Monkey Poo

The city of Bagan and the surrounding area is an archaeological zone protected by UNESCO world heritage because it contains thousands of pagodas; we found out that Buddhists believe it is a holy site and so they built temples over 2500 years ago as an offering to Buddha. On our first day there we rented bicycles to explore the area and pedaled around for hours under the blazing sun.

The female monks are dressed in pink.

This is a Bagan lady wearing the traditional neck rings. The yellow make-up on her face is natural sunscreen that most Myanmar men and women wear daily. 

Here you can see about 14 of the temples but there were many more in the distance that the camera didn't pick up.

There are Buddha statues around every corner. 

A large golden pagoda by the river.

That night we went to a bar full of locals and drank Myanmar beer for about 40p a glass and ate barbecue food outside. A table of locals sent us over beer and watermelon and spent the next half an hour giving us thumbs up from across the restaurant! Later on we biked back to our guesthouse and the streets were deserted, I fell off my bike and a Myanmar lady appeared out of the shadows and offered her hand to help me up; I cannot believe how sweet-natured the Myanmar people are, more so than anywhere I've been in the world, and I really hope the sudden influx of tourism here that will undoubtedly continue to gain momentum doesn't ruin their gentle, friendly nature and their beautiful country.

We'd planned an early start to see a small mountain the next morning however after twelve beers each the night before we were feeling awful. On the way our taxi took us to a whiskey plantation where they also harvest palm oil used for cooking and in most cosmetics, even though I was hungover I thought a sample of the whiskey would be a good idea. It wasn't. We arrived at Mount Popa, a volcano that hasn't been active for thousands of years, and began the climb up; I was a little disappointed because I'd put my walking boots on preparing for a challenge but they'd built steps all the way up and made us take off our shoes because of the temple at the top - shoes must always be removed before going into any temple here. I was beginning to think I was going to have to change the name of my blog to 'somethingaboutcows' considering how many of them I'd seen in India but I'm pleased/traumatised to say that I have had a new monkey encounter. On the steps up to Mt.Popa there were hundreds of aggressive monkeys running around and defecating everywhere (at this point I'll remind you that we were barefoot...) and at one point we were stuck in the middle of a violent fight between ten massive monkeys and we were seriously worried about being bitten. Once we'd climbed up, seen the temple at the top and come back down again we sat in a restaurant to have a cold drink but we were overcome with the stench of monkey poo. The smell was everywhere. It also seemed to be coming out of the kitchen so we quickly left and got a taxi back to our hotel.

Here we saw a cow grinding peanuts to make peanut oil for cooking.

Mt Popa has a protruding shape - it's in the distance so looks small behind the Pagoda in the foreground but you can see the temple at the top.

Part of the temple on the mountain.

View of the volcano from the top.

Monkeys everywhere!!!

The following day, after three nights in Bagan, we got an early bus to a town called Kalaw and our bus stopped at a Myanmar roadside cafe for lunch on the way. The Myanmar food that I have had so far has been amazingly delicious, particularly the traditional beef curry, and it usually comes with rice, pickle, a platter of raw and cooked veg as well as a small bowl of soup. This all got delivered to our table and to our horror the soup had that same stench of monkey poo that had made us gag the day before.

Edit: I later found out that a fermented fish sauce commonly used in Burmese cooking is responsible for the smell - it really is similar to monkey poo! Westerners tend to find this very unappealing, just like Burmese people can't stand the smell and taste of dairy.

This is what usually happens when you order a curry and Myanmar food is some of the best I've ever tasted...usually.

The (Bumpy) Road to Mandalay

After three nights in Yangon we decided to move up the country to Mandalay. We had to get a overnight cross-country train there which took 18 hours and left at 3pm in the afternoon. After a sweaty walk to the train station with our backpacks we arrived and couldn't find our train because everything was in Burmese, even the train numbers and times were written in indeterminable Burmese script so we wandered around trying to find someone to help. Eventually we were led to our carriage and shown to a cabin with four beds (two tiers on either side), quite different from the three-tiered bunk bed/open plan style of the Indian trains. Don't get me wrong, the train was extremely rickety and run down but we were so pleased with our little cabin because we ended up having it all to ourselves; once we were settled a man with stained brown teeth knocked on the door (pan, a form of chewable tobacco, is popular here as well as India and it stains the teeth and causes saliva to be acidic hence why you see a lot of the men spitting red liquid on to the street) and said he was our waiter and offered us beer...we were loving life! There was one problem however....the train was ridiculously bumpy! Paula said that she got up once in the middle of the night and said I was literally flying off the bed. Going to the loo was the real problem because, not only was I being thrown around the smelly, urine covered cubicle but the lock kept being rattled undone because of the bumps which meant the door would spring open. I'm surprised I didn't end up sprawled in the corridor unconscious with my trousers round my ankles - now that would have been blog material!

