I see Myanmar somewhere between India and Thailand (and not only geographical). The first thing everybody likes about Myanmar are the people. They all have a friendly face and always smile at you. There are tourists coming to Myanmar but not as many as to Thailand so the tourism industry is still not very developed. The government of Myanmar is trying very hard to attract foreign well-paying tourists and the country itself is really worth visiting. But as a budget traveler it's somehow like paradise. There are a lot good cheap places to stay. Food and local transport is incredible cheap as long as you travel by public bus and eat of local places. Of course you can also travel by plane, stay at 5 star hotels and also eat there. But then you will definitely not have so much fun and people in tourism are always different from local people. Most of the locals are not speaking very good English but you always succeed to get food or anything at the market. Shopping is really fun. I just bought a lot of things only because I liked to bargain with the people. As my luggage is now way too heavy I will send it home and hope that it will arrive safely in some months.

Almost all the people who speak English work in tourism, either in hotels or as guides or as trishaw-drivers. You don't have to look for the English speaking ones, they will find you. Some of those also speak other languages like German, French, Japanese or Chinese. But with English you will easily find your way and of course with hand signals, which are a bit different in Asia.

The trip to Myanmar didn't started very well as my flight was at 8 o clock in the morning and that meant that I had to be at the airport at 6. Public buses are not going so early so I had to take a tourist minibus at 5 from Kaosan. Even if I know already what to pack, as it is all that I have with me it still always takes hours and that's why I hardly get any sleep before a morning flight. It was not different this time. I was emailing until midnight and then it took me about 3 hours for packing. This left about one hour for sleep, which was naturally not very deep.

So I got up after one hour of lying in my bed and went to the minibus station. As in Thailand everything is on time I was there 1 minute to 5 and there was no bus, just some drunk Thais and some tourists going home from partying. First I thought that I was late but then 5 minutes later came a minibus. But the driver just said that he has just been to the airport and there should be another one coming soon. So I waited. After 10 minutes another minibus came and I entered and made myself ready for another hour of sleep in the car. But before the driver started his car he collected the tickets and said that I'm supposed to be on the minibus of another company and that he couldn't drive me. So I had to get off the bus again and already saw myself paying a lot of money for a cab. At 5:30 my minibus finally arrived and this driver was a real maniac. Normally the bus would take about 1 hour with normal traffic, we did it in 20 minutes. As my seat was above the wheels I was jumping all the way and got some nice blue marks. But we made it in time.

The next problem occurred at the airport of Myanmar. In Bangkok Thai Airways didn't allow me to carry my pocketknife in my hand luggage. So they took it and where supposed to hand it back at the airport of Myanmar (in Yangon). But after about one hour waiting time for the Thai crew at the airport they told me that the knife did not arrive and I will get it back when I'm leaving again. Fortunately this really worked and it costed me "only" 2 visits to the town office of Thai. But I still like the airline.

As I finally arrived at my chosen guesthouse I had the choice between a bed in the dormitory (3 USD) or a single room (7 USD). I decided for the single room because it had big windows and I had not had windows for several weeks. Also the dormitory was for 16 people and didn't look so nice at first glance. But at the end of my trip I stayed in the dorm and it was really good there. So I would recommend the dorm if you were travelling alone.

At noon - just when I decided to leave my room - it started to rain very heavy. Of course it was also monsoon time in Myanmar. But the rain stopped again about one hour later and that's how it was every day. Around noon you had to find some shelter, e.g. a little teashop.

At my first afternoon in Yangon (capital of Myanmar, former name Rangoon) I was just walking around and found myself pretty soon again in a monastery. I guess I was the first tourist there as the all looked at me as if I'm an alien and then one guy who knew pretty good English thought he has to convince me to join Buddhism. So I had to talk with him for several hours about Buddhism and the Christian religion and how bad the Christian religion is. First I thought it's pretty nice to talk about meditation and the different stages of Buddhism but after a long time it was just boring. When I finally succeeded to leave he wanted to know in which room I'm staying at the hotel and said that he wants to come there and talk further about religions and Austria. It's pretty strange that when I told him that I'm leaving he started to be interested in my country.

So all in all it can be very interesting to talk to people in monasteries but if they know good English it can be very hard to stop them.

After that experience I just had dinner at my guesthouse and watched a lot of movies instead of going to bed early. In the dining room of the guesthouse was a big TV with a DVD player and one of the other tourists had rented a lot of movies which we watched all evenings and most of the nights.

