Exploring Yangon

The past two days have been busy exploring Yangon (fka Rangoon and once the capital of Myanmar). Yesterday, I asked all over the city with Stephanie, someone I met on the plane from San Francisco. We both had a free day so it worked out well. It also helped keep me awake and battle jet lag.  Today, we had an organized tour in a car.

It's mainly been a slice of life exploration with some pagodas tossed in.  Burmese people are very friendly. You can tell that Western tourism has just started to take off. People did double takes when they saw how tall I was -- I'm about a foot taller than most people.  And when we were at one pagoda, we had about ten pictures taken of us with locals.  It's very safe here, although the condition of the sidewalks isn't great.  You have to be careful bit to twist your ankle.

You don't see a lot of foreign companies -- the only American place I saw was Tony Roma's. No Starbucks or McDonald's.

The markets were interesting. Of course almost every street had fruit, cell phones, and random things like saws for sale right on the sidewalk.  Traffic isn't terrible -- not as bad as Bangkok but it's getting worse.

The pagodas were okay. Nothing exceptional even if they are two thousand years old. We saw a forty year old reclining Buddha that was about fifty meters in length.

We also took a train around town. It was a very old train, reminiscent of an Indian train.  Unfortunately you also saw a lot of garbage strewn around the tracks along the way. You don't see abject poverty but there were some shanty towns.  People seemed happy with their lives.

Tomorrow we leave for Mandalay. Tonight we have a visit to another pagoda.

Strand Hotel

Hello from Yangon!

I got in late last night. In staying at the Strand Hotel. It feels like something out of a Graham Greene novel. The hotel dates back to the British era, built in 1901.  All sorts of historical figures stayed here, like Rudyard Kipling and David Rockefeller.  The rooms are luxurious with wooden floors and fans running from the high ceilings.  It's centrally located, making a good starting point for a walking tour.

The pictures are of my room and the lobby. The instrument played in one is a xylophone though it's a series of wooden slats hanging together rather than the ones we see in America.

Wandering Once More. Destination:Myanmar

Given some freedom from work, I'm taking advantage of the time to resurrect my travelling.  It's been a little while since I've posted on this blog so I may be rusty.

Tomorrow, I'm off to Myanmar, once and sometimes known as Burma.   It was something of a last minute trip.  For one, we wanted to wait to make sure that the presidential elections there went peacefully, especially once the opposition party had a resounding victory.  All looked good, so we went ahead and planned the trip -- Myanmar may very well turn out to be more peaceful than other places in the world right now.  Oh, I'm travelling with Julie this time.  I last went with her to Malaysia and Singapore in 2010 -- there are blog posts for that trip if you go back far enough!

I'll fly through Incheon in Seoul, although I'll only have a 1.5 hour layover.  On the way back, I'll have 8 hours and I may try to take a tour of the DMZ.  That's one of the places I didn't get to visit during my previous trips to Seoul.   It might be tight.  8 hours is an awkward amount of time.

I get into Yangon (fka Rangoon) late night and a day before the tour starts.  So I'll have some time on my own to explore after resting up a bit.  This is a very nice tour, so we're staying at some of the nicest places.  In Yangon, we'll be at the Strand Hotel, a British-era hotel.

Anyway, I had better get to packing.  I've cut and pasted the summary Google search so people know where Myanmar is and a little about it.  Let me know if you're reading this!

Myanmar (Burma)

Country in Asia

Myanmar (formerly Burma), is a Southeast Asian nation of more than 100 ethnic groups, bordering India, Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand. Yangon (formerly Rangoon), the country's largest city, is home to bustling markets, numerous parks and lakes, and the towering, gilded Shwedagon Pagoda, which contains Buddhist relics and dates to the 6th century.

Capital: Naypyidaw

Currency: Burmese kyat

President: Thein Sein

Population: 53.26 million (2013) World Bank

Continent: Asia

In the hills above Minca

It's been a few days since I've posted. Part of that is that I was off the grid at the hostel; part of it was that I hit that ennui where you get lazy about writing about things.  I did manage to last most of the trip now.

