So next chapter of travelling!!! Happy to get away from Hsipaw we went to Mandalay again, stayed one more night there just to recover - Mandalay was also not the cleanest city - to catch the local slow boat to Bagan. That was a nice experience, sitting on top of a quite big boat with all the locals together on the floor. The first time fresh air because we drove along the Iradawady river, a mighty stream in Burma. We passed bathing kids, farmers with oxcarts, loads of teakwoodtrading ships and loads of piles of teakwood along the river - and not to forget, lots of stupas everywhere - Burma, definetly the land of stupas!! My motto for the country - stop building stupas - plant trees!!! After 13 hours on the boat we arrived in ... read more

Mingala ba again from Mandalay!! After a long busride overnight in a surprisingly quite good bus (even water was supplied and seatnumbers were on the tickets) on the new Mandalay - Yangon Highway we arrived in Mandalay. We made a reservation in Yangon before for a hotel - it is not absolutly necessary but a good advice - especially if you don't want to run around at 5 in the morning and need to find a hotel!!! The rooms were .... mmmmh .... how to describe .... looking like a prison and very scrabby on the first floor - and that for 15 Dollars for a double room!!! O.K. but on the other hand the people working in the hotel were extremly helpful and friendly, especially the women in the morning reception hours!! So not a ... read more

Sawa di kap!!! Ok, finally I arrived after a long train ride in good old Bangkok - me that's Michael. The boarder crossing procedure was easy, the transfers from the 4000 islands were all in time. The train ride was quite rough and loud because I couldn't close my window, but after 12 hours I was back in that lovely crazy city. Eating Sushi and Sashimi was my first action on Sunday when I arrived - delicious. Finally I found e new lense in Panthip Plaza shopping center, my old one was broken - now it makes real fun again to make photos!! Then on monday I went early in the morning to the embassy of Myanmar. I thought that I was early but I wasn't, about 200m of people where lining up at 8.15 o'clock ... read more

Sabaidee!! Now we continued after a nice time around Tha Khaek to Pakse. The busride was not really the most comfortable one but is was definetly a busride that will stay in our minds. Normally the ride from Tha Khaek to Pakse should last around 5 hours, we took around 11!!! And that because of many reasons. First our driver had to deliver lots of tires that were packed on top of the bus to a place he could not find in Savannaket. So we drove around in a citytourlike loop in Savannaket, unloaded the tires, loaded them again on top, then again looking for the right place!! After 1 hour not finding the owner of this tires we continued to Pakse, and suddenly the engine of our bus made strange noises, one time we lost ... read more

Hallo from Vientiane, thanks first for all the messages and comments, we know that we have not been the busiest writers for the last months!! After Vieng Xai we went to Phongsavan, also a historically interesting place in northern Laos. The bus rides through these areas are always a great thing - fantastic sceneries in the mountains, passing small villages with outstanding friendly people along the way. In Phongsavan we visited the archaeological site "plain of jars" - used 300 B.C. till 300 A.C. very sure for funeral reasons, but there is still a lot of things to find out about these mysterious big jars standing in a nice area. Also very interesting was the MAG work, that is a organasation that disarms the bombs still laying around in hundreds of thousands in this area. Laos, ... read more