There was a real risk of chipping a tooth whilst I held the glass of Myanmar beer up to my mouth, never mind about all the spillages! 

Friendly Myanmar people unobtrusively trying to sell fruit at the stations.

The Myanmar country side is dotted with golden pagodas.

We arrived at our destination at 5am and got a ride through the dark streets on what looked like a wheelchair attached to a bike - called a trishaw - to the backpacker district of Mandalay and quickly found a guesthouse so we could get a few hours sleep. When we emerged hours later we decided to try and find Mandalay hill which is a shrine on top of a hill that overlooks the city; we used a map from a guidebook but still hadn't found it after an hour of walking, it turned out we'd gone in the exact opposite direction, this was probably down to the fact that there are hardly any road signs here!

Mystery street food for breakfast - fried quails eggs with some unknown beige balls!

A typical street in Myanmar - market stalls and, of course, a golden pagoda at the end.

They LOVE disco Buddhas here!

This is the view from the top of Mandalay hill - the temple was covered in pink and gold mirror mosaics.

Paula got her palm 'read' by a complete nutter. Look closely top centre and you can see a chubby, blue woman milking a cow with her mouth...as you do. 

I bought a mini kettle from Thailand so I can have tea when I want and eat packet noodles to save money!

It is much more expensive here compared to neighbouring India and Thailand so we're trying to fit in as much as we can by only spending 2-3 nights in each place. There wasn't very much to do in Mandalay so we caught an all day boat to our next destination at 5am in the morning. All these early starts, long journeys and constant moving from town to town has left us exhausted...it's such a hard life being a traveller...! Half asleep on the boat I went to the toilet which was by the noisy engine and because the handle was broken I got stuck inside! I thought I was going to be there all day since it was so loud that nobody could hear my banging and Paula was dozing on the deck chairs outside. Luckily, for some unknown reason, Paula looked behind her from the other room and saw a door handle going round and round. She grabbed a crew member who eventually let me out and 'helpfully' showed me how the lock works whilst laughing.

He wasn't laughing when he had to fix the door later on in the day after other people got stuck in there!

We watched the sun rise from the boat.

More pagodas....

Sunset on the boat! Yes, the pointy things you can see are Pagodas.

After a nine hour boat journey we arrived in Bagan and the only way to get to the guesthouse area was by horse and cart!

Myanmar: The Final Frontier

After a short plane journey from Bangkok we arrived in Yangon, the commercial capital of Burma, in the evening. Burma changed its name to Myanmar around the time I was born but it goes by both names. I had to change the time on my clocks and my money once again (I currently have five different currencies in my purse). After missing a night's sleep whilst travelling to Thailand and having three consecutive late nights in Bangkok I was extremely tired and slept so deeply that night that when I woke up I had no idea where I was or even what country I was in!

Hmm this is a real head scratcher...do I go for the person's nose or the feet salad?

The first thing I noticed about Burma is that they drive on the right hand side yet their drivers' seats are also on the right of the car and this causes some dubious driving, especially since road markings are a rarity here. Burma is not just in the middle of India and Thailand geographically - it seems to be a blend of the two countries when it comes to culture, level of conservatism in behaviour and dress as well as food and the way the cites and countryside looks.

This is a very common sight on the street here - a man will cut up intestines of animals and put little bits on cocktail sticks for people to come and eat with noodles.

Our first full day in Burma started with us getting stuck in an epic rainstorm so we sought refuge in a doorway and sat there for a hour watching the world go by. Since the military coup in 1962 tourism wasn't encouraged in Myanmar until recently so Westerners are scarce here - compared to tourist havens like Thailand - and the locals are understandably curious when they see us. We were getting a lot of stares whilst we sat in that doorway but the lovely thing was that they all had a big, friendly smile to offer us - Myanmar is the friendliest nation I have ever encountered. I often feel guilty that for me, being English, it is easy for me to travel because English tends to be the international language for communicaton. I make myself feel better by, at the very least, learning 'hello' and 'thank you' in the language of every country I go to because these two words can get you very far; I found out the Burmese word for 'thank you' straight away at the airport and this has turned out to be quite a crowd pleaser, the people here are delighted when they hear me speak Burmese and they often looked shocked or giggle, it's very sweet.

There are market stalls everywhere that sell fruit and flowers even at night.

As Burma is still emerging in the tourist market it is difficult to find budget guesthouses and so we are having to spend a lot more money. To counteract this we have decided to stick to street food for our meals i.e. the myriad stalls and vendors that align almost every street and road. Here we can have an entire meal for under a dollar; the currency here is called kyat but it is only available inside the country so we had to bring crisp, new US dollars to exchange hence why my mind is working in dollars at the moment.

