Day 47: Sapa

-We arrived in Lao Cai (check) at 5am and took an hour-long drive to the town of Sapa. The drive was beautiful as the sun was rising over all the rice fields. Sapa is half mountain town, half valley full of rice fields. It is absolutely beautiful.

The mountain town of Sapa:

-We were given time to take a shower at a hotel and had some breakfast before heading off for our 12km hike (which ended up feeling more like 5km and was on a very flat path, I don’t think that really counts as a hike). Women from the local villages follow you the whole way to the home stay just so they can sell you things. It’s actually quite annoying because they don’t leave you alone until you buy something and when you but one thing from someone everyone else wants you to buy more from them. Nevertheless it was absolutely gorgeous, we were super lucky with the weather.

Marco swimming in the river:

In front of some rice paddies:

 Some local children trying to sell bracelets:

Marco in front of the valley:

A local:

Some more views of the valley:

Where we ate lunch:

-We met some really nice people from England and Australia whom we went down to the river with for some swimming. A Dutch couple at our home stay had bought some gifts for the kids, just simple things like balloons, paper, stickers, and a jump rope. The kids went wild though and absolutely loved it. We all had fun trying to make paper airplanes and fortunetellers.

Living quarters for the night:

-In the evening we had a great meal and the most delicious fires cooked with garlic. We played some cards and tried some of the local rice wine, which reminded me of bai jiu.

Dinner with the group:

Day 46: Hanoi to Sapa

-Marco and I spent the day walking around the crazy bustling streets of Hanoi. The streets here are very thin but are full of motorcycles, cars, and people. We didn’t really walk anywhere in particular but just wandered around enjoying the city.  Last time I came to Hanoi I hated it, but this time I wasn’t as tired and hungry so actually enjoyed it quite a lot. We stopped at Daw… market and bought some cheap North Face backpacks for our trip to Sapa later in the evening. We saw the Old City Gate and the big lake here (name), stopping for lunch at a little restaurant with the cutest 2-year-old boy helping out as the waiter. The strangest thing is the people who come up to you on the streets asking if you want your shoes shined when you’re wearing flip-flops. One even offered to sew mine, even though they’re not broken.

Some views of the lake:

The old city gate:

-In the evening we headed to the train station for our overnight train to Sapa. We had two other Vietnamese men in our carriage, one very fat and very drunk. He would not stop staring at us playing cards, that is until he passed out and started snoring louder than I thought was physically possible without waking yourself up. Needless to say I got no sleep. 

Random Myanmar Facts and Tid Bits

-Of the entire population 80-85% are Buddhists.

-70% of the country's monks live in Mandalay.

-Instead of www. Standing for world wide web, it stands for wait wait wait

-Burma and Rangoon are the old British colonial names. Now they use Myanmar and Yangon.

-1 of 3 countries in the world that doesn’t have a contract with Coke. They import the coke from Thailand.

-People here love saying hello, and tend to do it until they get a hello back, which makes them so happy.

-The kings used to love to move the capital city, which is why Yangon, Mandalay, Amarapura, and many more cities all used to be capitals of Myanmar.

-Our guide’s joke in Mandalay: “that there (pointing to a bunch a yellow buildings) is the government hotel. Very easy to check in, very hard to check out.” His explanation of a prison.

-Another guide joke: the Chinese eat with 2 chopsticks, the Burmese eat with 5. (Talking about their fingers).

-The guide joking about the number of Chinese in Mandalay. You wake up to a Chinese alarm clock. Eat a Chinese breakfast. Drive your Chinese motorcycle to work, which is run by Chinese. Go back home and make plans with your Chinese friends for a Chinese dinner. 

-There are approximately 500,000 monks in Myanmar and only 40,000 nuns.

-Myanmar became a British colony in 1885 and gained independence in 1948. Aung Sun Suu Kyi’s father, General Aung Sun helped establish independence before he was executed.

-Quick way to tell the difference between a temple and pagoda: you can go in a temple but not a pagoda.

Day 45: Yangon to Bangkok to Hanoi

-After successfully using all of our kyat and flying to the Bangkok airport, we spent the whole day lounging around waiting for our flight in the evening. Marco and I are masters at killing time now, rotating between eating, playing cards, and reading our kindles. Kindles were the best thing we brought with us on the trip. I don’t have to worry about finishing my book because I have tons more right there at my fingertips. After weeks of fried noodles with chicken, both my lunch and dinner consisted of chicken nuggets and fries, and I drank diet coke galore (rare and very expensive in Myanmar).

