We arrived at Yangon in the dark from Palau, via Seoul. We set up camp at the Royal Star Guest House in central Yangon. The city has its share of legacy buildings, but wandering the streets and markets appealed more to us.. We purchased train tickets to Mandalay and visited Shwedagon Pagoda twice.

Shwedagon is marvelous. It hums with activity, primarily religious pilgrimage, but at times it feels like a theme park.

We figured train travel must have improved since our previous Myanmar visits in the 1980's and we bought $12 sleeper tickets for the 15 hour journey to Mandalay. On earlier trips, we had been so time-limited (one week visas) that we had traveled 2nd class, trying to sleep on the floor. Traveling first class on this trip meant that we tried to sleep on beds. The narrow gauge rocked the carriage back and forth so it was like trying to sleep on a horse. Sleep would only be possible at the point of total exhaustion, a real travel experience.

We arrived in Mandalay in the early morning darkness, craving sleep. We slowly made our way to our guesthouse. We snoozed when our room was available and then went bike riding in the afternoon. We signed up for a small tour the following day to see the historic areas south west of the city (Inwa, Amarapura and Sagaing Hill). The next day we rode bikes through the bike friendly city and visited Mandalay Hill and Shwenandaw Kyaung Monastery.

We found Amarapura to be firmly on the beaten tourist path and felt embarrassed by our presence, particularly at the Amarapura monastery where the daily routine of the monks was put on display for bus loads of tourists. It was a total gong show and then later at the U Bein bridge was more of the same. U Bein bridge pedestrians were about 80% tourists, 20% locals at sunset.

We took a bus from Mandalay to Monywa and took a look at a few hotels and they were pretty grubby, and went into the Chindwin Hotel. The less expensive rooms were downstairs but full, so we sucked it up and took a $50 room on the corner with a pagoda view. That was an excellent choice, because if you are gonna be sick in Monywa, the Chindwin Hotel is the place. We ended up staying 4 nights in the Chindwin Hotel.

After lunch on our first day, we hired a driver and the loudest three wheeler in Monywa to visit the garish Thanboddhay Pagoda, which is like no other. The pagoda features intricately decorated temples housing over 500,000 Buddha images. That was followed by a visit to the nearby 129m tall Buddha (Bodhisattva Tataung). The Big Buddha ranks as the 2nd largest statue in the world. We wandered up the interior levels, going from Buddhist hell to Nirvana.

There are already about 10,000 Buddhas on the hill and they are still building more of them, we passed a few concrete trucks along the way.

One tourist went down, with intestinal woes. The likely cause was dinner, which looked innocuous and actually quite yummy (Chinese; sweet and sour veggies, snow pea stir fry, no meat). The beer glasses were so cold that the beer actually froze when poured into them. Or was it the Burmese lunch? You just never know.

Our unscheduled rest days in Monywa allowed Glenn to wander the town. The main pagoda was a 5 minute stroll from hotel and the market not much further.

On our last Monywa day, after our 6:30am breakfast at the Chindwin Hotel, we took the boat across the river. Foreigners are required to charter the ferries for a fixed price of 2500k ($2.50). Then we chartered a jeep (fixed price of $20) to the Hpo Win Daung grottoes and adjoining Shwe Ba Taung. Although these sites were becoming better known,, we saw only a couple of other tourists, at the tail end of our visit.

We caught a van to Nyang-U (Bagan) and transferred over to our hotel, the Northern Breeze. We had enjoyed the comforts of Chindwin Hotel and were warming up to "flash-packing", so the mid-range hotel ($45) fit the bill. We were happy with New Bagan; on our two previous visits to Bagan in the 80's we had stayed in Old Bagan, before they moved the village.

There are many ways to see the wonderful Bagan ruins including car with guide and horse carts, however we started with push-bikes. On the second day, Sheila changed to an e-bike and discovered that once you are on an e-bike, Bagan is your oyster.

In all, we had 2 and half days touring Bagan. We were satiated with pagodas but not bored of them. We especially enjoyed our "secret" pagoda,, which was nice place to catch sunrise away from the throngs of tourists and photographers.

We took a six hour afternoon bus to Pyay and stayed at the Lucky Dragon Hotel. We were getting the hang of flash-packing with another mid-range hotel.

The friendly central market of Pyay was massive with truckloads of villagers doing their shopping there. We found the other tourists in town and formed a group to charter a three wheeler tuk-tuk for the afternoon and visited a couple of pagodas south of town; the Spectacled Buddha (Shwemyetman Pagoda), and Golden Spirit Mountain (Shwenattaung Pagoda). The other three tourists had been in Myanmar for 3 weeks and we were in our third Myanmar week, so we were all approaching pagoda saturation. However, we had a colourful tuk-tuk driver and the highlight of the excursion was sitting down with him for coffee.

We left Pyay on an Asia Express bus to Yangon, which looked modern and cosmopolitan after our up-country trip. We had one night at the Royal Star Guest House and then it was onto the southern Myanmar city of Dawei on a Myanmar National Airways flight.

We had a couple of nights at Maungmagan Beach, staying at the Coconut Guest House for $25 a night in a nice newish, clean fan room. Maungmagan Beach was good for walking at lower tides as it is flat and hard (a mud sand). The beach was OK, but not idyllic. Restaurants were quite good, they make pretty good seafood. A seafood dinner on the beach with beer was typically 10$.

One morning, we got off to an early start and walked about an hour south of where we were staying to visit an interesting fishing village.

Dawei itself was quite pleasant and we, foreigners, got a warm reception.. We stayed at the Shwe Moung Than Hotel,in a fine corner AC room with views across the palm trees.

We began our journey north with a 5:00 am bus to Ye rather than pushing on to Mawlamyine in one long bus day. Ye is a pleasant provincial town, and we stayed at the Starlight Guest House, run by an American/Myanmar couple,

We spent a couple of nights at Mawlamyine which was in desperate need of gentrification. A covered walkway that led up a ridge on the edge of town gave access to the fascinating Mahamuni Pagoda complex.

We made a day tour of Ogre Island (Bilu Kyun) with Mr Anthony who was a very sweet man.

Continuing further north we caught a two hour boat ride with other tourists to Hpa-an which also scores high on the grubby score with hotels to match. We stayed at the Soe Brothers Guest House and made our own arrangements for a tuk-tuk tour tour of the surrounding Karst area. The bats were cool; a thirty minute stream at dusk.

Our last stop in southern Myanmar was Kinpun. We stayed in town and then took a truck up the mountain to join thousands of pilgrims at the atmospheric Golden Rock. At one point, a group of monks had fun with us and they helped us take a few fun photos of the rock itself.

We took our last Myanmar bus from Kinpun to Yangon and stayed a night at the Royal Star Guest House. The hotel owners were happy to see us a third time and "Auntie" prepared special fried noodles for our breakfast the following morning. Then it was off to Seoul and Vancouver.