In the guesthouse I also met a lot of other tourists. With a girl from New Zealand (Cheryl) I traveled most of Myanmar and at all the places we met the same people again and again. Everybody has the same route and as there are not so many tourists it's good to meet again.

On the second day we bought our tickets for the bus to Taunggy, which was quite a hassle. At first we didn't find the place where all the companies should be and then they offered us tickets for 8 USD. We finally succeeded to get tickets for 4000 Ks (Kyats) but at the hotel we heard that it would have been possible for 2500 Ks. In the beginning you always pay a lot more. The rest of the journey was a lot cheaper. But still, we didn't pay 8 USD.

The exchange rate USD to Ks is about 1:1000, but if you change a lot USD you can also get about 1200 or 1300 Ks, but those moneychangers are not so easy to find and at some places they only want to give you 900 Ks for a dollar. Everybody accepts USD and Ks, but preferably USD as the inflation in Myanmar is pretty high. There is actually also a 3rd "Touristcurrency" called FEC (Foreign Exchange Currency) which has the same value as the dollar but not everybody accepts it and you won't get good exchange rates for it. Every tourist is officially forced to change 200 USD to 200 FEC at the airport but the officers there persuade you to change less for a little present (usually 5 USD). That's the way the government officials earn money. All the officials except some kind of present for doing anything and everybody accepts it. So it's a kind of legal corruption.

The bus travel was a lot longer as expected as we stopped for 2 hours because of a flat tire. The total travelling time was 25 hours instead of 18. So it is pretty close to my 26 hours bus travel in India.

The seats of the bus were pretty ok for day-travel but not for sleeping. The bus was supposed to have reclining seats, but they reclined only for about 5 degrees, which is not enough for sleeping comfortable. Our journey started at 12:30 and in the beginning it was pretty cool, as there were also a couple from Israel and an Israeli guy traveling with an English guy. Up to now I?m used to Israelis talking Hebrew to me. In Thailand almost everybody expected me to be Israeli and the Israelis from the bus also started their talk in Hebrew. We talked about travel experiences and Israel and so it was not boring at all. When it got dark, they bus people showed some movies until 2 o clock in the morning. So even if you could sleep on these seats, it was too loud too sleep anyway.

The first movie was a Burmese love story without subtitles, so not very easy to follow. But if you like love stories it was pretty ok to watch. The next movie was a kung fu film similar to crouching tiger hidden dragon (male and female fighters). I guess the title was ?The Warrior?. I would recommend that movie if you like unrealistic kung fu fighting. The next movie was some kind of brutal American military movie and then ?The Scorpion King?. As I was too tired to watch I just kept my eyes closed and tried to sleep. I realized that even if I only have my eyes closed without sleeping I?m not so tired the next morning. This helped me through a lot of bus travels.

At a road junction to Inle Lake (our destination) the bus let us out and a lot of pickups were already waiting for tourists. First they wanted 50 Ks per person but then they brought us for free to our hotel. They received their commission anyway.

The place were we stayed was Nyaungshwe, a little town close to the Inle Lake. From there you could take a boat on the canals to the lake what we did the next morning together with two Japanese girls.

The boat was a canoe with an engine and four comfortable seats with umbrellas. The umbrellas are very useful as it also rained in Nyaungshwe every day because of the monsoon.

Our first impressions of the lake were the floating gardens and fishermen. People live in the canals on bamboo houses on stilts and in front of their houses they grow vegetables that they sell at the market.

The fishermen at Inle Lake are very famous for their special rowing style as they are standing on the boats and use one leg for rowing instead of their arms. I made way too many pictures of them.

The pictures can be seen on my travel homepage at:

Unfortunately the size of the pictures is too big and I had no tool to make them smaller. So the pictures look pretty strange.

The next stop was at a local market. It was the first market we saw in Myanmar and of course we made a lot of pictures.... of people, of food, of people selling food, of people eating food. Everything really exciting for westerners.

The market was really cool and colorful. People were selling a lot of different kinds of dry fish, beans, sweet cake bread (very delicious), beetle nut and a lot of exotic fruits and vegetables I was too afraid to try.

The people on the market spoke hardly any English but I succeeded to taste a lot of the food and the price was shown with the according number of banknotes.

One thing that I didn?t try was betel nut, a special nut that is used like chewing gum and has slight doping effects. It is supposed to taste sour and people have it quite long in their mouth. The main reason why I didn?t try it was that the nut turns the teeth and the mouth red and the people using it always spit the red liquids on the ground. That looks so awful but I guess for them quite normal. There are also women chewing betel nut not so many as men (almost all of them).

