HPA AN TO YANGON BY BUS

The next morning we were on a bus again, heading for the capital, Yangon.  Bus fare was $5 each and the journey took somewhere around 6-8 hours from memory.

Our night in Yangon was short and sweet, we wandered the dirty, bustling streets of a really interesting looking city - it had a street scene that rivalled anywhere I had been before, also a seemingly similar game to Vietnam of ‘how can we fit regular sized people on the world’s smallest plastic tables and chairs’! 

Unlike Vietnam though, many places were simply serving tea and proved hugely popular with the locals, with a vast array of culinary delights, from nearly every Asian origin, available every step of the way.  

There were dirty old mould covered cement buildings in various stages of disrepair, beautiful Temples that glowed at night, loud busy markets and a huge number of brand new banks that resembled 5 star hotels, all sharing the town centre in a  weird mix of old and new.

We stayed at Chan Myaye Guesthouse, $30 a night, but it had hot water, wifi, fridge, free breakfast (more fucken banana pancakes!), a good room and 8 floors of narrow steps to climb to get there!  If you stayed a week you would walk out super fit, I asked the guy if it was hotel or gym… then tried to explain it… then just gave up!

In the morning we walked 3km to the Thai Embassy to organize my re-entry visa back to Thailand, only to be told they wouldn’t open again for another 5 days… doh!   Not wanting to stay another night, knowing we would have to return at a later date to do my visa, we high-tailed it back to the guesthouse and made arrangements to head to the next destination, Pathein.

Chan Myaye were extremely helpful here and should be commended for their customer service.  Not only did the lady organize our bus, a taxi out to the station, booked our hotel in Pathein, gave us a refund on our second night as I had paid in advance – she also wrote all instructions and information we would need at the bus station, in Burmese for us.  

This might sound like simple things to do for a customer, but when you have traveled as much as I have, so many places just wouldn’t be that helpful, or couldn’t be, simply because of the language barrier, and to get our money back was fantastic, as this was New Year’s Eve that she was refunding on – try getting that back at any hotel in the world!

A few shots around town

Huge generators in the street for the very regular power outages