Flora
Flo Joined: January 4th 2005
Logged in: January 18th 2012
Logged in: January 18th 2012
My last trip was January-February this year, to Thailand, Laos and Myanmar / Burma. I've written blogs about my last trips to Asia (Indonesia, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia) and Central America (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua)
My list of places to see seems to keep growing and growing....currently in my top 5: Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and New Zealand....oh and a few relaxing beach holidays, maybe Curacao? Hawaii? ;)
Travel Blog Posts
We finally found black sticky rice at the market in Kalaw
Our final day in Myanmar! We were picked up after breakfast by a taxi to take us to our next and final destination in Myanmar: Kalaw. After speaking with Eitan during our first cab ride in Yangon, and hearing great stories from other travelers about this mountain town, I was sure I wanted to check it out. Unfortunately we only had an afternoon and a morning here so we wouldn't be able to do any long treks (the most popular one is from Kalaw to Inle Lake in 2-3 days, or vice versa). After settling in the Eastern Paradise Motel, a comfortable hostel, we walked around town and enjoyed the cool air. Kalaw is set in the mountains and was popular with the British upper class during the colonial days. No surprise, as it really is ... read more
One foot rowing, whilst fishing
We arrived early morning from the Heho airport after a 36 minute flight with Air Bagan. The flight was 100% better than I expected, I'd heard all sorts of horror stories about the domestic flights in Myanmar but our aircraft looked fine (it had some Alitalia logos here and there so that gave some reassurance). We met with a woman working for EPG travel at the airport, we reconfirmed our Heho-Yangon flight and got in a taxi to Nyaungshwe where we were spending two nights at the Hu Pin hotel. The hotel was easy to be found; a bright yellowy orange building at the entrance to town. We got room 701 which was up 4 flights of stairs, no elevator, but the bonus was the mountain views across town. We were absolutely knackered from a day ... read more
Sunset from Dhammayazika Paya
One of the reasons we left a day later from Yangon was so that we could take a ferry boat from Mandalay to Bagan on the Ayeyarwaddy (Irrawaddy) river, which was apparently a beautiful trip (not to mention more comfortable than taking another bus!). It left at 6 am so we could see the sunrise on the boat just before floating by the famous hillside temples of Sagaing. Our boat was full of package tourists which was a bit of a shame as they seem to be a lot more demanding ("I have to pay 500 kyats for hot water??pff..." Uhm lady, you're on a boat, maybe you should be happy you can get hot water!). But of course, there were normal people too :) We enjoyed the views from the deck where we had to ... read more
February 3rd 2011
The teakwood monastery
As I said in the last blog, the road to Mandalay was long.. But unlike the roads in Laos, this was a proper highway so at least the ride wasn't that bumpy. We had a nightbus leaving from just north of Yangon at 8.30 and we were dropped off way ahead of departure time by our taxi. Luckily our ticket had a company name on it because the bus station was about as big as a large town. We were the only foreigners on the bus so we were also a prime target for the salespeople....water, Chiclets, chips...but we'd already bought our snacks back in Yangon so we had to disappoint them... Our bus looked good, an old Japanese bus with comfy and bright velvet seats. The company even handed out toothbrushes and water! This was ... read more
It's big! (Shwedagon Paya)
We arrived in Yangon with the afternoon flight of Air Asia from Bangkok. Our first impression was that the airport was very modern; a neat small airport, not busy... however we had to wait about 40 minute for immigration. In the queue my mom got talking to Carmen from Germany, who wanted to share a taxi into central Yangon with us. At the baggage reclaim another traveler, Eitan from Israel, joined our taxi group. He was a helpful traveler, as he had been to Myanmar several times before, traveling for his work as well as for holidays. After checking a few taxis we finally got a reasonable price($8) to town and got in our windowless and rather shabby cab. We chatted to the other travelers and got some helpful tips from Eitan. We also realized we ... read more
Sunset
This will be a relatively 'short' blog for the amount of days covered as we didn't have a busy programme compared to some of our other locations, and that was our intention! We chose to head towards the beach and having heard good stories about Ko Chang and favouring a short drive over a long one we decided to go there. On our 1 day in Bangkok we attempted to pay for Jorn's KLM flight (not possible as all offices were closed and the Dutch office was unable to help) we booked a bus ride for the next morning and explored the busy streets around Khao San Road for one afternoon / evening (and that was enough for us). After driving about 4-5 hours the next day we arrived at the ferry which took us across ... read more
The Arc de Triomphe of Vientiane
Our trip from Vang Vieng to Vientiane was one of our shortest trips so far, a mere 4 hours to the country's capital. We had booked ourselves on a minivan leaving at 9am to get into the city at a reasonable time for us to still explore the capital's main sights before hopefully taking our next trip the next day back to Bangkok. We had been instructed to wait at the tour agency at 8.30 am so we were there right on time. We know that Lao time is not incredibly strict, but when we were still waiting at 9.15, having seen many minivans pass us, we were wondering what was wrong. At 9.30 a small bus (yes, a bus. NOT a minivan) pulled up, and knowing our luck with transport, we knew this was ours. ... read more
Inside the cave - shrine
Our journey to Vang Vieng was one along many winding mountain roads. Nearing Vang Vieng around sunset, we had stunning views over the jagged mountain ridges, absolutely gorgeous. Unfortunately that was one of the only enjoyable elements to the journey, as our ride (you guessed it: another VIP minivan!) was a cramped little van with 12 people with leg space based on the average Lao person...(read: no leg space). We met two Belgians in our van and they, like us, were also looking for a place to stay outside of the town centre, as Vang Vieng has several streets lined with bars and restaurants playing loud music or reruns of Friends and Family Guy to attract the typical Vang Vieng visitor; 18-21 year old backpackers looking for a party. Now there are several exceptions of course, ... read more
White temple
The trip into Laos was an interesting one. There are several ways of getting over to Luang Prabang from Thailand: by plane (pricier), by slow boat (2.5 days by bus and boat along the Mekong river, sounds nice but a very long time to be sitting on a chair on a boat) or an overnight 'VIP bus' that takes about 24 hours. We decided to go for option 3 and get it over with. First part of the trip was relaxed; we had a spacious seat on a minivan, A/C, a nice stop at the White Temple - all pretty good. When we got to the border at Huay Xuay (no idea how to spell this) we took a little boat across the river, sorted our visas and were almost ready for the next part. We ... read more
Temple in Chiang Mai
Back on a new travel adventure, this time with Jorn :) On the 6th of January we flew directly from Amsterdam to Bangkok with EVA Air and after a 3 hour layover there, we flew to Chiang Mai with AirAsia. We decided to avoid the chaos of Bangkok and opted for an easier start. We had booked a hostel that morning so it was an easy transfer to our hostel in the Old Town (MD House). It was located set back from a nice street with a couple of shops and cafe's so we chose one that looked busiest. After ordering a small meal and a drink we noticed the people around us were also Dutch and seeing an 'FC Utrecht' flag on the wall, we realised it must be a Dutch cafe. After flying 1000s ... read more