For people in Myanmar as I guess in most Asian countries it is quite normal to spit very often, normally on the streets. My driver in India opened every ten minutes the door and spit out on the street. Some years ago the government made new paving on the streets and forbade the use of betel nut, as they didn?t want red marks on their new streets. But you still find a lot of red marks on the streets and at first glance they look like bloodstains. On top of one temple were buckets in every corner just for the people to spit into and they were used quite often.

Another disgusting thing, which is quite normal for Asians, is to vomit on bus travels. In Indonesia they just vomited on the floor between their legs. Then the bus stopped, somebody went out to get some sand, which was poured on the vomit (pavement pizza), and the travel continued. In Myanmar people are better organized. In an aircon bus there are plastic bags provided and in other buses people seem to bring them along. So they only vomit in their plastic bags. But they will always vomit on travels on mountain roads. Somehow their stomachs are less suitable for this kind of roads than Western stomachs.

Enough disgusting details. After the market we went to a hotel where two long neck families lived close by. Long neck women have a lot of rings on their necks and if you would remove these rings they would die. I think that the only long neck women who are still alive only do this for getting tourist money, as you always have to pay entrance to see them.

The long neck women at Inle Lake have no rings but spirals on their neck, which are changed every year. With special instruments they broaden the spirals to get if off and on again. During this procedure the women have to wear some kind of stiff support in order to keep their neck from twisting.

Apart from the spirals on their neck they are also wearing rings on their legs, arms and ankles. They say that they make their living by selling hand-woven stuff but I think they make a good living by tourists paying entrance fee.

The next stop was at an umbrella factory where traditional paper umbrellas were made. First they make some sludge out of bark (Matsch aus Baumrinde) which they beat to thin plates. These plates are then put into water and after mixing to little pieces it is attached to a sieve in the water. Then they make some movements with the sieve and after some time they get it out of the water and let it dry. After that the finished paper can be pulled down from the sieve and used in the next step. Meanwhile the frame of the umbrella is made of bamboo and the paper is attached to it. Until this moment the paper is just white. The decoration consists of putting flowers on the paper and let them dry there. There is no painting used only flowers and the result is really beautiful. When the umbrella should be rainproof they put some special stuff on it which makes the color brown instead of white. I bought a small sun umbrella for decorative purposes and now I have to pay a lot for postage. L

After lunch we went to a paya (temple) (Phaung Daw U Paya) with 5 little Buddha images. The images were covered over and over with gold plates so you couldn?t recognize anything. This paya is the most important for the lake and during the temple festival the statutes are carried on a special boat along the lake so that everybody can pray to them.

In 1961 the 5 images were taken on their journey as usual when a big storm arrived and the statues fell into the lake. After some time the people had rescued 4 of the 5 images but they couldn?t find the last one. When they returned to the temple the 5^th statue was already on its place covered with seaweed. From that time on the 5^th Buddha image is always staying at the temple as a guard to prevent further catastrophes.

After the temple we went to some more manufacturers. First to a place where women rolled the Burmese cigars, then to a silk and cotton weaving mill and to a blacksmith. The best about the visit at the blacksmith was the offered snack, which consisted of fried rice crackers with pickled tealeaves. I was the only one who liked it but in my opinion it tasted fantastic.

The last stop of the boat trip was another monastery which was famous for their jumping cats. The monks there trained the cats to jump through rings, which is not bad for the cats as they are obviously well fed.

The next day we spent on the 5-day market and bought a lot of nuts, beans and sweet bread for our next bus journey. The market is named 5 day market as it moves from one little village to the next and every 5^th day it is e.g. again in Nyaungshwe. After the market we walked along our little village and finally found ourselves again in a school. The kids were really excited about seeing us and the teachers were also very friendly even if we disturbed the lessons just by being there. So we took some pictures and went on again. The kids are really sweet in Myanmar and most of the woman and kids are very beautiful. The young boys are also very handsome but as soon as they start chewing betel nut and getting older their teeth start looking very bad and that destroys their smiles.

