Your trip report is great. Thank you so much for posting. Looking forward to the rest.

Following along too YT and GT, and enjoying your report.
The story sharing does help others decide on what to do, where to go.
I think that's what Fodors forum is all about, kudos to you for posting.

On the Road & Hill Country

The next morning, we got up and took advantage of the early morning wifi at the Rupar Mandalar and then had our last breakfast (for now) at their wonderful breakfast buffet. Then we loaded up Phet Naung’s car and headed out. The first half hour or so was through the outskirts of Mandalay. Then we passed some brilliant green fields and began heading up into the hills. Looking back, we could see only a haze over the plain on which Mandalay sat. Traffic was heavy. And it was predominantly large trucks. Phet Naung’s car – as did most cars in Myanmar – had the steering wheel on the right despite the fact the country drove on the right. This made for some nerve-wracking moments when we attempted to pass large trucks; by the time Phet Naung could see if the road was clear, half the car was over in the incoming lane. Fortunately, most truck drivers would indicate by turn signal if the road ahead were clear.

We made it to Pyin Oo Lwin in about two hours. En route, just outside of town, Phet Naung stopped at a large white and gold temple, the Maha Ant Htoo Kan Thar Pagoda. I explored it on my own while YT remained in the car. I made the faux pas of placing my foot on the first step on the stairway into the elevated complex to remove my footwear and was promptly lectured in Burmese by some exiting devotees. The temple itself was beautiful and had nice views from the surrounding terrace. Afterwards, we checked out some non-descript colonial era buildings and the Purcell clock tower in town. Then we dropped our luggage off at our dark cold room at the Hotel Pyin Oo Lwin and then Phet Naung drove us to the nearby Kandawygi Gardens. The Kandawygi Gardens are some very large botanical gardens situated around Kandawygi, a small lake. It was Sunday and the gardens were crowded. We strolled around the lake, exchanging “mingalaba”s with groups of young people; it seemed at times if we were the Gardens’ major attraction. After some wandering, we sought out the orchid gardens and spent some time there checking out the numerous varieties of blooming orchids. Then we made our way back across a footbridge over the lake to the parking area and Phet Naung, and he dropped us off back at our hotel.

Later that evening, we took a car through the chilly evening – who knew the tropics could be so cold? - to The Club Terrace restaurant for dinner. The food was excellent - and probably the first real Burmese food we’d had since arriving in the country. We spoke to a pair of British travelers at the next table; they were also bound to Hsipaw the next day, although they were going by train. After dinner, as we waited for the return taxi, we spoke at some length to the owner of The Club Terrace. During our time in Myanmar, we had avoided any political discussions in order to prevent any difficulties for either ourselves or for the people to whom we talked. However, it was apparent that Myanmar citizens – whatever their political views – welcomed Myanmar’s ongoing opening to the world and the opportunities it represented. Those opportunities might be coming a little too fast though. The owner indicated that Myanmar’s infrastructure was not able to handle the large numbers of tourists that had begun visiting the country; even his restaurant was overwhelmed at times, although, fortunately for us, this evening was not one of the times. Then the cab came and we returned to our hotel with a decidedly novice driver and his teacher. His excitable driving served to take our minds off the frigid temperature. The driver was quite pleased with himself that he made it safely to our destination

The next morning, after a disappointing breakfast buffet, we set out for Hsipaw. It was about a three-hour drive that took us, at one point, on a series of switchbacks that were blocked by a combination of roadwork and large trucks jockeying back and forth to negotiate the sharp turns. Once, in the distance, we spied the Gokteik Viaduct, the long railroad bridge spanning the enormous Gokteik Gorge. (When we were planning the trip, we’d considered taking the train, but had been put off by reports of breakdowns, delays and an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s TV show “No Reservations” filmed on the train that showed Bourdain lurching in a 120 degree arc from side-to-side in an antique railcar.)

