, we could all leave together. The reception of the hostel was a complete pain in the ass, but I managed to extend my stay. So I joined my new roomies Elizabeth and Callum for another day of driving. We checked out the beautiful countryside, visited a monastery, sat in a very unstable boat with a fat French dude who almost made us capsize, considered stealing a turtle that was captured for sale, walked through some rice fields and took some beautiful pictures. The next day I left together with Rob and Callum towards Bago, and unfortunately we had to say goodbye to Elizabeth.

Bago was a total shithole. The small, dusty town had a grim atmosphere and not many things to do. We visited some temples and pagoda’s, and that was it. Rob left the morning after to Mandalay, but Callum and I had to take the night bus to Bagan. That meant another day so survive there! I’ve barely been bored during my travels, but oh my God the boredom during that day! We both went to the hairdresser, because… why not. Afterwards we went to the ‘’swimming pool’’, but when we saw the swimming pool, we didn’t want to swim in the swimming pool anymore. Even that was dirty and shitty in Bago.

Although I didn’t want to drive a manual motorbike the day before, I decided to do it anyways on this day (since there were no automatic motorbikes in Bago). For about the 50^th time, Callum showed me the shifting of the gears, the braking with the foot and the starting of the engine. Since I’m world’s worst multitasker it was likely I would kill myself, but we arrived on our destination: another small, dusty, boring village. We literally sat on the stairs in front of a pagoda, because we were too lazy to take our shoes off, and stared into nothingness, surrounded by street dogs. Pathetic? Only a little.

Bagan and Kalaw –>Inle Lake
Believe it or not, the day did finish. A restaurant owner we made friends with the day before, brought us to the station in his tricycle. We caught the bus and had quite a good sleep. It was actually so good, that I was having difficulties waking up my travelbuddy, who was laying in the aisle of the bus, in a coma, wrapped into six blankets. And I always thought I was a good sleeper. When we finally got off, we could choose between ten different taxi drivers. I was doing the talking, but because I am (also) world’s worst negotiator, Callum and our new friend Magdalena, who had to go the same hostel, took over the bargaining for a taxi.

After we succeeded finding a friendly taxidriver, the three of us rented e-bikes for the day (not motorbikes, because they are prohibited in Bagan). We checked out… ruins, ruins and more ruins. Oh, and some stupa’s, pagoda’s and temples. And more ruins. After Magdalena, Callum and I met in Bagan, we travelled together for a while. After Bagan, we went to Kalaw for a trekking. This meant three days of walking, from Kalaw to the Inle Lake, with a total of 55 kilometres. I knew it was gonna be a challenge, but it became even more intense when I hurt my leg. I don’t know how or why, but it felt like the muscle in my left leg was overstretched and caused pain from up my hip down to my calf.

I was having trouble sleeping that night because my leg stiffened up like a stone, and I got through the second day with a walking stick made of bamboo, and ibuprofen. I could cry because of frustration, exhaustion and the heat, but in the end, I was still going. And although I considered taking a taxi to the end, I finished the walk with everybody else.

Back to basic
The places we stayed in during the trekking were interesting as well. The first night we slept in this primitive village in the middle of nowhere. A little bamboo made house to sleep in, mattresses on the floor next to the baby room, a nice hole in the ground as a toilet and a well to take a ‘shower’. The circumstances seemed far from ideal, but this family we stayed with provided us with thick blankets against the cold in the night and prepared us a lovely breakfast in the morning.  

We spend the second night in a monastery, with the same simple facilities and monks meditating in the early morning. The walk towards the monastery didn’t go as well as expected. After a break I decided to take a head start since I was so slow, so Callum and I left the café before the rest of the group. Expectation: we would make it to the monastery before them. Reality: we got lost.

My own horror movie
Apparently there were many many many monasteries on this mountain. The sun was about to set and we were walking uphill, in a forest. I was still in pain, and therefore slow, and Callum was ahead of me, until… he wasn’t. I was standing on an intersection and screamed, but no answer came. I looked at Google Maps and took a left. I am basically blind when it gets dark, so I started to panic. Did we really just lose each other in the woods while it was getting dark?!

