So the first day of our tour started in Yangon with a walking tour which is great to have a local take you around and explain the local customs, food and why things are the way that they are.  Yangon use to have lots of water drinking stations around before bottled water became popular and there are still some around

We were then left to our own devices and a small group of us went off in hunt of a restaurant we had been told about.  Niels took the lead of our group of about 6 people and I knew right from the get go that we were going in the wrong direction.  Of course unlike me, I held my tongue (not) and came up with all these crazy bets.  So it was with much satisfaction when I was proved right.  I have found that with my year in Vietnam I have become quite good at navigating myself around.  To add to the heavy traffic and endless taxis are the buses that look to be from the era when the British had control, but the best thing is the wooden block that has to be place under the front wheel every time it stops.  In heavy traffic on a slight incline, the driver’s assistant works up a real sweat.

Now comes the most extreme part of the whole journey, the train journey from Yangon to Bagan, 627km, his number will seem more important soon. We left the hotel at 2:30pm and stopped at a supermarket to buy water and food for our trip.  I thought this was a bit weird, you can buy food on the train.  We then arrived at the station and this first picture sums up the entire train trip.

Now our guide warned us that it shook and that we had to take all our food and water for our 18 hour trip and not to pee while the train is in motion, I have done lots of trips in Indian and Vietnam, so I was prepared.  At 4pm we boarded into cabins with 4 people per cabin.

That was the last contact we had with the outside world for the entire 18 hours, yep, these were separate rail cars, you couldn’t move between carriages.  We settled in and thought to ourselves this isn’t too bad, well did that change, as soon as we moved, it started to shake, worse than jelly and the noise was deafening.  The four of us looked at each other and then we all looked out the window and thought what the f&^k.

It was the worst train ride of my life, and I lay awake on my top bunk bed wondering what you would do if there was an emergency.  Being on the top bunk, I got thrown around, it was crazy and then in the middle of the night I had to go to the toilet, screw that we weren’t stopped, I was about to take my chances.  After using the squat grate toilet I climbed into Niels’ bed and it was too hard to make it up the laddar in the dark.  Things normally seem better in the morning, but no not this time.  Our average speed for the journey was 35km/hr and we were all sick of it.  We arrived in Bagan at 10:45am the next day which was ahead of schedule and our tour guide told us it could have been so much worse, we could have had a breakdown.

We checked into our accomodation, had a shower, lunch and then we did our own thing for the afternoon and then just before sunset we met up and visited our first temple of Bagan near our hotel. 

We then all gratefully went to our stationary, quiet beds to recover from the train ride from hell.  We found out later that China had given the second hand carriages to Myanmar so they must have been bad if China got rid of them.

Today was suppose to be the day those who chose to went on a dawn balloon ride, 4:30am departure, however we arrived at the site and it was raining so was cancelled.  Very disappointing as it is one of the highlights of the trip.  We went back to the hotel tired and went on the group bike tour.  This was fantastic, Bagan has over 1000 temples so we obviously didn’t visit all of them but saw enough to get an appreciation of the magnitude and beauty of them.

We had lunch and then spent sometime exploring ourselves on our bikes until we met up again and went to one of the temples for a great view.

At one of the temples an old lady of 85 was selling some sweets so I bought some, she was gorgeous.

To finish off our bike tour, we watched the sunset from the top of one of the temples, it was very steep to get up and down.

The view was amazing and there were lots of tourists, look at the buses below.

The day was finished off with a dinner puppet show which was hilarious and the puppet owners very skilful.

The next day was another early start, 4:30am on the bus to the ferry leaving at 5:30am to Mandaly.  This was a full day trip on the Ayeyarwady River.  It is a wonderful way to travel and see the country and how life revolves around the river, much the same as in Vietnam.

We arrived at 4pm and were taken to our hotel, freshened up, had a walk around and then had Thai for dinner.

Dates: 24th October 2016 to 28th October 2016