In the afternoon we wanted to take a pickup to the road junction where our bus would pick us up for Mandalay. We found the pickup station quite soon and there was also one that was just getting ready. But the driver sent us somewhere else and meant that this was not the pickup we wanted to go with. So we looked for another pickup. As all the other people in the villages answered our questions with the pickup we just left, we went back there and found that is was well loaded now. The luggage was on the roof and the women were sitting in the back of the loading platform. But we insisted now that the driver has to take us to our destination as it was on his way anyway and it was the last pickup for the day. As all places were already occupied we had to stand on the edges of the loading platform, where women are normally not allowed.

The drive was quite comfortable even if I couldn?t move my feet. But I had fresh air and as the speed was not so fast it was not very difficult to keep a grip.

During the trip in Myanmar I experienced all kinds of road travels:

• AC bus with and without reclining seats and TV
• Local bus without space for legs
• Local bus with fish loading and awful fish smell (until that time I liked fish)
• Standing on the end of the loading platform
• Stucked in the middle of a pickup with bench
• Jumping on the loading platform of a pickup without benches
• Sitting on the roof of a pickup (partly on the luggage)
• Riding a bike
• Riding a trishaw
• Being a passenger in a trishaw

At the road junction where we had to wait some hours for the bus, we met a traveler from Norway who told us some horror stories of his trips. But he is still alive and of course still traveling. Most of the people I met were not on the first travel to Asia but have already been traveling to most of the countries and it?s always good to hear some stories.

With 2 hours delay our bus arrived and it was the best bus I had in Myanmar. It was comfortable with reclining seats and plastic bags for the locals. As it was an aircon bus there was also a TV and after some Burmese comedy they showed ?Face Off? which was a lot more brutal as I had it in my memory. But of course if it wouldn?t be brutal you would not see it in Myanmar.

At 4 o clock we had a breakfast stop and at 6 o clock another 2 hour break because of a flat tire. But this time I didn?t mind as we could see the morning donation round of the monks.

Some women of the village came with rice and other food on the streets and waited for the monks. Those came with big bowls and each woman gave each monk one spoon of rice. After the monks there came a young boy who collected the other food in several little bowls for the monks.

The monks always go for food and other donations in the morning barefoot through the villages or towns. After that they go back to the monastery and study or watch TV or do anything else. In the evening there is another prayer and at 8 o clock they are supposed to go to bed. The wake up call is again at 4 o clock in the morning. After 12 am (noon) the monks are not allowed to eat anything except Chinese tea (mild black tea without sugar) and chicory (a very sweet sugarlike candy).

But being a monk in Myanmar is not so strict as I saw them also in the evenings. They are also allowed to smoke and chew betel nut and all the money the monk gets as donation is for himself not for the monastery. Everybody can become a monk for some time and if he doesn?t like it anymore just get back to normal life again.

After 14 hours bus travel we arrived finally in Mandalay, the second biggest city. Mandalay was the only place I didn?t like so much because it is very touristic and people on the street hassle you with all kinds of transport, tours and souvenirs. You also have to pay a lot of entrance fee to enter most of the sights.

The first day we didn?t do much due to a lack of sleep from the bus travel. On the next day we decided to take the bus to some of the sights but intended not to pay everywhere entrance. We decided that we didn?t want to support the government so we looked at a lot of places only from the outside. We supported local people instead.

As we couldn?t find the bus station (everyone told us other directions) we decided to take trishaws as one of the drivers (Myo Myo) spoke pretty good English and it was really cheap.

Trishaws are like rickshaws bikes but the customer seats are at different places. Rickshaws have a bike in the front and a small bench on 2 wheels in the back. Trishaws have 3 wheels and the passenger seat beside the driver. Actually one passenger is sitting next to the driver and the other one back to back with the first passenger. I was also driving the trishaws and in the beginning it was pretty hard, but only because choosing the direction worked a bit different. On a normal bike you use your body weight to keep balance and set the direction. With a trishaw you don?t have to keep balance, as with 3 wheels it just can?t fall to one side. So in the beginning Myo Myo was always holding my steering wheel when I was driving to get us to the right direction.

I was driving a lot faster than the other trishaw drivers and as I was the first tourist to drive a trishaw I earned a lot of good comments from the locals. I guess I could make a living by driving trishaw in Myanmar.

At the first destination of the day the drivers offered us to wait and drive us to all the other places and back to the hotel. As we thought they could make some other business during the day we told them to pick us up after sunrise at Mandalay Hill which was supposed to be a good sunset place.

Our first temple contained the biggest book of the world and for this we paid entrance (5 USD), but it was not as good as expected. There were 729 little stupas each containing a marble slab with writing in Burmese. The writing is supposed to be the complete canon of some Buddhist thing. Besides these stupas the temple (paya) looked pretty cool and similar to the other temples.

