Felt like I was back at work today as I had to be up for my flight to Myanmar, but luckily for me it was a new exciting country that awaited me not a bread and milk delivery.
Woke up at 3:45 after like two hours sleep, had a shower and grabbed my bag. Luckily a taxi driver was waiting outside the hostel so after some bartering we set off for the airport. He was a crazy taxi driver, driving like a boy racer and listening to dance music super loud haha, certainly woke me up.
As I was checking in for my flight I saw Liam a few queues away from me; the guy I met in Chiang Mai who I was going with. After going through security we got some breakfast of egg, sausage and toast: the sausages were like tinned ones haha!! Was quite nice though and used up the last of my Thailand baht :D
Flight to myanmar went fine, and Yangon airport was surprisingly really nice and super clean. Customs went fine as we both had visas so just needed to find a taxi, we saw a boy on his own and asked him if he wanted to share a taxi to split the costs. His name is Yann and he's from Paris!
We got our taxi which I'm pretty sure wasn't a licensed taxi but he was really nice. Found a hostel called golden smiles inn, which is pretty basic but cheap as we got a triple room and you get a free breakfast, plus the family were lovely. In Myanmar, there aren't any ATM's and cards aren't accepted so you have to bring plenty of US dollars with you, which was fine for me because I had some anyway. All accommodation is paid for in dollars, bit the notes have to be post-2006, crisp, clean with no markings on at all. Liam even had one refused for a fold no be of us could really see lol. Everything else, pretty much, is paid for in local currency of kyat, which you can only get in Myanmar so we all changed some at the hostel.
Spent pretty much the whole day just walking round, it had been raining the morning we got there so the paths/road weren't great to walk on. My flip flops flipped mud all up my legs and I don't think my feet had ever been so dirty haha!! Some of the sights here are just incredible; they still use rickshaws where really old thin men will offer to bike you around (of course I would never get one of these) and women carry everything on top of their heads, literally will have a basket on their head filled with pots and pans, it's incredible!!!
As we were about to cross a road, a young boy came over to us and said hello; asked where we were all from and what our names were and if we wanted to buy any postcards. We declined; and at this point being so used to Thailand you expect some sort of harassment but the little boy just looked sad and said ok. We ended up surrounded by him and his friends and they were trying to sell but you can tell there more interested in practicing english and are just so intrigued by us.
After this, we walked towards a big pagoda they have on a roundabout (a pagoda is like a pointed temple which is usually gold in colour and sometimes actually covered in gold leaf. As we were about to take our shoes off and go in, a woman at the door told us our shoes couldn't go there; she pointed across the room and said foreigners shoes go there, whee there was also a $2 entrance fee and $1 fee for cameras, We walked away and took pictures from the outside. Many of the places we visited that day has fees for foreigners which we just refused to pay as the money doesn't go to local people or the upkeep of the buildings, it goes into the governments pocket.
The rest of the day was just spent sightseeing and walking round, we tried paan, which Liam had already tried in India and is basically beetle nut in a leaf with herbs and spices, it's like their chewing tobacco and literally EVERYONE here does it and it's on every street corner to buy. People's teeth are stained red from it and there's constant red marks on the floor where people have spat out the liquid. I didn't like it at all, was like chewing a bar of soap!!
After this, we went to try our first dose of Burmese street food, from the outside it looked like rice with pork and a sauce so we sat down. When we got it, it was what we thought but it was served cold.... The sauce tasted like gravy and the pork was mainly fat, so I left the fat and just picked at the rest, it was okay and only cost 70p but I won't be having it again lol.
Then there was a bit of a storm so we stayed sat down under the cover and the wind was so strong it blew over a stand at the top of the street, crazy!! Oh and another funny thing is that all the seats at street food stalls are like plastic stools, but they seem to get smaller and smaller, so we've sat on seats that were like 6" off the floor haha, very odd.
After this, we got beer, some more food later on and then showers and bed as we'd all been up since 4.
Oh, also, the Mosquitos here must be very sad as thy cant get enough of my B Positive blood... Haha!
(6 bites in one place)