I ate a deep fried locust. Cliché alert...it tasted like chicken (seriously).

We had tea on the street, they make their tea with condensed milk and so it's very rich. It was so hot we had to buy fans like the locals. 

This is one of our many mystery eats! The lady selling it spoke no English and we couldn't work out what it was but it was amazingly tasty and cost around 10 cents (6p).

We had two whole days to explore Yangon and so we spent our time walking around with a map (money saving tip no.1347: walking is a great way to see a new place but also saves money that would be spent taxis and rickshaws!). Every country in Asia is full of temples and religious sights and each one has their own name for them, in Burma the temples are called Pagodas and they are large, golden, handbell shaped structures that can be found literally everywhere. We only went inside the free ones because they charge foreigners quite a lot to get into the big ones; they are cheap if not free for locals (imagine if Britain, the 'PC' capital of the world, did that? There'd be uproar!), but also once you've seen a few in each country you've seen them all....and I've seen A LOT!

The Pagodas are pretty impressive, especially when they are lit up at night.

Most of them are gold but we found this mirrored one that looked like a disco ball.

They contain relics of Buddha, this one contained one of Buddha's hairs!

This is a reclining Buddha, it is longer than the Statue of Liberty.

Outside one of the Pagodas there were women with cages full of tiny birds, after much confusion - are they for eating?? are they pets? - we found out that if you pay 500 kyats (about 35p) you can buy one to set free for good luck! I felt sorry for the cramped little birds and so we decided to do it.

I could almost feel that tiny bird wriggling in my hand for hours after it flew off!

I'm rich!!! (Actually, this is mine and Paula's money for the month and is equivalent to about $800)

Three Nights in Bangkok

We travelled through the night on Tuesday flying from Goa to Calcutta and from there to Bangkok. We passed a storm as we headed east (you may have heard in the news about the recent cyclones that devastated the east coast of India) and I was fascinated by a belt of lightning several miles long; the lightning created burning orange patches of simulated daylight that glowed behind a veil of clouds - it looked incredible and I felt strangely small and insignificant whilst watching it from my plane seat.

Paula and I arrived at our hotel in Bangkok at 6am and headed straight for the Myanmar embassy to apply for our visas. There were around fifty people waiting already and so for the next two hours we were stuck in the cramped embassy building awaiting our turn having not slept at all the night before. After being in India for so long we were dying to go to a real shopping mall with proper shops and western clothes (I've ripped and ruined so many clothes by dancing, trekking, climbing an elephant...) and Bangkok is renowned for its shops so we headed to the biggest mall once we had handed our passports in at the embassy. Once inside the brightly lit mall full of fashionable Thai women I suddenly became aware of my appearance - I hadn't showered or slept at all in two days, my hair was forming involuntary dreadlocks and my pyjama-style trousers were held up with a piece of rope, hobo style!!

So far I've been extremely impressed with Bangkok - the parts I've seen are clean and the people are cheerful and polite and everything seems organised and modern. I wonder whether I would be as enamoured with Bangkok if I'd come here straight from England or whether it's purely the stark contrast to India that makes it seem so new, clean and pristine. Either way I am really taken with the city and the people.

The boats go speeding down the river so fast that we thought they had been hijacked at first!

There's traffic everywhere but not much horn honking thankfully! 

Once I'd finally been able to shower I went to meet Ben again for a few days before he flew to Perth, I still hadn't slept for forty eight hours but our time was limited so I kept going! We'd booked to stay at the Baiyoke Sky Hotel which is the tallest building in Thailand and has incredible views of the endless Bangkok skyline. This was unlike any cityscape I'd seen because the Baiyoke towered far above all the other buildings so there was a panoramic view all around; the bright lights of the city stretched as far as I could see to the horizon on all sides. That evening we ate my favourite food, Pad Thai, whilst Ben taught me some Thai phrases.

Outside a Bangkok temple.

Thailand is a predominantly Buddhist country and there are many Wats (temples) dotted around the city. 

Bangkok is a quite a bit more expensive than neighbouring SE Asian countries such as Laos and especially compared to India so we navigated our way around the sky train network to save money instead of shelling out for tuk tuks. I was amazed to see how clean and neat the trains were; the Thais board the bright, air conditioned carriages in a far more polite and civilised way than any city I've ever been to. The word 'metropolis' must have been invented for Bangkok - the sky train lines have many levels that weave in and out of hundreds of sky scrapers and sprawling shopping malls and there is even extra pavements neatly hanging above ground to help deal with the hoards of pedestrians.

The view from our hotel room window.

