Myanmar after a week

We started our Myanmar quest from Tachileik border crossing (also e-visa is now valid here) in Thailand where 3 officers handled the bureaucracy in a small room exactly like you would expect them to do in some movie with very questionable border control.

From Tachileik we moved on to small city of Kengtung where we familiarized ourselves with lives of some local hill tribes as we hiked to their villages. Our fixer brought some balloons to the village kids and it was amazing to see how a single balloon would light up the kids eyes when at the same time in the western world.. Need I say more?

Myanmar is often characterized as Thailand 30 years ago. That might be the case (almost) for some smaller places like Kengtung where one is still able to enjoy local food without western menus and prices.

Inle Lake region, however, is a totally other thing. There tourism is already very visible and especially it seemed that older tourist groups were majority within the region. There was no talk about the state of the lake itself but I think it is rather obvious that a body of water with so many uses (agriculture, fishing, tourism, hydropower) will have problems in the future.

From Inle we carried on to Bagan – the home of the temple populated plains. I had high expectations for this stop but unfortunately earthquake in August had mixed things up so that many temples were closed for climbing because of renovation/rebuild work. So all the info I had collected from different sources did not have anything to do with actual reality.

Here is a short list of situation as it was on Dec 1^st with the sites I visited:

• Shwegugyi (climbable but closed on the side of the best view)
• That Byu Nyu (not climbable)
• Ananda Pagoda (not climbable, huge crowds, big renovation work going on)
• Khaymingha group (smaller site, nice, worth to visit; best angle towards the road from the back)
• Dhamna Yan Gyj Pahto (not climbable)
• North Guni (totally closed)
• Pyathada (climbable, nice view to the plains, big terrace)
• Sulamani (not climbable)
• Thabeik Hmauk (not climbable)
• Buledi (closed) / Buledi 2 (ok, smaller site in front of Buledi)
• Shwesanda Pagoda (main venue to check out sunsets and sunrises, lots of people)

Currently we are on our way from Mandalay to Yangon and from there we will continue to Bangkok which is the end point of the tour. After that it is one night in Doha and then back to cold and dark Scandinavia.