YANGON, MAWLAMYINE, BILU ISLAND, HPA AN & BACK TO MAE SOT, THAILAND
Back
in Yangon we are staying at The Royal Star Guesthouse, fairly nice at $30, but
with shared bathroom and unreliable wifi.
It was a cool 2 level room with the whole downstairs set out like a
lounge room with sofa and large tv, then an upstairs area for sleeping,
essentially giving you twice the space you would normally get.
Early
the next morning we were back at the Thai Embassy to do my next visa, I was
trying for a double entry tourist visa, but as we were crossing into Thailand
by land and not flying, they would only issue me a single entry visa.
This will give me 2 months to stay, plus I
can extend it by another month for around $65 au, the double entry lets you
visit for 6 months, though you do have to exit the country after your first 3
month stint and activate your ‘second entry’, but this can be done overland.
The
cost of visa was $40 US and after maybe only an hour in total, I was told to return the
next afternoon to collect my passport and visa, hence forcing us to stay 3
nights in Yangon with very little to do.
We did find a couple of new favourite places to eat though, 1 of them
being directly across the road from the Royal Star. Cheap delicious food, cheap beer and at night
they would set up tables right in the very busy small street, a great spot to
watch all the hustle and bustle of Myanmar life.
After
our unwanted, but very necessary, stay in Yangon, it was another bus trip that
took us closer to home and to the town of Mawlamyine, a lively little spot on
the banks of the Salween River. Bus fare
was $10.50 and took around 6 hours.
They
were showing Avatar on the little tv in the seats which I still have never seen,
so I watched about the first 3 quarters before we stopped for lunch, where we
also ran into our boat trip buddies from Bagan.
Once on the bus again I was ready to resume the movie and see the end –
BUT NO…. the movie started
again!
So I read a book on the Ipad and sort of
watched it again, this time around we
got fairly close to the end before the bus pulled into Mawlamyine and cut me
off from seeing the end of this movie!!
F*** I hate that!
After
cruising every single accommodation option in town and finding them
ridiculously overpriced, full or both, we ended up at Breeze Guesthouse down by
the river. $20 gets you a shared
bathroom with cold water, slow wifi in reception only and was overall fairly
average, but the owners are friendly and helpful, can organize most things, plus they
have scooters for rent.
We
organized one for the following day to take a trip out to Bilu Island, before
heading back to the waterfront for a cold beer in readiness for sunset. They also have a great little night market
bbq scene there with a huge selection of food all ready to be cooked, you just
pile up your plate and they’ll bbq it and bring it over to your table as you
relax with a drink and watch a great sunset.
This
turned out to be some more of the best eating we had done and given the chance,
I’d probably eat it every day. There was
corn on the cob, marinated chicken, curried potatoes, quail eggs, vegetables,
seafood, plus a huge array of different meat skewers – it was so good we went
back the next night. For some reason we
didn’t get a photo of any of it…
The
next day we took a ride around town, before only just making it to the right
ferry in time to head over to Bilu Island, just across the muddy river, but the
landing point is about an hour away by boat.
Boat tickets are $2 each and we somehow got the bike on for free! When I say ferry, it really was just a large floating
platform used to transport all the villager’s and their huge amounts of stock
over the river after they had come shopping in ‘town’.
Once
on the other side we were quickly off on the bike, leaving the other tourists
(all 3 of them) in our dust as they scratched their head and pondered what to
do now? It was a nice enough ride around
the rather plain island, through some villages and at one point past some
sort of celebratory procession of bikes and trucks involving at least 200 locals all donned in matching outfits.
Other
than that, I would have to say the whole trip did very little for us really,
sure it killed a day, but in hindsight I could very easily have skipped the
whole thing - Bilu Island did not fare well on my travel highlights scale I’m
afraid! You never know if you never go,
but I don’t rate it very highly.
Another
$2 each for the fare home, this time in a smaller boat, plus another $1 for the
bike and 90 cents at each end for some locals to lift it on and off the roof
for me – money well spent! As I said,
bbq dinner again by the water with some other new friends, tonight even better
as there was also a lunar eclipse to dazzle us after the great sunset.
I
looked online but can’t seem to find information anywhere regarding this, but
it definitely happened!
The
whole point of coming to Mawlamyine was to then take the boat trip up river
back to Hpa An, but after seeing a lot of the scenery (plus the boat they would
take us on!) we decided against it and just took the bus. The boat takes 5 hours and costs $10, the bus
takes under 2 hours and costs $1!
Though
if we felt the scenery might be worth the journey we would have gone for it,
but the area between the 2 towns is fairly flat until you get closer to Hpa
An. Once again - you never know if you
never go, but we saved $18!!
Back
to the Golden Sky Hotel where the whole adventure began and after 27 days in
the country I would have to say that this was the best value room we had stayed
in during our whole trip, if only they had of all been like that!
I have seen some reviews stating that the owners or staff were not friendly, that was definitely not the case when we stayed and they were very helpful, plus huge smiles as they recognized us from 4 weeks earlier.
A bike was soon commandeered and we cruised
around the very scenic area again and headed back to the bat cave for another
sunset on the cliff top. Hpa An really was a highlight and a place I can see going back to, plus I'd love to explore more of the area south by bike.
Golden
Sky organized our taxi back to the border, once again $10 each and this time
there were only 4 of us in the car, from memory there were about 8 all squeezed
in the first time we did it. We had
hoped for 2 nights in Hpa An, but January 24th was the day the
traffic goes east through the rugged mountain road.
Our
driver was once again a fucken lunatic and seemed intent on being the fastest
man to ever to do the mountain pass. One
of the backpacker girls in the back seat was getting quite agitated and worried
about it all, though by now I must have acclimatised and was just thankful he
was making good time. 4 hours and 13
minutes to be exact, possibly some kind of new record, I believe our original journey
took at least 6!
A
relatively painless immigration check and we were soon back in Thailand and to
our previous hotel, the Pongpicha Boutique House, that has been looking after my bike, there were about 40
extra km on the clock, but I can’t really hold that against them!
So
tomorrow the bike trip begins again and we head south along the remote border to
Umphang, home of Thailand’s ‘largest/tallest.. something or other’ waterfall –
Tee Lor Su! Who knows where the next
month or so will lead us, but I’m sure it’ll be great, stay tuned and thanks
for reading
Sunset by the water
The ferry
Bilu Island