Our first impression of Hsipaw – later changed – was of a smaller version of Mandalay – dusty and noisy. Our destination was the Mr. Charles Guest House, a pleasant trio of buildings on a side street off the main road. We bade a temporary good-bye to Phet Naung and checked in. Mr. Charles Guest House has a range of accommodations – everything thing from shared rooms without showers and toilets to large new rooms with king beds, bathrooms and balconies. In addition to providing probably the best lodging in town, Mr. Charles seems to have cornered the market on tourist services. Mr. Charles provides tour services (half day walking trips, boat trips, full day walking trips, over-night trekking and sight-seeing by car or bike). Should you injure yourself trekking, Mr. Charles offers a clinic. Should you be thirsty from when you return from your trek, Mr. Charles also offers several varieties of cold beer. Mr. Charles can also arrange onward transportation to Lashio or back to Mandalay by either car or shared mini-van. Indeed, Mr. Charles offers everything except meals - we went out to a late lunch at the restaurant San around the corner and down the street for some fried rice, Shan noodles and a coca-cola and then wandered the town a bit. On our return, we arranged for a boat trip for the next day that would take us up river an hour to a hike to and from a monastery, and then to a small Shan village. We spent the rest of the afternoon in our room, washing articles of clothing, updating trip notes and reading. Later that evening we walked to the River Club for dinner. The food was excellent, the seating by the river superb. Nearby, already eating, were the British couple that we’d met the prior evening at the Club Terrace showed up. They’d enjoyed their train ride - and had arrived without delay. We talked a bit. They were spending one more night in night in Hsipaw before undertaking a trek that would take them to Inle Lake. I admired their ambition. Shortly after 6:00 a monk at the enormous Buddhist temple two blocks from our hotel had begun a long and amplified sermon. It was to last for three and half hours. I’d noticed an enlarged photograph of the monk at the temple earlier that day. We had arrived in Hsipaw just in time for a loud two-day Buddhist “revival meeting” (actually a fund-raising drive for temple construction). We greeted the nine-thirty p.m. ending with joy; the man didn’t have the most pleasant of voices.

It’s foggy in the mornings in the hills near Hsipaw. We could barely see the buildings across the street from Mr. Charles’. The breakfast buffet at Mr. Charles’ proved interesting. One of the three-building complex served effectively as a backpacker hostel; the backpackers, most of whom were going to spend the day trekking, used the breakfast buffet to carbo-load and put away an amazing amount of food. The resulting scrum had wiped out of a lot of the fruit and almost all of the western breakfast items, including toast and pancakes, by the time we arrived. Fortunately, the backpackers were rather parochial in their food tastes and there was plenty of a delicious Shan-style noodle soup left. And, most importantly, there was coffee.

The morning boat trip proved to be an instant relief from the dust of central Hsipaw. The boat departed around nine, after most of the mists had cleared on the river. We were in a long narrow boat with a pilot and an English-speaking guide. As we proceeded upriver, we passed women washing clothing on the banks, water buffalo, drying corn, bamboo rafts floating downstream and other boats, some with European travelers. Eventually, we pulled ashore on the far bank and began our walk to the Lonyon, a Tai-Shan monastery. We passed through forest and then carefully-tended fields of eggplant, papaya trees and low rows of pineapple plants. After half an hour or forty five minutes, we arrived at the monastery complex – mostly deep red wooden buildings with pale green shutters, a photographer’s delight in the morning sun. The complex was filled with frolicking novice monks – I took a photo of several of them grinning at something that one of them had downloaded on an electronic device. Another touring couple – German or Austrian – had arrived at the same time we did and seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as the young monks. I took some pictures of the interior and the robed Buddha surrounded by Buddhist flags.

Then we returned to our boat and continued up river until we arrived at the confluence of two rivers just after a series of class two rapids. We passed on the chance of swimming, admired the mildly turbulent view, turned around and headed back down river. After a while, on the other bank past the monastery landing, we pulled ashore. We had a brief tour of the tidy village of stilt houses largely made of teak with tin roofs. Some houses were partially teak with woven mat walls. Many of the houses had small adjacent houses for prayer. The walks between the houses were of pounded earth; many of the walks had signs indicating that buffalo were not allowed on the walk. Our guide indicated that this was because the people living there did not want the animals befouling their streets. I was struck by the overall tidiness, the sense of order and of industry. Everything – drying corn, stacked firewood, pots, the baskets and hats hanging on walls – seemed arranged for maximum tidiness and utility: sheng fui on a communal level. We stopped by a low house of woven mats that also functioned as a train station and a snack shop - the tracks of a narrow gauge railway ran about three or four meters away from the storefront and its lone waiting bench. If our guide hadn’t told us, we never would have identified the house/store with its hanging bundles of snacks in plastic bags as a train station. After our brief tour, we headed back towards our boat. On the way our guide pointed out a loofah vine with large nearly mature gourds. When picked young, the gourds are edible; when picked mature the fibrous gourds are used as scrubbing sponges. (I’d always thought loofahs came from sea creatures!) By the time we again set out downriver, the cool foggy morning had become a rather hot early afternoon. After arriving back in town we stopped by the Pontoon Café for coffee and guacamole (!) that would have seemed entirely Mexican were it not for the black sesame seeds on top and the accompanying fried tofu strips. We returned to our room for some reading and a nap.

