I'm still enjoying the hospitality of the family Piampongsant and will make use of their internet to post some more about myanmar, the second destination in myanmar was Mandalay, a big city in the central/north of Myanmar. The city is a famous tourist attraction because it is surrounded by ancient cities: Sagaing, Ava, Amarapura and Mingun are the four that we visited. 

We arrived in Mandalay at 5 am so we tried to find a hotel/ guesthouse where we would be able to sleep a bit and spend the next night. A blue taxi (a very small mazda pickup where we barely fit) brought us around to see a few of them. We took the nicest one however it was very humid and the room smelled. After the bumpy busride everything was ok for us and it didn't take long before we were all sleeping, at 10 we woke up again and took a walk through the city. The city has a relatively easy structure, the streets are numbered and everything is square just like a chessboard. In the middle there is a gigantic palace, but the government asks 10 dollar entrance fee which is going straight into the pockets of the military so we didn't go. Instead we went to Mandalay hill, a mountain with quite a few pagoda's and on top an incredible view. We were joined by a novice whose name resembled Toontje, with such a name it can't go wrong and soon we reached the top while it was raining heavily. On the top there indeed was a very nice view over the Ayeyarwaddi river, the palace and the rest of the city. We went down from the west side, which is way less touristy, downstairs we ended up in a dirty poor suburb where they didn't meet a lot of foreigners: a big contrast with the southern entrance which is royally ornamented and where a lot of people are trying to sell things. 

We were getting tired again and our belly was not fully recovered from the food we had in Inle lake so we took a blue car to our hotel and went for dinner and straight to bed.

right now I'm also going to bed

more will follow

I've been in Bangkok (Thailand) again for a few days now but finally I get some time to update my blog. It's been such a nice time here that I preferred to do other things, so for them who were getting impatient, I'm sorry .

so about my trip in Myanmar: The plan was to visit Inle-lake, Mandalay, Bagan and the region around Yangon. We first landed in Yangon, but the city is very ugly, noisy and smelly. It seemed like we went back in time for about 50 years, the cars and busses almost fall apart, most transport is on foot, by bicycle or trishaw. It wasn’t that pleasant to visit and it was shocking to see how these people live. We went to the Shwedagon Paya at night, it was a piece of beauty not far from the centre, it has a lot of diamonds, gold, silver and whatever you want… It is a true masterpiece and the most impressing pagoda I’ve visited, trust me there are a lot of pagoda’s around here. 

But it’s the only thing really worth visiting, the next day we took the bus to the centre and did the city walk suggested in Lonely Planet, taking the bus here is a true adventure, there are 60 bus routes and the people from the bus are shouting where they are going and trying to get you on board. We managed to get to there and we saw a lot of big buildings but they are all occupied by the government and even these buildings are not maintained. They are just standing there and nature is taking its toll. We took a flight in the afternoon to Inle-lake and it was completely different, Nyaungshwe is a small city where the people are always smiling and the nature around it is beautiful. We did a trek in the mountains towards a monastery in a cave and another meditation cave, after that we went to a hill tribe village where we had some tea. We were looking at how they dried the leaves to roll cigars and the old lady that lived there invited us in for tea. We continued are walk through the hills and went to another village, this time close to the lake. We saw a biological farm and a bit further a tree which had a lot of mangoes, when we tried to take a picture the woman came out and offered us some. To have an excuse and to not want to profit from her we said that we don’t like the green ones that much. She went inside and got us a bag with 3 yellow mangoes just for nothing. People here are living in wooden and straw huts but still they share what they have… On the way back, we saw a gigantic meditating Buddha statue in a differnt style than any other we'd seen before. We were a bit too tired to really appreciate this piece of art and continued our tour to the hotel.

The next morning we rented bicycles and went through the countryside on the east side of the lake to a market. The ride started on a nice road, but soon this changed into a dirt track and about an hour later it changed in a road that was used for ox carts... After getting of and on the bike for about 20 times, we reached the market: it was totally worth it! The market was very busy, there were a lot of people wearing the traditional hilltribe outfits and the side of the lake was covered by at least a hundred small boats who had to go through a maze if they wanted to leave. My dad was not feeling well so it was the perfect time for a fotoshoot! The ride back went a lot easier and we noticed that there had been quite a lot of wind, so we were home in no time and decided to stop somewhere for a fresh beer. We went to the lake resort 2, the view was amazing, a quiet lake with green everywhere (the lake is not very deep so the plants just grow whereever).

Our last day at the inle-lake we rented a boat since we hadn't seen the main attraction yet: floating gardens. People there make small long islands in the lake and then grow tomatoes, peas,... on it. They maintain it from their proa, really amazing to see them pull out the weed while balancing on such a small boat. We also saw the famous leg-rowers: the fisherman here row with one arm and one leg while holding the net in the other hand and balancing on the other foot. Again an unbelievable way of balancing! We had to catch our bus, so we went back to our hotel...

this was our first stop in Myanmar, soon more will folow

grtz