-Once we finally made it to Hanoi and picked up our bags, which took forever, we took a cab to the hostel. I stayed at the same hostel on my last trip to Vietnam with Katie. It’s really busy and fun with tons and tons of backpackers. However, we got in so late that we went straight to bed. 

Day 44: Yangon Again

-After a leisurely start we went back to Aung Sun Market, also known as Scott’s Market and Bogyoke Market, to buy some last minute items with our leftover kyat (pronounced chat). Everything in the markets are so beautiful but so impractical to carry when you’re backpacking. The most exciting thing I bought was an elephant puppet that Marco thinks is hideous. 

Day 43: Inle Lake to Yangon

-The Inle to Yangon trip was fairly simple and uneventful. After an early breakfast we took a boat ride and a car trip to Heho airport. The electricity was off when we checked in so everyone had to wait until it turned back on to go through security. There was a confusing moment when we landed where baggage claim was a sign on the wall that no one saw. Most of us exited then had to go back in to pick up our bags. The exit also included another security machine, I still can’t figure out how that was useful for after the flight.

-Yet again we spent the afternoon lounging around and avoiding the buckets of rain that seem to appear everyday in Yangon.

Day 42: Inle Lake

-After a delicious breakfast at the hostel we met our guide for a day on the lake. Are mode of transport was purely by boat. Unfortunately the weather was quite overcast so we had to bundle up in raincoats. First we boated through the floating farming fields where they were growing the primary crop of the lake, tomatoes. We also went through their village, which was exactly like any small town, except there were streets of water instead of streets of pavement. We stopped at a weaving village to see a few women from the longneck tribe. It turns out they live in a remote area that you need a special pass to get to. A few women come the Inle each month, primarily for tourists.

Marco ready for a day on the boat:

One of the floating farming areas:

Some locals:

Harvesting some rice:

The longneck women:

-We stopped by some ancient pagodas to look around. However, we didn’t make the 1-mile walk to the pagodas due to the rain and the fact that four people have died on the way in the last month due to snakebites. That was a comforting tidbit of information. The temples were really beautiful though. I almost liked it more that they hadn’t been restored like the ones in Bagan.

The old temples:

Marco in his outfit:

-After stopping for lunch we went to visit a weaving village, a blacksmith, and carpenters. One of the coolest things we saw was how some locals make thread out of the lotus flower. They pull out some fibers from the stem and roll it to make thread.

The carpentry shop:

Unfortunately blurry, but what is used for lotus thread:

-Our last stop of the day was stopping on a pier where lots of the local students leave school. They all get to school via a carpool system, or boatpool, as we like to call it. The young kids were all just so adorable hiding away under umbrellas to avoid the rain. A few of them would wave and blow kisses.

After that it was back to relaxing at the hotel after a nice warm shower.

Where the students are picked up from school:

Day 41: Kalaw to Inle Lake

-Our new guide Emma met us Wednesday morning prepared for a five-hour trek through the Burmese countryside. She previously had plans for us to visit Pindaya cave but we opted for the hike instead. It was nice to be walking after doing so much lounging around. We walked to a hill tribe on top of a mountain where they harvested limes and mandarin oranges. We were also offered some local tea but it wasn’t tea season yet so wasn’t the best. We were lucky because the rain wasn’t scheduled until the afternoon. It would have made hiking infinitely more difficult.

-We learned why the tractors around here, the main mode of transportation in the countryside, lack any covering for the engine. Apparently there are higher taxes on the vehicle if the engine is covered. The farmers lovingly name the contraptions ‘machines.’

Flattening some leaves for rolling tobacco:

Drying some tea leaves:

One of the walls:

Resting in a little house:

Scene from the hike:

       
  -Lunch was a local delicacy of chicken soup and watercress salad. I was a big fan of the salad, not so much of the soup. We also tried jackfruit for the first time. It had an interesting bubblegum like flavor.

            

           -The drive to Inle Lake, our next destination, was two hours long but filled with lovely sights of the countryside and surrounding mountains. The lake is in between two mountain ranges and is 19-miles long. It is filled with floating islands that are farmed mainly for tomatoes. We took a 30-minute boat ride to our hotel. Fishermen were busy catching their fish for the day and practicing the famous one-legged rowing. It was so surreal to be boating in between patches of plants. You didn’t feel like you were in the middle of a huge lake. This part of the trip was our one splurge- a gorgeous hotel literally on the water. Once we settled in we just enjoyed the view and watched the beautiful sunset.