I?ve seen just too many payas, pagodas, temples and monasteries up to now and they are all very similar. They all contain at least one stupa, which contains any kind of Buddha relic like a hair from him. The stupas are solid towers with a big square bottom and a small round top. Beside the stupa there are always a lot of Buddha images. The big ones are always reclining (lying) Buddha images and the shape of the Buddha statues is supposed to be the same too. The only difference is the use of the hands. There are several possibilities how a Buddha can hold his hands, but most common it is something close to the body.

After a lot of other temples we went up Mandalay Hill. There was one way with stairs (for tourists) where you had to pay 3 USD entrance fee and a road going up in serpentines. Of course we took the long road to avoid the entrance fee. On the way up we met two Burmese women of whom one was a guide and had a boyfriend from Switzerland. As he was studying Burmese she also started to learn German and she is considering moving to Switzerland.

For Myanmar people it is very difficult to travel to another country as the passport alone costs a fortune. I really wonder how some people manage to go abroad. In the south of Thailand there are a lot of Burmese working in guesthouses but I guess they escaped somehow illegally.

The 2 Burmese women were walking up the hill every day for exercising and on top at a smaller shrine we did some aerobics together.

As we could not see the sunset from our place we went up to the big paya but they didn?t allow us to go inside to see the sunset on the other side without paying entrance. So we went down again and on the way we found another temple where we could watch the sunset without paying. From that temple we took stairs down all the way. We walked at least for half an hour downstairs and our knees were shaking.

At the bottom our trishaw drivers already waited for us. They didn?t work anything in the meantime but have been to the teashop, drinking tea and smoking. We went then to a vegetarian (slightly Indian) restaurant and said goodbye to the trishaw drivers. But when we came out again of the restaurant they were still there and so we went now on one trishaw with Myo Myo to a puppet show. But as the entrance fee was triple what we expected we decided to go home. Suddenly it started to rain very heavy and so we escaped to a little teashop close by to wait for the rain to cease.

As it didn?t stop after some time we went home in the rain. Due to the heavy rain some streets were flooded and so Myo Myo was pushing his trishaw instead of driving. But somehow we succeeded to get home.

The next day I hired Myo Myo for the day to show me Mandalay. We went to a goldplate manufacturer, places where people made Buddha images of marble, wood and some other stuff and finally to the ancient capital city, Amarapura (which was about 30 minutes with the bike from Mandalay).

In Amarapura we had local lunch which was rice with small dried fishes. The fishes were so small that you didn?t feel fish bones or any difference when eating a part of the head. I liked these fishes but they are definitely the only ones where I would eat the head.

Amarapura is also famous for the world?s longest teak wood bridge, called U Bein bridge (and that is not a German translation, but a Burmese name).

On this bridge we met a lot of other tourists again who had come either by bus or by car. Amarapura is really worth visiting and it is very close to Mandalay.

The next day we went to another hill outside of Mandalay where an endless amount of stairs led to the monastery on the top and then at least double the amount of stairs within the monastery from one room to the other. I really increased by leg muscles in Mandalay by driving trishaw for several hours and walking an endless amount of stairs up and down. But unfortunately it does not show.

After Mandalay we took a minibus to Bagan which was not a very good decision as we had almost no space for our legs and the benches would have been pretty ok for one but were supposed for two. A tall Canadian guy was also on this bus and as he filled the bench easily they decided to put his Burmese neighbour to some other place.

One hour before arrival we had another stop and then we decided to move to the roof. As all of us moved there it was crowded again and in the beginning very uncomfortable as I was jumping all the time. But then I found a seat on the luggage, which was a lot softer. The only drawback was that I was higher than most of the branches of the trees and so the Canadian guy pulled my head pretty often to save him from bloodstains.

After this bus travel we needed to rest for the remaining hours of the day and as Cheryl did not feel well the next day we also rested that day. Only in the evening we went to some temple festival where a lot of Burmese singers performed. Some were pretty cool but as they only sang in Burmese I didn?t really understand the meaning. After the singing was a cabaret, which was only funny for Burmese and then was supposed to be some dancing. But I missed that (maybe best) part.

Finally we succeeded to watch some temples in Bagan. Some are of pure gold and some are just red nowadays. Almost all the stupas and Buddha images are either pure gold or with gold plates. There is a lot of gold in the mountains and the rivers of Myanmar and people use it for their religion. Most people buy gold plates and put them on Buddha images in temples. They believe the more they donate the better will be their next live.

