By Michael
While traveling in Myanmar, we always planned to reserve part of our 28-day stay for the southeast part of the country — specifically the cities of Mawlamyine and Hpa-an. We ended up enjoying these towns so much that we stayed for an extra two days beyond the length of our visa!
More on this later . . .
by Elizabeth
We first contemplated visiting Myanmar back in August 2011 after finishing the bar exam. At the time, very few tourists were visiting the country and it was very “off the beaten path.” Ultimately we decided that visiting during Myanmar’s rainy season did not sound like fun and opted to travel elsewhere (Ladakh/Kashmir/India). Now, more than five years later, we had finally made it to Myanmar only to find that the main sites are part of a clear tourist circuit. A beautiful and enchanting tourist circuit, but not exactly undiscovered.
The hills around Mindat in Chin State.
by Elizabeth
Our time in Hsi-Paw (pronounced See paw) ended up being one of the highlights of our time in Myanmar. The town itself is small and fairly laid back, with a nice mix of having tourist infrastructure but without being dominated by tourists.
by Michael
After Mandalay, our next stop was Pyin Oo Lwin, considered the summer capital of British Burma since it is where the British governor resided for part of the year. We left Mandalay by shared taxi (~90 mins, 6000 kyat each), and explored Pyin Oo Lwin by bicycle. The streets are full of lovely colonial mansions and we attempted to follow a hand-drawn map from our guesthouse around to some of the more notable buildings.
The Candacraig Hotel, formerly the British Club, was under renovation during our visit.
By Michael
Our time in northern Myanmar was marked by beautiful travel between places — Mandalay was a prime example. We took a boat from Bagan to Mandalay, explored its surrounding sites including a temple with pythons and even found our own “Little Bagan” nestled just south of the snake temple near Mandalay.
by Elizabeth
A must-stop destination on any traveller to Myanmar’s itinerary, I wondered as we got off our 12-hour overnight bus ride if Bagan could possibly live up to the hype. It does.
The Bagan Archeological Zone is a collection of over 3,000 individual archeological sites in a relatively small area. These buildings (and more) were built over a two-and-a-half century period from the 11th to the 13th century. During this time, Bagan’s kings commissioned over 4000 Buddhist temples, including many wooden buildings that are long gone. What’s left has been ravaged by time and earthquakes, but it’s amazing how much there still is to see thanks in part to recent restoration attempts.
by Michael
Once a prosperous port, then a national capital (before the junta decamped to the woods of Nay Pyi Taw), Yangon remains the bustling metropolis of Myanmar. It’s often difficult to get around — our hotel advised taking a taxi to the bus station three hours ahead of departure due to the city’s sometimes horrific traffic. So to get started, we focused on the somewhat walkable city center.
Yes, that is a temple in a traffic circle.
Yangon, formerly Rangoon, was the place where much of Myanmar’s history took place. It was here that political rivals assassinated President Aung Sun, where students rioted over the treatment of the body of former UN Secretary General U Thant, and where Aung Sun Soo Kyi was under house arrest for decades.* I had some understanding of the country’s history (independence, military rule, elections voided by the military, new elections but uncertainty) but not the details. So I ended up seeing the relevant places before I learned more about their significance during our trip.
by Elizabeth
We just wrapped up a full month in Myanmar! Our visit was filled with explorations of ancient pagodas, trekking through bright green rice paddies, children waving and crying out “bye bye” before shyly hiding behind their parent when we waved back, and crunchy tea leaf salads. The highs were offset (or potentially accentuated) by long, uncomfortable bus rides, painfully slow internet connections, and out of date information.
Hard to beat the view from the top of one of the many pagodas in Bagan.
by Michael
As regular readers know, we like hiking. Leave us somewhere too long and we find the trails. One of the draws that led us to visit Hong Kong was the allure of lots of easy to access hiking trails and we had looked into the 100 kilometer MacLehose Trail but figured it would was too long for us to do without our full camping gear. The trail runs east-west across the Kowloon Peninsula, with view of islands, ports and cities.
The trail is officially divided into 10 stages, although not all stages are created equal. We initially set out to only hike stages 1 and 2, and maybe stage 3. While on the first stage, we talked about our schedule and decided that it would work for us to take four days and hike the whole trail. Not having a tent, we would spend all nights in our hotel room(s) in Kowloon, near the Jordan Road MTR station — the downtown-ish area with the cheapest rooms in Hong Kong. We managed to piece together the full trail using transit (and one taxi) to shuttle us back and forth.
Hiking is a great way to see Hong Kong for what it is — dense city and beautiful countryside, with mountains and valleys, islands and coves. The MacLehose Trail makes you work by gaining and dropping a lot of elevation, but it rewards hikers with a variety of superb views.
by Michael
Our “Go South for warmth” plan worked the moment we landed in Hong Kong. After weeks of cold, we could walk around in shorts and t-shirts. At times we may have felt underdressed, but that was about formality, not temperature.
We originally planned to make our visit to Hong Kong a quick stopover before heading to Southern China’s Yunnan province. What was intended to be a 2 or 3 day visit ended up being a full week! This post covers our visits to sights in the urbanized parts of Hong Kong. We also spent four days hiking the MacLehose Trail, a 100 kilometer (62 mile) trail across the “New Territories.” The hike is described in a separate post.
two backpacks, no plan 