Blog pause!

I had hoped to prepare a bunch of posts to publish automatically while I'm away from the internet for the next 8 weeks, but I didn't manage to do so in the short time I had. I focussed instead on socialising with friends and family, a bit more important than the blog posts.

I've got tonnes of photos ready to post, sans text, so they'll go online in June. I will not be checking my email until mid-June.

Pyin U Lwin, Burma

On February 5th I left Mandalay en route by pickup to Pyin U Lwin, formerly called Maymyo. This area of Mandalay Division has great strawberries, and February is strawberry season!

Leaving Mandalay:




On the way there, as is the norm in Burma (more so than in other developing countries I've visited), there were all sorts of random vehicles.

These little Honda trucks are half a century old and are tiny! They're about the size of a Smart car:




These old (1940s?) buses are still used all over Burma:




A very common setup in many countries in Southeast Asia is to take a simple engine and connect it to a wheeled platform somehow, with a long steering column. Easy to fix, but slow as anything, and difficult steering. This is a bit more advanced than most of those, but still fairly simple:




Horse-drawn carts are also quite common in many parts of Burma today:




To cool engines at the half hour rest stop between Mandalay and Pyin U Lwin, hoses are left running cold water onto the engine blocks:




I only spent one night in Pyin U Lwin, and while I was eating at a restaurant (and drinking several glasses of tasty fresh strawberry juice!) I took this photo of the typical mode of transport in that town:




The next day I took off by train to Hsipaw, a route which included passing over what was once the second highest rail bridge in the world... photos coming soon in the next post.

Mandalay, Burma

On February 3rd, I headed from Yangon to Mandalay by bus. First I had to take a truck to the bus station outside town:




Then I had to wait a couple hours at the bus station. I bought some snacks from a vendor, and was amused by the "big, big bite-size pieces" I ate.




I got minor food poisoning on the overnight bus (the first time I've had food poisoning of any type in a developing country - previously I've only had food poisoning in the UK and New Zealand). So I spent the morning sleeping it off, and in the afternoon felt fine and went for a walk about town. Sadly, I don't think this beer is particularly legitimate...




The Burmese government is really just a military dictatorship, and they have these hilarious/ridiculous signs in many places. 'Tatmadaw' means the Burmese military.




One of many gates on the Mandalay Palace wall, complete with moat:




Another one:




Looking up at Mandalay Hill, a 7km walk from my hostel just before sunset:




Looking down from the steps leading up Mandalay Hill, you can see hundreds of small stupas in rows:




I met a Buddhist monk at the top of the hill and chatted with him a bit to help him practice his English. I also let him play with my dSLR camera.




We took a 'ghost' photo just for fun too, with a bit of blur to keep his face non-identifiable:






The next day I caught a pickup truck out of town, because I wanted to eat some strawberries... more on that in the next post.

Yangon, Burma

On January 29th I took an overnight bus from Mae Sot to Bangkok, spent the day trying to get my computer working properly, met up with my friend Nick for tasty dinner at an Indian restaurant, spent the whole night trying to get my computer working properly, didn't sleep at all, then caught a flight to Rangoon, Burma in the morning.

Trying to set up and configure Linux on my laptop:




I spent the next three and a half weeks backpacking around Burma (Myanmar), an experience I highly recommend. My first few days were spent in Yangon (Rangoon).

Shwedagon Paya is massive, and can be seen from pretty much everywhere in Yangon. I went at night on my first day in Yangon, when it was nice and cool outside and many Burmese people were praying and such:






A Buddhist monk came up to me after a while, and even though he didn't speak any English I figured out that he was inviting me somewhere so I went with him. He paid for the ride on the back of a pickup truck and then a bus, and we ended up at a monastery with a huge reclining Buddha. Although it's mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide (which at least 90% of non-package tour travellers seem to follow religiously), it gets few tourist visitors. Neat place.




On February 1st, I drew a line on my map of Yangon that I estimated to be a 10km loop and followed it. Although it was terribly hot, I quite enjoyed walking around town and seeing areas where tourists don't generally walk (simply because there's nothing to 'see' there, just as you won't find many tourists exploring average residential streets in Vancouver). But my photos are from more frequented areas...

Sule Paya, the centre of a roundabout in downtown Yangon:




City Hall looks like some kind of fortress:




An old building (I believe it's the Ministry of Finance & Revenue), with a colonial architectural style quite typical of Yangon:




This level of building maintenance is not uncommon in Burmese cities:




Another colonial building (I believe it's the High Court), with Mahabandoola Garden in the foreground.




I passed by the Defense Services Museum on my walk. This old jet has a few people living underneath.




Random old colonial building:




This centipede was in my bathroom:




There are an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 Buddhist monks in Burma, so this is a very common sight:




The railway station, with many unhelpful and clueless staff members inside:




After a couple days in Yangon, I was ready to really get my trip started, and set off by bus to Mandalay, the subject of the next post.