Some Notes on The Trip to Myanmar

The weather in Myanmar is dry and getting cooler by November. We thought it is an ideal time to visit.

We were conscious of the Rohinya’s problems but of the opinion that not visiting doesn’t help the situation. This trip in fact helps us to understand more the complicated issues involved; not prejudging or jumping to a conclusion.

The trip brought us to Yangon where we can have a direct flight from HK. There are three international airports in Myanmar, Yangon, Mandalay and the capital.

From Yangon, we started our trip, which includes 4 domestic flights; allowing us to visit Bagan, Inle Lake, Mandalay  and back to Yangon. Each flight typically takes around one hour.A trip by roads will be time consuming – many roads needed to be improved or widened.  We encountered quite a lot of road widening and improvement on the way.

The trip allows us to see:

-a lot of temples, pagodas, buddhas – almost everywhere.

-palaces and parks.

-the picturesque scenery of Inle Lake, where we spent two days, taking a full day boat ride on the lake.

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– the sunset and morning reflections of the lake at our hotel villa.

-the life of ordinary people; in the market, on the street, in villages, especially those in the fisherman villages.

-students in a school with many orphans.

-monks, nuns and novices in their daily lives and in a procession.

-people working in arts and crafts.

-and also quite a few cats; some really interesting too

While we have not taken the hot air balloons in Bagan, we have gone up to the tallest tower early before sun rise, watching the balloons going up among the mist of the early morning sun and the picturesque temples lit up by the sun as it rose.

Watching temples during sunset was also an unforgettable experience. After taking a horse drawn wagon, we went up to a mound to see the beautiful sunset with rays striking on the temples.

Mandalay was full of culture and history; we are glad that we visited the place. We were particularly impressed with the 1.2 km long timber footbridge at U Bein.

We were there twice, once in the morning, actually walking the full length of the footbridge and also took a boat in the boat at sunset. The silhouette at sunset of the bridge was particularly impressive. 

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To save time, we have taken four domestic flights;

-rode twice on horse drawn wagons, twice on boats. The rest of the tour was by cars.

We find the people friendly, polite and the place safe.

We just wonder why we didn’t visit it earlier, given that Yangon is only 3 hours flight from where we are based.

We are starting to miss this country!

PS No shoes and socks are allowed in the temples and pagodas.