The Alaroni Big Trip: Myanmar

For many years I've wanted to visit Myanmar and our recent visit to this beautiful country didn't disappoint. Yangon is a pleasant capital city with plenty of good street food, a mix of colonial architecture and Buddhist temples, lots of trees planted along the streets, and very friendly and peaceful people. We spent a couple of days in the capital before flying north to Mandalay where we took a boat trip to Mingun and climbed to the top of the massive base of a pagoda built in the 11th century. We also visited a temple with the second largest functioning bell in the world (90 tons) where the girls made friends with a couple of monks.

After Mandalay we took an all day bus to Bagan, a former center of Buddhist culture and scholarship and where hundreds or thousands of stupas and temples were built roughly 1000 years ago. The first day there, Maya and I made it to a large temple we climbed to view the sunset and to marvel at the late afternoon light reflecting off hundreds of temples spread across our view. The next day we all rented bikes and road on dirt tracks from temple to temple visiting both massive and small sites, many of which had monks praying or walking around.

From Bagan we traveled to a town in the mountains to start a 3 day trek. After a night in the town where we would start or trek (Kalaw), we awoke to pouring rain and very cold weather. Fortunately, our guide was more than happy to postpone the trek to the next day. So, we relaxed in the hill town for the day before setting out for what was now would be a two day trek. We walked through beautiful farmland and hills watching women harvest rice and chilies and men plow their fields with water buffalo. At night we sleep in a hill tribe village, only accessible by footpath through the hills, staying with a local family and well attended to by our guild Pooqua. On the second day we hiked to Inle Lake where we took a narrow wooden boat through canals and viewed the wooden houses and everyday life of people living on the lake. Amazingly, people create floating fields of crops on top of the lake by growing vegetables in soil placed on top of water hyacinth, which is very buoyant. Also, fisherman have a unique way of paddling their boat oar with their legs and use large cone shaped fishing nets/traps to catch fish. The views from the lake were impressive.

Once back in Yangon we hooked up with old friends from Amman, Jill and Rony who were ever so gracious to let us stay with them at their beautiful new apartment. It was nice to see old friend and to catch up. We also had the chance to go out to dinner in Yangon with Mira's former 5th grade teacher, Josh and his family.

All in all, a great trip to Myanmar. We're now just arrived in Phnom Pehn, Cambodia and equally look forward to exploring what this country has to offer.

Cheers, Rob

With monks we met at full moon festival, Yangon