That evening, we made our way out to a Chinese restaurant run by the memorably named “Mister Food.” There, we ran into the intrepid trekking British couple for the third night running! They must have thought we were stalking them. They had spent that day doing what we had planned to do the next – visiting the “Shan Palace,” a noodle factory, “Little Bagan” and Mrs. Popcorn’s garden restaurant. The highlight of the meal came when one of them observed that visiting the noodle factory had put them off noodles for life – this as I was digging into a mound of stir-fried noodles with pork! I promptly ordered another beer. We returned to our room with day two of the itinerant monk carrying on at the immense temple. Again, he stopped promptly at nine-thirty p.m.

The next day, we arrived at the breakfast bar a little early, had pancakes before our soup, waited until the fog lifted and had a lovely morning walk. Perhaps mercifully, we couldn’t find the infamous noodle factory. We did find the Shan Palace and had an interesting half hour talking to “Fern” (I’ve spelled the name spelled phonetically) regarding the last half-century of Burmese history. Fern was the wife of Mr. Donald. Mr. Donald was the nephew (son of the younger brother) of the last Shan prince of Hsipaw. During the March, 1962, military coup that effectively ended democratic rule in Burma for over fifty years, the last Shan prince, or “Sao,” Sao Kya Seng, had been detained by the military and never seen again. (There is a book-length, albeit poorly written, account of these events by the last Sao’s Austrian wife, Inge Sargent, in her autobiographical book “Twilight Over Burma: My Life as a Shan Princess.”) Fern and Mr. Donald now live separately in two houses that had once belonged to the Sao’s family; neither can leave either house at length for fear that the military will claim the house had been abandoned and arbitrarily seize it. The story was heart-rending, as was the situation of this charming lady living in the under-maintained and decidedly modest “palace” that was perhaps as large as a home in a suburb in Europe or the US. Fern does not have wifi and is dependent on visitors for information as well as income. If you go to the Shan Palace, please make a donation and bring some English-language books! The Shan Palace is on a largish, somewhat overgrown plot of land. Don’t miss visiting the prayer house nearby on the grounds; it’s a sadly neglected monument to faith.

After the Shan Palace, we continued on to “Little Bagan,” which lies out of town past the turn to the Shan Palace. “Make a left by the big tamarind tree,” we were advised; fortunately, although unable to tell tamarind from teak, we do know large trees and made the correct turn. You go by “Mrs. Popcorn’s” on the way to Little Bagan; we poked our head in, indicated that we’d be back for lunch and continued down the road to Little Bagan. I couldn’t get the James Brown song “Mother Popcorn” out of my mind. Little Bagan is a series of stupa fields on either side of the road. Many are in a state of ruin, overgrown with plants, some with trees growing out of the middle and covering the outside with roots. There are a few that are either new or have been restored. Some are still used for worship; they are statues of Buddha inside. After making the rounds of Little Bagan we headed back to Mrs. Popcorn’s for lunch. There had once been a Mr. Popcorn, who had in fact manufactured popcorn. He was deceased and Mrs. Popcorn no longer made popcorn, but instead served lunch to people passing by to Little Bagan. We were shown to a shaded table by her daughter, “Lady Popcorn.” We eventually switched to another table to avoid some persistent insect attacks. Our lunch consisted of cold cauliflower salad, chicken curry, cabbage soup and some curiously potent beans. The portion was too large for us to finish; we concentrated on the curry and the cauliflower salad and I had some of the beans. The setting was particularly nice: we had reclining chairs and a shaded table with a nice view of a beautiful manicured countryside on a warm bucolic noon day on the other side of the world from our polar-vortexed home.

We slowly walked back to Mr. Charles’ – I kept wanting to call it Mr. Charlie’s – to avoid the encroaching mid-day heat. I rummaged around their bookshelves and borrowed a copy of Colin Cotterill’s Laotian murder mystery “Disco for the Dead.” We skipped dinner – whatever hunger we had wasn’t enough to make us brave the inconstant sidewalks and the abrupt drop-offs into murky ditches. We spent our last hours updating our notes and packing our suitcases. We were leaving the hill country the next morning.

Thanks for that GT.
Your story really makes Hsipaw sound so interesting. Will have to go another time.
If it's any consolation, I took the circle train in Yangon, and was SO glad that DH and I didn't take the Mandalay - Yangon train last year. I also saw the Anthony Bourdain footage, there was no trick photography, and I usually like trains.

