Blogs from Inle Lake, Mandalay Region, Burma, Asia - page 14

(Dustin) I don't know if you have a map in front of you but you might find that Pyay and Inle Lake aren't really smooth destinations considering Bagan in the Middle. Actually we just combined these two places because we didn't have a whole lot of pictures from either and they were both more small towns so we figured it would work out easier this way. Pyay turned out to be way more fun than we originally thought it would be, sure it has temples and historic stuff and those always hold some interest for us, but the people made the place just awesome. After a night of sweating because all the power turns off at 10:30 pm and the silence and heat was pretty uncomfortable. We decided to check out another place in the morning ... read more

Here's the second part on my Burma travels. Bus travel in Burma As I mentioned before bus travel in Burma (without even considering the crash) wasn't always that easy. You should know that I had my first 'non European bus experience' on the 'chicken buses' in Guatemala. No denying that those experiences gave me a very solid education in 'adventurous bus rides'. But for the 9 hours 'local bus' (as opposed to big air con bus) ride from Bagan to Kalaw, I wasn't prepared. I was supposed to be at the bus station at the lovely time of 4.30 am to catch the bus that would leave around 5 am. Imagine a minibus which size would allow about 20 seats for European standards. They managed however to install 30 seats in there. Leg room was virtually ... read more

Again, this date is fabricated and we are really somewhere else. Please stay tuned as Aneta is responsible for the entry preceeding or at least chronologically before this one. Okay. So this is Inle lake and more specifically we stayed in a place named Nengshwe (sp?). This is basically the only budget option in the area as the rest of this 22 km lake is either villages on stilts or fancy schmancy resorts on stilts. But for us a nice room by the water being gently awakened by the long boats taking tourists to handcraft markets (read as sarcasmm - think chain saw at 5 am) was just fine. Actually this is supposed to be a heavily touristed area but seemed rather empty by most travel destination standards. All the locals said business is down. Which ... read more

The journey from Bagan to Inle was another bus based nightmare, 16 hours on a “mini-bus”. A “mini-bus” in Myanmar is not what the rest of the world would call a “mini-bus” - it's basically a bus where everything has been halved in size, including the space for the passengers, tie that in with 40 years of abuse on Myanmar's terrible roads, and add in a broken seat in front where the entire weight of the passenger is supported by my knee, and this becomes my worst ever bus journey. I emerge from the bus temporarily crippled, some how negotiate a taxi from the bus stop, to the village of Nyaungshwe 11km away. The Remember Inn is our base for the 4 days we stay in and around Inle, it wins the “second best breakfast” in ... read more

Above all powers above all kings, above all nature, and all creative things, above all wisdom and all the ways of man, You were here before the world began. Above all kingdoms, above all thrones, above all wonders the world has ever known. Above all wealth, and treasures of the earth, there’s no way to measure what You’re worth. Crucified, laid behind a stone, You lived to die, rejected and alone, like a rose trampled on the ground, You took the fall, and thought of me, above all.- Above All: Michael W. Smith Myanmar: A country that many Americans haven’t heard of, let alone been to. Burma: a little more familiar, yet still not widely traveled by Americans. Myanmar and Burma are one in the same; Myanmar is the name that the government gave Burma when ... read more