Impressions of Myanmar (Burma)

Flying from Bangkok to Mandalay was a jump back in time.  The airport in Mandalay is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles of fields, with none of the development that surrounds other airports.  The airport was clean and efficient, lethargic and empty.  Ours was the only airplane that I saw.

There’s no bay in Mandalay, which is a hot, dirty, sleepy little town many miles from the ocean.  The buildings are mostly two to four story blocks; Chinese functional architecture.  I didn't see any interesting examples of older European buildings.  Our hotel was surprisingly nice and the staff worked hard to make us feel at home.  We ate at some local restaurants a block or two from the hotel, and the food was OK, not bad but not memorable.

We visited the Palace where the last king of Burma lived until he was defeated by the British,  The walls were wood but the roof was sheet metal giving an overall surreal feeling, and the grass looked as if it had not been mowed for some time.  At sunset we went to the top of Mandalay hill, climbing some 1800 steps under cover all the way.  The view at the top was stunning.

A small bus took us to Bagan over roads that varied from new highway to an almost non existent track through a shallow river.  I saw many carts pulled by oxen along the way, and the restaurant we stopped at for lunch was little more than an open building with a dirt floor and some plastic tables.  In contrast, our hotel in Bagan was very nice and even had a beautiful garden and pool.

The pagodas and temples in Bagan - there are thousands of them - are spread out over a large area.  We hired a driver with a horse cart, a two wheeled device with a padded platform to sit on, and saw several sites.  It is a dry rather barren area that is beautiful at sunset, and I took some nice pictures,  I was told that Bagan at sunrise is also beautiful.  There were a  large number of tourists from all over the world at Bagan and several large signs urging everyone to dispose of their garbage properly and to ‘Warmly Welcome and Take Care of Tourists.’

We returned from Bagan to Mandalay  by the same small bus, a five hour trip, and then rode  thirteen hours by big bus to Moulemein, a surreal trip with stops every two hours throughout the night.  Moulemein is a small sluggish city on the ocean with some interesting architecture.  We had one great meal in a small restaurant on the bay of fresh seafood.

The VIP bus we took from Moulemein to Yangon was wonderful, a big Chinese thing with only two seats on one side of the aisle and one on the other.  There were thirty seats altogether and one ticket was 10,000 kyat - about 10 USD.  The TV monitors on the back of the seats worked and we watched the Fifth Element with Bruce Willis.

Yangon is the largest city in Myanmar, and it has an area near the waterfront of interesting old buildings that are in an unfortunate state of decay with plants growing out of the facades.  It feels as if the city has been asleep for fifty years and just woke up to a state of disbelief.  There are huge development projects under way, but I didn’t see a single US company represented there; no McDonalds, no Starbucks, no Subway.  We rode on the train that circles the city, a three hour trip, and except for our digital cameras it could have been 1954 as easily as 2014.  We had a good dinner at Junior Duck, a Chinese restaurant overlooking the river.  We drank cold Myanmar beer and watched the sunset, then ate stir fried seafood in the open air second floor balcony area.

My overall impression of Myanmar?  Nice people (mostly) who seem very religious; poor infrastructure; minimal development..