Looking forward to the next episode !

I love trains too and kept going back and forth when planning our trip about taking the train from Pyin OO Lwin to Hsipaw. After talking to the British couple I had regrets that we didn't take the train. I also recently read on a TR that you can take the train over the viaduct and then get picked up. Never thought to do that and it may have been a good compromise. Hsipaw is definitely worth exploring.

Dona,
Checked out Asia forum specifically to see if anything from you and wasn't disappointed. Sounds like great trip so far. Glad all is working out. Will keep checking back to read more!

Hi Alison! Thanks for checking this out. How is Turkey planning coming along?

A short addendum to my last post: The Kandawygi Gardens have a $5 US entrance fee. It's worth it.

On to Bagan

Phet Naung picked us up the following morning at a quarter to nine for our ride back to Mandalay and the overnight luxury of the Rupar Mandalay Resort. The bumpy five-hour ride retraced at one go our earlier drives from Mandalay to Pyin Oo Lwin and from Pyin Oo Lwin to Hsipaw. We paused once at an overlook at the Gokteik Gorge, but it was so hazy that it was like looking at a faded photograph rather than a real scene. We were stopped once while a rockslide was cleared from the road. We passed a huge military academy outside of Pyin Oo Lwin - the military seems to have reserved the best of everything for itself. Soon we came to a view over the immense plain upon which Mandalay sat. It took our breath away – the air was choked with exhaust and dust. We again drove past some well-tended vivid green rice paddies and desiccated cornfields. Then we passed various buildings painted in unlikely (to Western eyes) color combinations, Christmas red and a very pale minty green being a repeat offender. It was a relief to arrive at the Rupar Mandalar. The Rupar Mandalar – with the sole exception of the wifi – is a delightful hotel. So delightful, in fact, that one could conceivably run the risk of never leaving the well–tended grounds and accommodating staff to brave the heat, dust and noise of Mandalay. And we didn’t this day. We spent the balance of the afternoon seeking the ever-elusive and maddeningly slow wifi, avoiding the heat and then lounging by the pool. We had our last free cocktails, then ate and went to bed early. We were catching a boat at dawn.

We had a very early breakfast at the Rupar Mandalar and then Phet Nyaung picked us up for our ride to our large boat docked on the Ayeyarwady. We were among the very first passengers to arrive – not that it mattered in the beginning as all passengers had assigned seating on the lower deck. However, within an hour of departure, most of the passengers had moved to the sunny upper deck. As the day wore on, many of the passengers moved from sun to shade on the top and second decks. On the initial stretch of the river, on one’s right as one headed downstream, there were numerous golden stupas in a lush landscape. Then the banks became more barren as we headed downstream and eventually became low sandy cliffs. We were near the end of the dry season and the boat veered from bank to bank to avoid shallows. At one point, two crew members were on the bow double-checking the depths with long poles - I resisted the urge to shout “mark twain.” After a while, a kind of riverine somnolence set in. I dozed, I read, I photographed passing boats. And I rearranged chairs for further dozing and reading. After eleven hours we neared Bagan and began to see occasional stupas on the left bank. We had been on the river from sun up to sundown.

Eventually, we pulled over to the left bank and docked. We’d arranged with Santa Maria for a driver (which, as it turned out, we hadn’t needed to have done – there was no shortage of taxis at the docking point). After some delay in getting off the boat, we hooked up with our driver and were soon bound for our hotel, the Hotel @ Tharabar Gate. We stopped off en route to purchase the five day pass to the Bagan Archaeological Zone; the pass costs $15 US or 15 Euros. I paid in dollars. I’m unsure whether payment in kyat was accepted.

The Hotel @ Tharabar Gate was a large resort-type hotel. The grounds were well-tended and it had an aura of tour-bus luxury that we usually avoid while traveling. (We prefer smaller hotels.) The rooms were nice. Unfortunately, the teak floor in our room was marred, probably from dragging furniture around instead of lifting it. We’d arrived starving; all we’d had all day were some snacks and an order of Shan noodles on the boat. We left the Hotel @ Tharabar Gate, turned left, walked down the road maybe fifty meters and then followed the sign on the right for the vegetarian restaurant “Be Kind to Animals the Moon.”

Immediately across the dusty street from the crowded Be Kind to Animals the Moon is another vegetarian restaurant, Yar Pyi. The British couple that we’d repeatedly run into in the Shan state had recommended this restaurant. I had a spicy peanut/tomato curry that was sublime – it tasted exactly like Creole peanut soup. YT had an aubergine dip. Although Yar Pyi didn’t serve beer, I was still able to order one. They went to the trouble to go out and buy one, which they then brought to the table but served out of plain sight on a chair beside me in case the religious authorities came by.

