As we drive past men standing majestically on the end of little wooden boats, their skirts flowing in the breeze and their leg wrapped around the oar as they paddle along, we could only be in one place in the world: Inle Lake. Despite being told that we would get in between 2 and 3am […]
Myanmar
Exploring the Thousands of Temples in Bagan
We’ve climbed the Temples of Angkor in Cambodia and we’ve been dazzled by the Grand Palace in Thailand but, to me, nothing compares to the temples in Bagan. The bus here felt long but wasn’t too bad. Getting on and off I also had someone carry my big rucksack for me for the first time […]
The City of Gold: Mandalay
We arrived in Mandalay bright and early after our luxurious VIP gold-class bus from Yangon. We had TV screens so I watched 2 films, played a game and listened to some 2007 chart toppers. At 6am we checked into our hostel which seemed clean and nice but we couldn’t have a bed yet so we […]
Yangon: The Run Down City Filled With Tradition
‘This is Burma’ wrote Rudyard Kipling. ‘It is quite unlike any other place you know about’. More than a century after he said this, I still believe it to be a valid statement. It is a country where men wear skirt-like longyi, women are covered in thanaka (traditional make up made from tree bark) and […]