Myanmar, Thailand, and lots of Night Buses

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.

Pagoda in Yangon

City of Yangon

Reclining Buddha

Monks' room in the monastery

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.

Taxis in Bagan

Sunrise from our view on the top of a pagoda

Chilling on the ruins of a pagoda

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.

View of the countryside.
Photo credit: Emily Thompson

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.

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.

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.

Buddhist Temple in Bangkok

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!