Yangoon - Arrival in Burma (schnichla)

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Mingala Ba,

so or more than a less is the next way to say hallo in Burmese!! After an uncomplicated flight from Bangkok to MyanmarYangon with airasia we started our (Anne and me) journey to Burma. The weather was pretty similar to the waether in Bangkok, hot and dusty, but I expected it to be hotter!! In the airport we were picked up by a hotel for free, nice because we didn't book anything in advance. The first impressions were really nice on the one hand - friendly atmoshere in a pretty new airport, men waering longis - similar like a sarong for the women, smiles everywhere and a lot of powdered faces with something like a sunprotection for the skin, made of a special kind of wood. First hotel - Ocean Pearl Inn - nice room to be paid in crispy superduper nice dollar notes. It seems like the increasing amount of tourists and the lack of hotels with a license to host foreigners raised the prices quite strong in the last year!! Funny are all kinds of transports that are special for this country - trishaw is one of it, where two people sit back to back to each other in a sidecar and are brought to short distanced places by a bicycle!! Not to forget, minipickups called blue taxis - very funny Minimazdas looking like Mr.Beans pickupbrother!!

The city itsself suffers a lot of pollution but on the other hand a huge amount of pagodas. In 3 days we explored the city by walking and taking taxis. Many payas/pagodas were on the list and apart from them the street life of the Burmese people. Lot's of soup shops, chapaties and nice market areas were close to our hotel. Shwedagon paya is for me the most impressive pagoda that is visited by a lot of locals too. In the evening it is alluminated so we took our time to sit around and watched the flow and enjoyed being in Burma!! In the evening of the third day we took a bus to Mandalay from the bus station which is 1 hour outside the center ... so first impressions really nice people and many pagodas ... Ah I almost forgot, what is really a bit nasty is that fact that you really need crispy dollar notes for getting really good exchange rates, but the hotels don't seem to be that strict but still, better take really extraordinary, hillarious, supernice, brandnew shimmering, unfolded, astonishing, outstanding good dollar notes with you ... and an eraser in case there is a mikroscopic miniminimini-dust to be rubbed away!!!

So have a nice time - Michael

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