We’d arranged a private guide, Minthu, for our three days in Bagan, based on a recommendation from many on this board. He showed up promptly at 9:00 in a horse-drawn cart (#54). We were supposed to have both a guide and driver, but the driver was unavailable and Minthu was acting as both. This was fortunate, as the horse drawn cart is on the small side and I’m 6’3” – I’m not sure it would have been a comfortable fit for four of us. Minthu discussed the various possibilties for our day and after a brief discussion, we left the choice of temples to be seen up to Minthu.

We started the day by going to a noviation parade. These are annual events, where the families of young men becoming novice monks dress up their younger children and bullocks to celebrate. I believe that the one we went to was in Thiripyitsaya village. The parade started with a line of girls and young women wearing their finest clothes, many of them shading themselves under elaborate parasols. Then came boys mounted on decorated horses wearing princely finery and decidedly feminine makeup (lipstick, rouge, eyeliner, eye shadow, etc.). Some of these boys were as young as two or three. Then came girls, under parasols sidesaddle on decorated horses, also dressed in regal finery. Lastly came ox drawn carts; the oxen were also wearing elaborate decorative costumes. The entire ceremony was accompanied by booming music and had to have been one of the most unusual events I’ve ever see.

After the morning spent at the noviation parade, we headed back towards Bagan and visited Shwesandaw Paya (Pagoda), one of the older pagodas on the Bagan plain, a five terraced building topped with a stupa. We explored this glorious building at length, climbing up to the third terrace and scanning the stupa-studded horizon. It is impossible to underestimate the sheer number of pagodas and stupas in Bagan. They number in the thousands and are in various states of restoration, repair and disrepair. Some of them have been repaired – inauthentically per Minthu – by military families in the hope of gaining merit. We found the sheer number overwhelming and the views jaw dropping. For YT it ranked up there with her first impression of Machu Picchu. After visiting several temples, they all began to run together. I tried to address this by noting down the names and then later looking them up on the internet to place a pagoda with a name and verify our visit by comparing the on-line image with my own photographs. This worked fairly well, impeded only by my habit of taking pictures of any and all passing non-visited pagodas that struck my interest.

After climbing Shwesandaw Paya, it was early afternoon and becoming quite hot. We had Minthu drop us back off at the hotel. He picked us up again around 4:00 p.m. when it was cooler and we headed back out this time to the magnificent Sulamani Pahto. The Sulamani Pahto may have been our favorite of all the temples we visited: a surrounding walled courtyard, multiple receding terraces, multiple corner stupas, elaborate brick- and stonework, gargoyle-like figurines, extensive murals, superb stucco work, pointed arches and a 12th Century Buddha – this pagoda has it all! Next up were Shwegugyi and Pahtothamya.

Shwegugyi is architecturally lovely, a beautiful off-white building with corner steeples, stucco carvings and pointed arch doorways and windows. It still has its original teak doors and its vertical lines are faintly reminiscent of a gothic church. Pahtothamya was an older, smaller one-story temple, dimly lit with some faint wall paintings. We ended the day by catching the sunset near Sulamani Paya, with what I think was Ananda Pahto silhouetted against the evening sky. Minthu managed to take us to temples when they were relatively tourist free so while we often passed many tour buses as we roamed around we never felt as if we were in a tourist crush. At sunset it was just us and another couple standing on the hill while in the distance we could faintly hear and see the crowds watching the exact sunset view from a terrace on one of the temples. Later that evening, we had dinner at a restaurant next door to Hotel @ Tharabar Gate, catching the tail end of a puppet show in the process. The food was just OK and I didn’t catch the name of the restaurant.

The next morning, Minthu arrived by car with a driver and we set out for Mt Popa. Mt Popa is something of a drive from Bagan; it took us the better part of the morning to get there, particularly since we stopped along the way to observe the production of palm sugar (“jaggery”). We’d seen this before in Cambodia. Palm sugar sap is extracted from various types of palm trees, then set to boil. The resulting crystallized sugar can be formed into cakes or is used in the production of candies. It can also be distilled into toddy, a low alcohol palm wine with a one-day shelf life. We ended up with a small bag of tamarind palm sugar candy, a larger bag of coconut palm sugar candy, and a bottle of high-test alcohol that had been processed from toddy. All for the equivalent of $4 US.

