As I said in my previous post on Mandalay, the flight to Bagan was (for once) without incident and on time. I stayed in the centre of backpacker ville – lots of traveller restaurants and hotels. The place seems to be really taking off. I booked in to the New Park hotel. $7 for a nice room – big and table and chair outside and I’m glad to it’s still in business today. Like Christmas, I had forgotten it was…
Kalaw 28th Dec 2002 Another interesting bus experience! I was up at 6am in the cold, had breakfast and was ready and waiting for the bus to Mandalay. Eventually it arrived at 8.30, although the aisle was blocked with sacks I did manage to find a seat. It shuddered 500m down the road and then stopped again to cram more goods on board eventually leaving town at 9am. The journey itself wasn’t too bad. Obviously we broke down, had a…
I got on the bus from Yangon to Mandalay as planned and found myself sat next to a mad Italian vet called Carla who happened to know a mutual friend in Hanoi. She was good company but talked a lot. The other foreigners on board were an Israeli girl called Udit, who I described in my diary as being very thoughtful and introspective and an American, Jennifer, who was quite independent and interesting. They had been to a Buddhist monastery…
I was living in Vietnam at the time, so the flight was fairly short and uneventful. Arriving in Yangon, I was through immigration fairly quickly and exchanged some money for the official Foreign Exchange Certificates (FEC). this was compulsory I remember $200 for 20FEC. I then got a taxi ticket and was soon headed into the big smoke. I had decided to stay in the YMCA as my copy of the lonely planet said it was very clean and the…