Day 28 - yangon to Mawlamyine

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On this visit to Yangon we had only allowed a day before we headed off to Mawlymyine in the south east. We have more time in Yangon on our return before we fly back to Bangkok. After breakfast at the hotel we packed and got ready to check out. After catching up on emails, we checked out and headed off to further explore Yangon. We had borrowed a map from the now out of date lonely planet and used a suggested route to explore the centre of town. The first stop was the Sule Pagoda. We had already had a bit of a look but this time we had a wander around the entire building. It is certainly spectacular. We didn’t bother to pay the $2 entrance so didn’t look inside. Next we wandered off to look at the Independence Monument. There were many workers inside the fence around the Mahabandoola Garden where the Independence Monument has been erected. We could only presume they were getting ready for Myanmar’s Independence Day that falls on the 4^thof January. We didn’t go inside the gardens as the monument was quite visible from the foot path and of course there was an entrance fee for foreigners. The gardens were very pretty though.

We wandered off towards the river and the port and saw many old colonial buildings left from when the British occupied Myanmar. Many are in a state of disrepair, some are in a state of restoration and some have been turned into tenement buildings occupied by many, many people. A few of the buildings are used by various Myanmar Government departments such as the Port Authority. As it was Saturday there were many local people out enjoying the day as well. We eventually found ourselves back near Sule Pagoda and so headed off in the opposite direction to where we had been.

This walk took us again through Chinatown and little India where we wandered through the small streets each representing a different type of industry or business. We found Spice Street and although not as spectacular as New Delhi it was still very fragrant and made for interesting viewing. Market stalls had been set up along one of the main streets. They sold everything you could think of and the local people seemed to be having fun bargain hunting. As it had now started to become deadly hot we wandered back to the relief of the air-conditioning in the hotel to wait for our pick-up to the Northern bus station in a couple of hours. The free wi-fi kept us occupied and we chatted with a fellow Aussie who was just about to start an organised trip around Myanmar with a well-known travel company, so time passed quickly.

The trip to the Northern bus station was during peak hour traffic and we soon discovered why we would need an hour and a half to get there. The going was very slow. Our lovely driver dropped us right in front of our bus company office at the bus station. I am glad he did. Pretty much nothing at the bus station is in English. We checked in and were given the number of our bus. It was pretty useless information as nothing on the buses was written in English either. To complicate matters he had provided us with the number in English and very few people, including the other bus staff, were actually able to read it. The time for our buses departure came and went. We had asked a couple of times if our bus had arrived but were told no. If it hadn’t been for a different employee of the company asking us where we were going we would never had known our bus had been sitting there for ages and was getting ready for departure. Thankfully he showed us to the bus which was parked in the middle of a heap of other buses, none of them appeared to be from the same bus company.

The bus eventually departed at 9pm. We had been warned that the buses could get very cold especially because of the air-conditioning. That wasn’t anything we would have to worry about. We hadn’t been driving for more than 5 minutes when the bus stopped due to some malfunction. The driver and a few other staff on the bus spent 15 or so minutes fixing and we were off again. This same scenario was to occur three or four more times over the next hour. Eventually the bus was pulled over and the driver and his assistants spent a good hour fixing the broken fan belt. We were on the road again with the air-conditioning barely working. By the time we stopped for a toilet break it had stopped working completely and it was open windows until this became too cold.

Karoke was played on the bus for the entire 7 hour trip. It was easy to sleep through as we couldn’t understand a single word, and we both got a few hours’ sleep. We arrived at the bus station in Mawlymyine at about 4am. We had to catch motorbike taxis to our hotel as that was all that was available at that hour. The hotel was full so we had to wait in the lobby for a room to become vacant. The OH had a few hours’ sleep before a room was available at 8.30.

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