Mt Popa is worth the drive. It’s a sheer vertical mountain crowned with a temple. It looks like something out of a fairytale. We took the covered 777 step walkway – shoeless – up to the temple. The walkway is lined with vendors selling food and souvenirs. There’s also a population of monkeys, who are always attempting to steal food from the vendors. Many of the vendors have wooden slingshots, which they use to periodically chase the monkeys off. One doesn’t actually have to shoot at the monkeys; merely displaying the slingshot will cause all except the boldest to scamper away. In addition to the vendors, there were people who cleaned up after the monkeys, who have a tendency to befoul the tiled walkway. The temple on top of Mt Popa has great views out over the surrounding countryside. It also has an unusual convex stupa and a golden niched wall. Inside each niche was a statue of Buddha. The hilltop complex had recently been redone with funds from donors from around the world. Among the donors was the Burma Superstar Restaurant in San Francisco. On the way back down, I stopped in the hall of the 37 nats, or spirits. It was a bit like the Madame Tussaud’s of the Burmese animist underworld.

We returned to Bagan about 2:00 and called it a day. Minthu had been an excellent guide, very informative and highly knowledgeable as well as personable. He explained the subtle changes in the Burmese depiction of Buddha across the last thousand years and could identify the era of a depiction by those elements. (Across the years, the ear lobes had grown longer until they touched the shoulders and the length of the fingers had evened out until eventually they were all of one length. There were also subtle changes in the top knot on Buddha’s head.)

That evening, we had dinner with welltraveledbrit and her husband, fellow travelers. In the past year, we’d met up with them for tea in Paris, drinks in San Francisco, and two dinners in Bangkok, the last only a couple of weeks earlier at a GTG at Gaggan with progol and her husband and Hanuman. We met up in the Hotel @Tharabar Gate lobby and headed to the Star Beam Restaurant, off the same street that Yar Pyi is located on. It was a superb meal of smoked fish, papaya salad, eggplant salad, two kinds of chicken curry, prawn curry and roast pork loin accompanied by beer and Myanmar’s own Red Mountain wine (the white is excellent!). We had a great evening comparing notes and sharing stories. Again our trips were paralleling. They were leaving the next day for Inle Lake. We were leaving for Inle Lake the day thereafter.

The next day was our last full day in Bagan. Minthu had a prior commitment that day and we had arranged to be in the able hands of his brother as a driver. While not a guide, he provided quite a bit of information at the various temples to which he took us. We started early with the temples in the Nyaung U area, Shwezigon Paya (gilded, several standing Buddhas) and Kyanzitthar Umin (murals and a standing Buddha). Then we visited an unidentified temple with a brick stupa that looked like south Indian influenced before returning to our room to escape the midday heat. That afternoon, after about 3:30, we visited Gubyaukgyi, another large brick pagoda with a restored Gubyaukgyi-style stupa, Htilominlo Guphana, Upalithein, Manuha Paya, and Nan Paya. My attention had long waned before we arrived at our favorite, a small stupa with an open chested Buddha that held numerous clocks. We called it quits in very late afternoon and returned to our hotel. It had been a long day. We were exhausted. We ate again at Star Beam that night: Smoked fish, papaya salad and avocado salad. Then to bed. We were moving on the next morning.

It sounds like you had a fine time in Bagan with our friend, Min Thu. I'm so glad. I found my first look at Bagan (from high on a temple right after sunrise) to be absolutely breath-taking. It was the view I had dreamed of.

Min Thu was great-so glad you introduced him to this broad. Bagan is a place that goes right up there as a top ten site for me. I was amazed by it.

That should be "introduced him to this BOARD." Where is that edit feature already????

I rather like the typo, Yestravel.

yestravel thanks for the great report..... you answered some of my questions about specific temples... Of course, I always want to see everything...! I know I won't be able to go into too many, but had kind of zeroed in on Sulamani Pahto as one to see for sure.

The fact that you were able to have a nice sunset view without climbing up into a temple has me excited....can you tell me some detail about where the "hill" is, maybe in relation to several temples. Would love a nice view similar to the "classic ones" over the field of temples.

Our first view will be early morning as we arrive by boat so that may be nice also.

We are staying at Hotel at Tharabar Gate too. I have made notes about the places you ate. Shalom has us at the Red Canal in a ground floor room in Mandalay, but I may ask him to change that to Rupar Mandalar. I know Kathie liked that hotel also. It is so hard to pick sight unseen!

Thanks for all the detail about Bagan. All the information is getting us really excited about our trip!!