On the river on the way to Inle:

Beautiful view from the hotel:

Day 40: Bagan to Kalaw

-We woke up early for a six-hour drive to Kalaw, a mountain town in the Shan state. Our driver brought along his brother for the ride so he didn’t have to complete the whole journey (there and back) by himself. Driving that long in the US would be one thing, driving that long in Myanmar is something altogether. The cars here are as old as me, and those are usually the nice ones. On top of that only recently did they build toll roads, which are actually paved. Even then there are areas under construction so you have to go off-roading for a bit. Additionally honking is used as an indicator here, and a way to warn the traffic in front that we’re coming up. It also seems to be just a thing for the driver to sound for no apparent reason at all. We frequently swerve around to avoid the multitude of stray dogs casually sitting in the roads. Seat belts don’t seem to exist in any of the cars we have driven in, and the roads don’t have speed limits. Near the end of our drive we saw a truck completely flipped over and stuck in a ditch on the side of the road. That should give you an idea of driving in Myanmar.

-We did take a couple of breaks on our drive. First was at a palm oil and brown sugar plantation where we saw a guy climb up a tree to collect some palm juice. We were given some different types of palm juice to try, including the highly fermented kind, so we casually took some shots at 8am. They gave me a present of brown sugar and sesame seeds (eaten together here), which is code for ‘tip me.’

-Our second stop was just for lunch in a little restaurant. The driver(s) used a hose to cool off the tires resulting in billows of smoke, another example of the perfectly safe driving methods of Myanmar. Lunch was nothing special; I’m just ready for a meal that doesn’t consist of fried noodles and chicken.

-Once we arrived at our hotel we soon discovered that a) no one in our hotel spoke English and b) there is really nothing to do in Kalaw. Therefore we ended up relaxing yet again, this time in a very un-relaxing room as they were doing construction next door.

-For dinner we made the 30-minute walk into town and found a little restaurant. I ordered a cheese sandwich much to Marco’s dismay, but I wasn’t expecting the little green worm that came on it. On our way back we bought some more movies and then were caught in a downpour. I had to use my book light as a flashlight since parts of the streets were pitch-black. Always prepared. 

Day 39: Lazy in Bagan

-Day 10 in Myanmar was a day of complete laziness. Marco was completely templed out so we opted not to rent bikes and see more temples. Instead we finished watching Tera Nova, surprisingly addicting, and read our books by the pool. That pretty much summarizes our day.

Day 38: Around Bagan

-Mr. Oo had a whole agenda planned for us today. First we stopped at the Nyaung U local market. It was full of all types of fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, rice, etc. There weren’t many tourists so you really got the sense of what the market is like day to day.

-We then went to a series of temples, which I’m just going to list here:

1. Shew Zigon Pagoda

2. Gu Byauk Gyi Temple- known for its 13^th century paintings, half of which were stolen by Germans

3. Amanda temple- with a Buddha statue whose facial expression changes depending on where you look at it from

4. Sulamani Temple

5. Nanpaya- different from the others because it had a Bramah statue instead of Buddha

6. Manuha- also known as the Mon King temple. I wasn’t completely following but he built huge Buddhas in tiny rooms to represent how imprisoned he felt in Bagan

Temples, in no particular order:

-The temples were all gorgeous and they are everywhere you look in Bagan. Previously there was an earthquake in the area that caused most of the pagoda tops to collapse. Many have been replaced and reconstructed and on many you can visibly tell the difference between old and new, which is a little jarring. I personally prefer the old crumbly temples.

-We also made a quick stop at a laquerware workshop that was really interesting. So much time is invested in some of the pieces there.

-The highlight of the day was definitely lunch. Mr. Oo is quite the avid chef as well as tour guide and English teacher. We went to one of the restaurants owned by his students (who he teaches free of charge) and he cooked us lunch. Once everything had been prepared we were able to go back into the kitchen and see how everything was done. My favourite was their cutting boards- slices of tree trunks. The meal was delicious and it was lots of fun trying to speak English with the shy waiting staff.

-After a brief break after lunch we went to Law Ka Ou Shaung, another temple, to watch the sunset. Mr. Oo knows the ins and outs of Bagan so took us to a small temple completely devoid of tourists. Two adorable little kids came over with keys to let us in. They were part of the family assigned to look after the place. Marco and I had the whole temple to ourselves and were able to climb all the way up to the top to look at the view. It was absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately we had come a little too early for sunset and it was a little hazy so we decided not to wait the extra hour and to head back for the night.