Yangon, Myanmar

We left Toronto on Wednesday evening and an Uber-LRT-plane-plane-taxi-plane-taxi and 28 hours later we arrived at our hotel in Yangon, Myanmar at mid-afternoon on Friday. We had applied for our visa to Myanmar online and had no issues entering. We got a stamp but no sticker in our passports.

We lined up with the other tourists to try our luck at the four ATMs in the airport. Heather was able to withdraw 300,000 kyat (about $300 CAD). I managed to get both my cards suspended :( even though I had called CIBC to let them know I was traveling.

We're staying at the Hotel Grand United which has great views of Shwedagon Pagoda. After a longer than planned nap, we went out for dinner at a hotel-recommended restaurant. It was pretty touristy but hit the spot.

This morning I was up at 5:30am so took some pics of Shwedagon Pagoda at dawn. It was cloudy so didn't get all the colours of sunrise but it was still great lighting.

After breakfast we took a taxi to Sule Pagoda, in the heart of downtown. Took off our shoes and socks to enter, bought some flowers as an offering to Buddha, and then walked around the inside clockwise, just like the Rough Guide said. It was pretty bright with the sun and all the gold.

The streets of Yangon are really cool to walk around, with all the old colonial architecture. Downtown is really bustling, and there's great street food everywhere. We had a couple errands to run (confirming our flight tomorrow, and finding a place to make international calls so I could unlock my credit cards) which took us through some non-touristy but very lively streets.

We walked towards Chinatown (one of the things to do in the guidebooks). This was even more packed with bustle. One of the food stalls was making fresh pancakes with coconut and almonds that we just had to try. It was mmm good. The hardest decision was picking a place for lunch. Decided on a street vendor that was so busy they had stools three rows deep. Picked our food by pointing at what other people were eating. Heather had some noodles and broth, I had a different noodle with some stuff. Both were excellent. They mix up all the ingredients to order, so it's possible to have spicy or not. Had some green tea which was also great.

It was getting hot (about 34C) and close to noon so headed back to the hotel to relax. The hotels have business cards with directions in Burmese script so it's easy for taxi drivers to figure out where you're going. English is not as widely spoken here as other countries we've visited, but it's so far been no problem to get around.

Toronto, Canada

We'll soon be off for our next trip to Myanmar, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, with Bangkok as a base. At nine weeks this will be our longest trip together for Heather and me. By coincidence all three countries are primarily Buddhist, although I didn't know that about Sri Lanka until we started researching.

We're flying Emirates through Dubai (12 hours to Dubai, 4 hour layover, 6 hours to Bangkok). I messed up scheduling our next flight from Bangkok to Yangon -- I wanted to have a day rest in Bangkok before flying to Yangon; but missed that we arrive in Bangkok +2 days, not +1 day. We arrive at Bangkok at Suvarnabhumi Airport at 7:35am and depart from Don Mueang International Airport (the other airport in Bangkok) at 11:35am. So we have three hours to get through customs, get our baggage, take a taxi across town (Google Maps says it's between 40-80 minutes at that time of day) and check-in an hour ahead of departure. Might be close. There are 15 flights a day between Bangkok and Yangon so if we miss our flight there's others we can take.

We're taking the fancy new Union-Pearson Express to the airport as it's rush hour. Next time I blog hopefully we'll be in Yangon!