That night Ben and I spent a few hours trying to find a good spot for dinner; we attempted to get in to the impressive Lebua Sky Bar where they filmed Hangover 2 but we were wearing shorts and flip flops so were turned away. We were beginning to get tired and hungry when we spotted a free ferry on the river running through the city, we weren't sure where it led to because the attendant didn't speak any English so we decided it would be fun to go to a mystery destination. We pulled up to a gorgeous complex called Asiatique with glittering lights along the riverfront and had dinner by the water. As we were eating a boat pulled up and suddenly the sky was filled with fireworks!

The riverside views.

The fireworks were magic!

After dinner we had drinks at the bar on the 83rd floor of the Baiyoke.

Ben left the next morning and Paula and I returned to the Myanmar embassy to collect our passports with our new visas inside. That night we tried to get in to the Lebua Sky Bar again as we'd been dying to go ever since we read about it in an in-flight magazine on the way to Bangkok. This time I made sure I was dressed appropriately and we were greeted by a team of staff and shown to a small place designated for tourists. We chose the cheapest thing on the menu (a Singha beer - £7!!!) and although the view was very good we were confused because it didn't look like the photos at all! Once we'd finished we thought we'd better leave before we blew more money and on our way out they asked us if we wanted to now go to The Sky Bar!!! Of course we said yes, we realised that the first place must have been a little trick to get you to spend money. They led us out to the open air bar on the top of the building and a live band gently played as we walked down the marble steps and past a team of bowing waiters.

This was the first part they took us to...

...then they showed us this!!

That view!!

Later on that night we went to Khao San road, some of you may recognise the name as this is where they filmed part of the film 'The Beach'. Known as a backpackers paradise this road is infamous for its party scene; we went to a bar and then a club where we danced like crazy people for hours and discovered that Thais are probably the most friendly people we have ever met and they definitely are a nation who know how to have fun! Paula and I both fell asleep in the tuk tuk on the way back to our hotel and had massive hangovers the next day whilst we packed and checked out. That was the first proper night out I've had since I started my travels and will be the last for a while as there is no nightlife in Burma plus I really have to watch the pennies (or should I say rupees, baht, kyat or dollars??!!).

My new Thai buddies :)

Goodbye, India

On Tuesday it was time to say goodbye to India for good. Before I came many people warned me how intense India is and said that I'll either love it or hate it but I disagree....some parts I have hated and many other parts I have loved. This is the land that seems to contain ten countries in one with mountains, deserts, cities, jungles, beaches, palm tree fringed rivers, waterfalls, endless green fields, hills and forests. I've seen some of the most beautiful scenery and landscape and this is by far my most favourite thing about the country however it also houses some of the most dirty places I could ever imagine.

Markha Valley, Ladakh.

Pangong Tso Lake, Jammu & Kashmir.

India is where babies wear eyeliner and fall asleep on the back of speeding motorbikes, women in saris wield pick axes whilst they work on the roads, a 26 hour train journey is perfectly normal, women cover themselves from head to toe in saris and yet some can be spotted wearing Playboy flip flops, sex is a massive taboo and yet this is where the Kama Sutra was invented, a head bobble is an acceptable answer to anything, discarded flip flops are around every corner, people's lives are shared with cows, dogs, pigs, monkeys, goats and chickens that are allowed to roam freely, you never go long without being offered a cup of sweet chai tea and there's a temple/mosque/church on every street.

Shimla.

Varanasi.

Since I left England at the end of July I've had some of the most scary, shocking and frustrating moments of my life...however I've also seen some of the most beautiful places and had some incredible adventures! I have trekked in the Himalayas, stayed with Indian mountain villagers, meditated with monks, gone white water rafting, paragliding, had a monkey wee on my face (!!!), driven a rickshaw on a Delhi motorway, philosophised with new friends over many Kingfisher Strong beers, seen a dog eating flesh from a human skeleton on the banks of the Ganges, been harassed at the Taj Mahal, planked on an elephant's head because my trousers had split open, had a midnight BBQ held in my honour, eaten bread cooked in cow pats, driven a moped through a mass cow orgy, slept under shooting stars in the desert, been headhunted in Mumbai and asked to be in a Bollywood film, visited a slum, hired a houseboat for the night, been kayaking, paddle boarding and I've been pulled over by police for riding a bike with no licence.

Varanasi.

Pushkar.

I've also had hundreds of mosquito bites, eaten ridiculously spicy food, shared chai tea with the locals, learnt so much about Indian life and culture, had 'Delhi Belly' six times, met many people who had never seen a white person before, clocked up over 200 hours of train journeys and most importantly met some brilliant people from all around the world!

Mumbai.

Goa.

Now it's time to explore Myanmar and in order to get there we have to stop over in Bangkok, Thailand for three nights to obtain a visa.

Goa.