Thanks -- glad the TR is helpful. For Mandalay I was stuck deciding between Red Canal and Rupar Mandalar. As we have said we were very happy at Rupar. I chose RM because I liked the look of the rooms with all the teak wood. I think Red Canal is also a bit out of the downtown, but nearer to some sites. Pls be aware that RM were in the process of adding a new building which should be completed shortly from the looks of it. It was a multi story addition. I'm sure if you email they can tell you what will be in it. The pictures on Trip Advisor are what it RM looks like. I thought it had a resort feel to it. I think you will be fine at either.

At Hotel @ Tharabar Gate make sure you get a room close to the lobby/restaurant. The rooms are really spread out and some were quite far from the lobby/restaurant.

I'll see if GT has any notes on which temples we were near for the sunset. I know it was the one that "everyone" goes to for sunset. MinThu made several jokes about that and mentioned there were several good viewing sites that didn't attract so many tourists. I would think your guide should be aware of where to go.

Following your travels and loving this report. Of course, you know I'll be studying the details if and when we go to Myanmar. The writing is terrific-- great descriptions of your travels-- and the detail is so helpful for others in planning trips.

By the way, I also loved the typo -- introducing MinThu to this "broad". --lol!

Paule

Maybe some typos are just unconscious slips…ooops.

@cwn - we think the temple behind us off to the side was Shwesandaw Paya

Inle Lake

We took a cab to the Bagan Airport the next day. The flight to Heho was short and it was only a 45 minute drive (via a Santa Maria driver) from the airport to our hotel, the Pristine Lotus Spa. We paused in route to buy “Inle Zone” entrance passes ($10 US or 10 Euros, good for seven days). The Pristine Lotus is a nice, quiet, somewhat isolated hotel on the upper northwest side of Inle Lake. It slopes up away from the lake. Our large room was in the upper part and had nice views. We explored the hotel, then walked into the nearby town Khang Doing. We stopped at the hotel-recommended roadside restaurant Myat Thet Kaung for an early dinner of fried rice, Shan pork curry and a salad of “yellow pea” tofu with sliced scallions. All were so-so except for the tasty yellow tofu salad.

Before our walk, we’d arranged with the hotel for the next three days’ travels in the area by water – the Pristine Lotus maintains a number of boats and boatmen. (We initially included a driving trip to Kakku, which we later dropped for another day on the Inle Lake.) Inle Lake, or at least the parts of it we saw, is ringed by marshes. Some of the marshes have been converted to fields – tiny islands – via the addition of soil and compost. They also have “floating gardens,” created by the addition of soil to free-floating mats of lake plants. Stilt houses, some of bamboo and woven matting, others of solid wood, are spread amongst the marshes and fields. Access to the lake is via a series of channels cutting through the marshes and around the houses. Every house seemed to have one or more boats, mostly low flat dugout-type canoes. People here live a water-focused lifestyle by necessity. To visitors, it’s a very picturesque world.

On our first full day at Inle Lake, we headed out for the southernmost parts of a second lake connected to Inle by a canal. It was the better part of three hours away by motorboat. Early morning fishermen were already out on the lake, fishing either by large traps or by netting. The fishermen were all in low dugouts and navigated by using their legs to row an oar while they netted fish or lowered traps. Our boatman had limited English – our conversation consisted mostly of our names and the names of destinations - and was very pleasant. He slowed down whenever we took photos. En route, we saw welltraveledbrit and her husband – they were staying in Naungshwe - in another south-bound boat. We waved at one another as they passed.

Our first stop was the tribal market in Thaung Tho. Dozens of boats were pulled ashore there. On one side, there was a large market of vegetables and firewood, filled with women in tribal dress. The other part of the market was a long walkway with stalls. Several stalls offered antique silver coins, at least some of which I believe were local reproductions; the 1804 American silver dollar and French Indochina trade piastres made repeated appearances. The Chilean silver peso – with its somewhat belligerent motto of “por razon o por fuerza” (“by reason or by force”) – also made an unlikely appearance. We briefly wandered up the walkway, took photos, bought a 3000 kyat ($3 US) cotton scarf and then pushed off for our next stop, Sankar. Sankar has a number of old ruined stupas (chedi), many of which are half submerged in the lake. We wandered around the chedi, noted that the Buddha statues all had their right hand resting on miniature elephants, and then ran into welltraveledbrit and her husband. We joined up and listened while their guide showed them a monastery and strolled a walkway into town. Then we returned to our boat and headed off to the nearby Tharkong Pagoda. This was a newish temple surrounded by restored chedi. In a misguided attempt to save future effort, I took my sandals off and left them in the boat as a covered walkway to the temple began at the dock. This proved to be something of a mistake as the chedi area – where footwear was permitted – had gravel paths. I ended up gingerly threading my way through the chedi and was rewarded by the discovery of a wonderful large – and unbilled – reclining Buddha in a structure behind the temple.