There is one thing I don?t like about Buddhism. Women are not allowed to go close to the Buddha images and put gold plates on them. They can only put some flower arrangements in front of the images or pour water over special marble stone Buddha images. Sometimes women are not even allowed to see some images. L

The fascinating thing about Bagan is the multitude of stupas and payas. On some of the payas it is possible to walk up and from there you see stupas in every direction. One story is that a former king said that he wants to have a stupa no matter where he points with his finger. And it really looks like that. It is really amazing.

Close to Bagan is Mt. Popa, a monastery on top of a mountain. The way to the monastery was of course again over a lot of stairs but this time we had company by some monkeys who waited there to get snacks from locals or tourists. As I already had some experience with monkeys in India and Thailand I must say that Mt. Popa monkeys were not so aggressive and therefore not frightening.

One good thing about Bagan are the restaurants. There are among others one delicious Indian restaurant, one cheap vegetarian restaurant and 2 Burmese/ Chinese restaurants with free puppet shows. So we finally saw the Myanmar puppet shows and it was really nice.

The guys at the vegetarian restaurant played guitars and one evening they played for us while we were singing English songs and drank cocktails. It was a really cool evening.

I really enjoyed Bagan. It is a nice little town even if you are not interested in stupas and payas.

After Bagan I decided to go with some other people to Ngapali Beach to relax some days on a deserted beach. Unfortunately the travel there was not so easy. First we had to go to Pyay, a stop on the way to Yangon where we arrived at 4-o clock in the morning. Fortunately I found a nice guesthouse where I was allowed to stay until the evening without paying an extra day. The owner was really nice as he gave me my breakfast at 1 p.m. when I finally got up. The rest of the day I was chatting with some new travelers and visited Pyay.

At 8 p.m. we went to the bus station where our bus should leave at 9 p.m. But as the bus came from Yangon you could not rely on that and at 12 p.m. we finally left Pyay. As the bus was fully loaded with some goods I could lay on the luggage which gained me some muscle ache but no sleep.

At 8:30 a.m. we arrived at Taunggok where we had to change the bus. In the meantime we had breakfast at the only restaurant. The only dish there was some spicy noodle fish soup. But at least it was warm food.

The next bus brought us to Thandwe where we had to take a cab to finally arrive at Ngapali beach. First we were pretty shocked by the high prices and the low quality of the guesthouses compared to places like Bagan or Nyaungshwe.

But after being in the water, jumping with the high waves and relaxing on the long sandy beach we got a lot more relaxed. When watching the sunset we decided that it was worth the long journey. The sunset was really very beautiful with the sky and clouds in all colors of blue, orange and red.

The food in the restaurants was also more expensive than in other places but it was mainly seafood and still a lot cheaper than in Europe. I ate prawns, red snapper, squid and one day lobster. It was for all of us the first lobster as we could have never afforded it at home and here it was only about 5 USD.

The beach was full of crabs and especially in the night it was pretty hard not to step on them. Some of the guys always tried to catch them and one day they catched some big ones which we had before our dinner. They tasted pretty funny not like prawn or lobster. Maybe I will have another crab in Phnon Phen where they should be very good and cheap.

After some relaxing days we went back to Yangon. The bus was supposed to go directly from the beach to Yangon and unfortunately this time it really did.

Unfortunately because we were stuck in a bus together with some fish load and the smell in the bus was really awful. I had all the time my sarong (with sunscreen smell) on my nose but it didn?t really help.

When we finally left the bus all our stuff (also inside our bags) smelled fishy and I didn?t open it at all in Yangon. I just took it like it was to Bangkok where I had everything washed.

The last 2 days in Yangon I spent with visiting Hindu temples, eating Indian food, seeing 2 Indian movies and talking to some Hindus. The only non-Indian thing I was doing was visiting Shwedagon Paya, the biggest and most sacred paya in Myanmar. It is made of a lot of gold and everybody told me how great it is. It was nice but every time people tell me how great something is I expect something totally cool and then I?m normally disappointed. So don?t expect anything and go there on one of your first days in Myanmar. Then your experience will be a lot better.

I didn?t expect anything of the other places or of Myanmar as a whole even as a lot of people told me how great it is. That?s why I really liked the place and would recommend it to any budget traveller. I spent about 260 USD in 3,5 weeks in Myanmar and I bought a lot of stuff. So it is a really cheap place.