When booking my flight to Myanmar, I had no idea what to
expect. See, I had known was that this was a country in Southeast Asia that had
before been known as Burma. After doing some research, it seemed like a crazy
country with tons of temples, revolutions, and Buddhists. In fact, this country
was closed off to tourists until a couple of years ago. So, Max (a famous
German cook who studies in Canada), Emily (a very patriotic American), Alejandro
(a talented singer from Spain), and I booked a flight to Myanmar for 8 days
during reading week before finals started. Then Max, Emily, and I would fly to
Bangkok, Thailand for a couple of days before I had to come back to Singapore
to study for my final exams.
Now, to explain this trip on only one page would be
impossible, but I am going to try my hardest. We landed into
Yangon, the old capital of Burma,
and met up with Alejandro who had gotten there a day before us. We walked
around, saw some Pagodas, and saw a
huge
reclining Buddha. We then got a tour of a monastery next to the Buddha, met
with the Master, and learned more about Myanmar. Apparently, this particular
monastery had almost 1200 monks living in it, but unfortunately, in the past, the
government went on a killing spree- and many of the monks either fled or were
killed. Now, slowly but surely, monks have been returning. At that point in
time, there were around 700 monks living in the monastery.
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| Pagoda in Yangon |
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| City of Yangon |
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| Reclining Buddha |
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| Monks' room in the monastery |
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| Kid monk with a cat |
We then took a night bus to
Bagan, a small-ish town with
tons of different temples. The night bus
was also carrying fish…yes, fish. And, our bags were down in the cargo area
with all of the fish. So when we got to Bagan at around 4am, all of our bags
smelled pretty fishy.
Anyway, I digress. We stayed at Bagan for 2 days, rented
bikes, and biked around the area looking at all of the different monuments. During
the 1300s, the ruler wanted a new temple built almost every week, so today,
there are around 2200 temples and pagodas scattered around the area. It was
extremely hot during the day, but looking at all of the different pagodas that
were built almost 1000 years before was pretty breathtaking.
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| Taxis in Bagan |
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| Sunrise from our view on the top of a pagoda |
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| Chilling on the ruins of a pagoda |
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| inside of a large pagoda |
After staying in Bagan, we took another night bus to Kalaw
to head to
Inle Lake.
Kalaw, unlike most of the other places we were staying at, was in the mountains
and was very cool and refreshing. We stayed the night there (for 2 hours until
the sun came up) and met with Johnny, our guide who would take us on a 2 day
trek through the countryside to Inle Lake. Although he did not really speak
English and we had some miscommunication with him, it was probably one of
the best experiences I had in Myanmar. It was really awesome seeing the
countryside during the day and then spending the night at a local village. After
the first night, we took baths in the river with Johnny and a kid from the
village and headed to bed, exhausted but pretty happy.
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View of the countryside.
Photo credit: Emily Thompson |
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| Elderly woman in a village working |
In the morning, we were ready for another day of trekking.
After walking all day, trying to scare Emily with cow crap, and having even
more miscommunication with Johnny, we ended up at Inle Lake.
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| Picture-perfect stances at Inle Lake |
This place was really cool, and we went on a boat tour and discovered
several different markets.
After a full day of boating, we headed back to the hostel
and took yet
another night bus to
Mandalay, where we would be
staying for 2 days until we caught our flight to Bangkok. When we arrived, I
remember standing outside for only a few seconds and already sweating
profusely. Looking through the lonely planet that we bought for $5, we saw that
there was a place called
Pyin
Oo Lwin that we could head to. It was a much cooler, British Colonial area
where the British went for vacation when they controlled Myanmar. We ended up
having to take a “pickup” to this place. Basically it was a regular pickup
truck that had tons of cargo on top and squeezed more than 10 people in the
back of. It was such a great experience, even if it was a really tight squeeze.
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| Our limo service to Pyin Oo Lwin |
We arrived at Pyin Oo Lwin, and it is so much nicer and
cooler than Mandalay. We walked around the area, tried fruit wine, and played a
ton of cards. Our little vacation had to end and we took another pickup back to
Mandalay so we could catch our flight to Bangkok. Unfortunately for Alejandro,
his flight was straight back to Singapore and he had to take yet another 10
hour bus ride back to Yangon to catch it.
So Emily, Max, and I headed to Bangkok, exhausted but amazed
at how awesome our trip was. Once we got to Khao San Road, the “Backpacker’s
Village” where our hostel was, we realized that we were kind of in a bubble in
Myanmar. We had basically been the only tourists within sight, but in Bangkok there
were tons of foreigners everywhere!
We had heard about the
Chatuchak Market,
the biggest market in Thailand with over 5000 stalls. So, we took a tuk-tuk to
the market and were amazed at really, how many stalls/random items there were.
We all ended up buying a couple of things (Max more than Emily and I), and I
tried a cricket! The Thai eat cricket by the bag, and I only wanted one, so it
took a while before the vendor realized that I did not want to buy a whole bag
full of crickets…It wasn't bad at all, it was pretty dry and very salty.
The next day, we just walked around the area and saw some
Buddhist temples. At night we just stayed at Khao San Road and watched the
hustle and bustle. That night, I also tried a scorpion. Why, you ask? I
actually don’t really have an answer to that…just wanted to try it I guess. The
scorpion, in my opinion, was much better than the cricket, although probably
because it was just more deep-fried.
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| Buddhist Temple in Bangkok |
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| Buddha's feet on another Reclining Buddha in Bangkok |
The next morning I had to leave for my flight back to
Singapore so I could study for my finals. It was extremely sad saying goodbye
to Max and Emily, for they were traveling a couple of more days, and it was the
last time we would be traveling together.
As I was heading back to the Bangkok Airport, I realized how
lucky I was for being able to travel around Southeast Asia with such a great
group of people. Although I had to leave early to do schoolwork (the main
reason of “studying” abroad), I knew that we all had such a great time together
this semester, and that we would all reunite in Montreal!