I had flashbacks in my head of this thriller Wolf Creek and stood there shaking, when I heard footsteps. Callum was walking downhill. Oh my God, I have never been so happy to see his stupid face! I was standing there with my hands in front of my mouth with the tears in my eyes, while he passed me by without saying a word.

‘’Where are you going?!’’

He looked absent and indifferent. Why was he walking downhill? We were almost there, right? Why wasn’t he answering me? I yelled at him that he had to stop and talk to me.

‘’There is nothing there. Just a pagoda. I walked around it’’, he finally said.

I couldn’t believe it. Of course there was a bloody pagoda. It’s Myanmar and they build pagoda’s on every mountaintop. But where the fuck was our accommodation? I started to freak out. We had to get out of these woods; it was almost completely dark now and started to get cold.

‘’Do you want to put on your hoodie?’’, Callum asked.

THERE IS NO TIME FOR THAT – I DON’T CARE – WHY ARE YOU SO FREAKING CALM – I wanted to yell, but instead I just said ‘no’.

If you think this story is good enough for a horror movie, it’s about to get worse. As we were making our way down, Callum suddenly stopped in front of me. ‘’Give me your stick. There’s a dog there.’’

So there was indeed a dog standing there, just staring at us. It was massive, about the size of a wolf, with its ears straight up, pitch-black because of the lack of light. Luckily it took off after some noise and a swing of the stick. We continued our journey back to the road, and while I was having a thousand thoughts crossing my mind, Callum was whistling and complaining about the possibility that we missed dinner. We went back to the monastery-like building of which we thought it was the right building before. And this time, it turned out to be our accommodation… So we were actually standing in front of the right monastery an hour ago, but since it was silent and empty then, we had made our way into the forest. HOW STUPID?!

I walked up to the entrance when I heard another trekking group talk about ‘a boy who was finally back’. I asked them if it was Callum they talked about. ‘’I don’t know’’, the French guy answered. ‘It-uh, was the English guy. But zhere is still a girl missing.’’
‘’I am the girl’’, I said as I walked by their little group. I cried when I saw Magdalena sitting on the stairs with Bernice; a beer in their hands. I felt bad when they told me our guide was driving around on a motorbike, looking for us. We called him and he was relieved to see us. I was relieved this horrible day had ended. And Callum was relieved we didn’t miss dinner. 😉

Inle Lake and Mandalay
Although the group had to wait for me a lot of times, we still turned out to be pretty good friends.  I had good fun at least. 😉 I woke up smiling every morning, despite the early waking’s because of a crying baby or… a playing dog. The monastery was full of street dogs and they didn’t mind sleeping on our beds. I woke up one morning because of a puppy yawning and playing on the bed next to me. I laughed about it, but my neighbour Magdalena, on whose bed the dogs were playing, couldn’t really appreciate it. Her face was priceless, and more reason to laugh for me and the rest. 😉

Our trekking finished at Inle Lake, so this little town became our chill spot to recover. A proper swimming pool, massage, pizza and all that shit. Magdalena, Callum, Bernice and I were together again in Mandalay, where we visited some temples and waterfalls. Because of a tuktukdriver who brought us to the wrong waterfall (surprise), we ended up at one without any other people, so we could go for a proper swim after the hike upwards. Magdalena and I hired a driver for the day who drove us around on his motorbike (yes, both of us on the back of one motorbike), which turned out to be a really good day as well. We visited the U Bein Bridge, which is the oldest and longest bamboo bridge in the world. On top of that, we read the largest book in the world… or maybe we didn’t read it completely. The Kuthodaw Pagoda consists of 729 mini pagoda’s, which all have one stone with text in them. Together they make one hell of a story, so if you want, you can read the book. I just walked past and took some photo’s with it. Like a real tourist. 😉