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Walker's Travels in Scandinavia 2017 and others
80km - 28-35deg, fine and sunny. Slept really well; all that waiting was exhausting. The room was so big that it had two large aircon units, one at each end, both locked on 16deg. Gunther and Yvonne would had enjoyed it but I was tucked up under the blankets. Brekky at 7am on the hotel roof, then on the bike at 8. Left the city fairly quickly through the morning rush hour. The streets were packed with vehicles of every description, scooters, bikes, trucks, buses, tractors and some contraptions a combination of all of the above. There's two things guaranteed in Burma, if a vehicle is coming up behind you they will give you a very wide berth and they will sound their horn. But it's a "I'm here but I won't hit you" not "get off my road"!! For reasons I can't work out Burma has changed from driving on the left of the road to the right. However they only have right hand drive vehicles, think about it; you're pulling out to pass a truck but can't see anything coming until your vehicle is already on the wrong side of the road!!! It wasn't long before we were on our favourite type of road, dirt through the villages and back blocks. This dirt road was particularly rough and "undulating", so even more fun. It was great to view the passing parade of Real Burma. It was a very, very basic way of life in the vast majority of places, then every now and again there'd be a really flash house; one of the Ruling Elite maybe? We had a brief stopover at the local beach and then away we went again. About 65km of rough dirt then we stopped for a lunch which had been ordered from last night's restaurant as a takeaway. This was due to the fact that we were in such a remote area that there were no safe eating places available. Another 30km on sealed roads and we called it a day. The two Burmese guides and one of the Brits had put their bike on the ute earlier due to the heat, 35deg, and rode in the vehicles. At the 80km mark all the bikes were loaded and we headed towards Ye in the bus. About 2.75 hours later, 7:15pm, we were very relieved to pull up at our motel. They had booked the place out so it wasn't very big. Run by a Canadian guy and his Burmese wife. Rustic but comfortable would describe it kindly. After a quick shower and clothes wash we met for the 200m walk to our local restaurant for dinner. It was very basic, the little plastic stools the tiny locals sit on, one cook for us 10 and many other customers coming and going. The first dish they brought out I couldn't eat because of the very hot green chilies, but after getting through to them we weren't locals I was able to eat my fill of rice and a chicken dish. I was in bed at 11pm but due to the aircon going off regularly I didn't sleep that well. My room was like an oven on occasions. Lucky I did have a fan. They gave me wifi details on arrival but I never actually managed to connect let alone download emails etc. I wasn't worried as I had spoken to Wendy before leaving Thailand and warned her about the possibility of not getting wifi. This part of Burma is very remote and has only been open to tourists since 2013. We have not actually seen any other foreigners since entering the country. But this is why we are here we want to see the place before the hordes come and overrun the place. At 5am I gave up on the sleep and just did some admin.
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