Minca was about as different as all the other stops of our trip as it could be.  We were on the middle of a forest atop hills in much more basic conditions than any of our other places.  It probably was the first time I've stayed in a hostel in over fifteen years. I actually liked that aspect.  You really do get to meet a lot of interesting people from all over the world. At the hostel, I met people from Australia, Hungary, England, Ireland, France, Amsterdam, and the U.S.   Many of the people were very recently removed from college and amidst months long journey through Colombia and other Latin American countries on a shoestring budget.  It was nice to see quite a few Americans. I like that there are people from the U.S. that don't have that visceral reaction about visiting Colombia that many people do.  This country is really an amazing and safe place (more about that in a post when I get back).

It was a fairly laidback stay at Minca. We had one home to a wonderful waterfall before getting caught in the rain five minutes from town. We ended up sheltering under the eaves of an aluminum siding roof with a few locals.  We had lunch at Lazy Cat, a burger and quesadilla place that was pretty good. I had climbed down the hill at night with my headlight and a few Irish girls and an American guy for dinner at the same place the previous night. It was so much easier taking that hill without the encumberance of bags!

The weather was a lot better than Santa Marta and Cartagena, being up in the hills. Unfortunately, my hope of it being a bug-free destination was in vain. I was okay but Kathy got eaten alive.  :-(

I personally enjoyed the stay at the hostel though I imagine more than a few days of shared bathrooms, cold showers, and paperthin walls would have gotten to me. Still, it was a nice change of pace...

On to Minca

Another early morning as we took a collective taxi to Santa Marta. The hotel told use all sorts of departure times, so it was very confusing. But eventually we made it on the road. The highway was in very good condition, better than some places of the U.S. even! It was a sunny day with good views of the ocean and some major rivers.  The taxi was a tourist van with seven passengers. I sat in the front.  At Baranquilla (where Sofia Vargas is from) we stopped some passengers and four of us switched into a car.  That was more cramped. The other two were from New York. We've run into a handful of Americans along the way.

Once we got to Santa Marta, we had to switch to another local taxi to head up into the mountains and Minca.  We're in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.  When we got to Minca we had to hike up a very steep path with our very heavy bags in order to get to our hostel.  This hostel feels like one. It's far off the beaten path and it appears that a lot of random people have stumbled here. The place is definitely the most rustic and simplest place we've stated at. Hopefully, the bugs won't be too bad.

Cartagena, Day 2

This was our full day in Cartagena, and we packed things in.  The whole area we were staying in was going to have electricity shutoff from 7 to 7. I guess it was a Sunday.  So we got up early for a hot shower... and still had to settle for a touch above cold.  We never had a warm shower at that hotel, Hotel San Martin.  (Granted that it was almost always above 85 so it wasn't terrible, but still...) We had a lot of other issues with the hotel, so it is highly not recommended.

We walked up to El Centro, the historical area of Cartagena. The buildings are of the colonial style and very well preserved. We did a walking tour of the area, seeing all of the places from the outside. It was so hot that we weren't too inspired to go into many places.  You could actually walk on the old walls and get some nice views. Many buildings appeared to be reclaimed by universities, hotels, bff museums. We had a nice, luxurious and long lunch at the Hotel Sofitel, a former monastery. The rooms here were $600/night!  We had lunch right in front if the pool, watching the upper crust of Colombia gallivant about.

We were so dead when we finally made it back to the hotel. A long siesta and then dinner at a local Spanish restaurant.

Cartagena

This entry won't post for a few days as we've entered a Wi-Fi free zone at Minca. More about that in a future post. Suffice to say, I'm sitting in a hammock in a hostel while writing this.

We had a whole day sucked up by travel in getting from the coffee region to Cartagena. We had a 6am departure from the Finca. It was too early for breakfast so we were given a bag full of mandarin oranges and mangos.  There was no traffic at that hour and we had plenty of time for our flight. My bag got tagged and I had to be called back for it to be opened up. I think it was the L lens with high quality glass.  Anyway, we flew on a Fokker 50 to Bogota. A few hours there and then we continued on to Cartagena.

After checking in we walked around Bocagrande. This area is kinda like Miami with high-rise apartment buildings fronting the beach.  We had a whole fish as well as a mixed grill, right by the beach.  Dessert was at a crepe place that had been recommended to us.

The day was purely a burn day for after a few hours of rest we went to a steakhouse down the street. It was actually pretty good. Their theme was to ask everyone where they were from and to bring over flags from that country. Since the U.S. was too easy, we challenged them with India and Taiwan... and they succeeded! 

More Cartagena in the next post...