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Well, we arrived in the beautiful country of Burma, or if you're more up to date with your geography Myanmar, early in the morning and managed to get ourselves a fab hotel room for the bargin price of $15 through a 'nice' guy we met at the airport, who I'm sure you're not surprised to hear shafted us big time when we asked him to get us some bus tickets! Anyway, as everyone is aware Jess is half Burmese and still has a couple of relatives living there so we called Auntie Daphne and arranged to meet her that afternoon.
Auntie Daphne arrived at the hotel and immediately we loved her. She is a chain smoking 65 year old with an awesom sense of humour, so when she told us that her sacred granddaugher Po Po was in a modeling show in Mandalay, which happened to be our next stop, we were more than happy for her to accompany us on the journey and spend a coupl of nights with us. Our first stop was Taungoo, which is where Jessica's family are from, we spent one night there and went to see the house that Jess's Dad and Aunties and Uncles grew up in which was amazing. After spending an hour with the current residents we went off in our side cars, which are bikes with a little seat on the side( big enough for a 6 year olds backside... not ours!!) in search of the school that Jess's Dad went to.
Next stop Mandalay... the city itself wasn't anything fantastic, but we did spend a day going round 4 ancient cities around it. The first was Sagain, there wasn't really much there, just lots and lots of Monks! We did walk up 1370 stairs to a temple, which nearly killed poor Jess, but the view was definately worth it. You could see right across the city and see the river. After Sagain, Amarapura, we had to get a boat there, and then could only view the city by horse and cart, which Heather kept going on and on about,she was very concerned about the horse and whether it had recieved enough water, but it was better than walking miles in the 41 degree heat!! We visited an amazing Teak Monastry which was hundreds of years old and a few other temples. Then we went on to U-bein bridge which was incredible. Back in the day, it was built without using one nail, but obviously over time, they've had to shove a couple in to keep it standing, even with the nails, it was beautiful! That evening we witnessed a Burmese modeling show... what an experience! We got to meet the 'Queen' model of Myanmar, which was thrilling!!! Auntie Daphne found it hysterical that the 'Queen' asked us to join the show when obviously we couldn't because we're sooooooooo fat!! All Auntie Daphne did was tell us, continuously, how fat we were! Bless her, we think she meant it as a compliment!! Anyway, moving on... after Mandalay we had to leave Auntie and go it alone. We decided to get the local bus to Bagan which was 14 hours away. Oh Lord, what a nightmare, it would take us forever to describe the pain of the journey, but lets just say that it was a million and one times worse than Laos, and involved a lot of sacks of rice, no leg room or bum room what so ever and a whole lot of sweat, may we repeat for the duration of 14 hours. Officially Myanmar has the worst public transport in the whole of Asia and we wouldn't be surprised if it was the worst in the world! However, we did survive, and they say, what doesn't kill you will only make you stronger... that makes us the strongest people in the world! Luckily the pain was worth it, when we arrived at Bagan we were happy little bunnies because it was beautiful. We only spent 2 nights there, but saw a lot. We spent an entire day going round all the Temple ruins there, most of them were built between the 8th and 13th century, and we prefered them all to Ankgar. There were hardly any tourists, consequently all our pictures came out well!
On we went to Inle Lake, after another 12 hour public bus journey from hell, we arrived! We stayed in a gorgeous Bamboo hut right on the Lake, we only planned to spend 3 nights there, but ended up staying for 5. We spent a day on the Lake, visted a 1000 shops, a market, a monastry and a 1000 more shops! We spent time on our bikes, just riding around to see the area, spent a lot of time playing cards and drinking coffee mix, and the highlight had to be watching Chelsea v Tottenham on Jess's birthday! We paid 300 kyats each to sit in a room full of men and monks chewing betel and spitting it in to plastic bags and have them constantly turn round and look at us throughout the match especially because we were the only girls and tourists there, and we were drinking beer!! How British!!
After Inle we made our way back to Yangon on a luxury air conditioned bus... what a treat, which took 20 hours. We were so sad to leave Myanmar, we had an amazing 2 weeks, and met some wonderful people. It was very like India in so many ways, which made us both feel at home! We missed the challenge of travelling because everywhere else has been so easy, Myanmar gave us a challenge, that's for sure! We're now back in Bangkok and off to the Islands next!
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