Our next (and nearby) stop was at what amounted to a primitive rice whiskey or palm liquor distillery adjacent to a restaurant. I think our boatman’s intent had been for us to have lunch there, but it didn’t occur to me at the time. At any rate, the restaurant was already filled with several large, slightly tipsy German tour groups. We shoved off again and our boatman took us to a pretty stilted restaurant set in the lake. We snagged a table off to the side and had a less than memorable lunch. Indeed, it was so unmemorable that I neglected to note the name of the restaurant. As we were leaving the restaurant, we again ran into welltraveledbrit and her husband. They’d been eating on the other side of the restaurant. Neither of us had seen the other. It was around 4:30 when we made it back to the Pristine Lotus. We skipped dinner.

After breakfast – which seemed to have doubled as the wifi hour – the next morning, we headed out for our second day on the lake. We captured some gorgeous early morning photographs of fishermen on the lake before going to the silk-making town of In Phaw Khone. There we toured a weaving factory and learned about lotus cloth – lotus stems contain a white fibrous core that can be spun into thread and then woven. The result is a slightly rough-textured fabric that is seven times as expensive as silk. Much of the cloth – and many of the garments – at the factory were a silk-lotus blend. The factory itself was an immense airy space on stilts filled with clacking bamboo looms operated by local women. We didn’t buy any of the garments – mostly scarves – offered for sale. They were expensive even by Western standards.

After In Phaw Khone, we backtracked to Indein (pronounced “in-dine”). Indein is accessed via a long canal. And today was its turn to host the five day market that rotated among lakeside villages. We somehow made it through a throng of boats to a dock and climbed some wooden stairs to a dirt trail that led into town. The trail was lined with vendors who seemed to have better crafts and merchandise than we’d seen elsewhere. In short order, we bought a shoulder bag, some t-shirts and a white cotton short-sleeve man’s shirt. The vendors also lined the long walkway to the Shwe Inn Thein Paya religious complex above the town. Some stands sold old Burmese banknotes, antique brass Burmese coins and beautifully-worked knives, all of which we passed on. We turned off the walkway for a while to visit the ruined stupas of Nyuang Ohak in the lower town. When we arrived at Shwe Inn Thein Paya, another set of ruined stupas had little appeal and made our way back towards the canal and our boat after the briefest of visits.

After Indein, we stopped at another stilted restaurant, Inn Thar Lay, for another so-so lunch. We decided to forgo a visit to the cat-jumping monastery; it sounded a bit like Barnum and Bailey writ small. We were back at the Pristine Lotus by 2:30. That evening, we dined at the hotel restaurant and had a superb dinner – Shan tomato-peanut salad, apple-scampi salad, fried calamari accompanied by glasses of excellent Burmese Red Mountain sauvignon blanc. We ended with a delicious sea-coconut pannacotta.

On our final day at Inle Lake we started late, as we only planned a visit to nearby Nyaungshwe at the north end of the lake. Our boat trip took us through a network of canals lined with large tomato “plantations” and marshland inhabited by herons and egrets. We spent the morning and early afternoon in Nyaungshwe. We explored the market. YT got a foot massage. And we toured the spectacular, scaffolding-enclosed Yadana Man Aung Paya. Eventually, we returned to the bridge near where our boat had docked and had a tasty lunch at the Viewpoint Restaurant – Shan tomato-peanut salad (again!), pumpkin dumplings with tamarind sauce and avocado salad. Then it was back to the Pristine Lotus to settle our boating tab ($60 US for the long ride to Sankar and environs, $35 US for our day at the silk factory and Indein and $20 US for the trip to and from Nyaungshwe). We spent the remainder of the afternoon packing, reading and updating our trip notes. That evening, we again ate in the Pristine Lotus: Shan tomato-peanut salad (I was addicted) and spicy papaya salad. We toasted Inle Lake with some Red Mountain sauvignon blanc. We loved Inle Lake. It rivaled Bagan as the highlight of our trip to Myanmar.

As I have a cat that, in her youth, jumped 5 feet in the air to catch things in her mouth or between her paws, I had little interest in seeing cats jump through hoops (though it is testimony to the monks patine in training the cats to do that). The reason we visited the monastery was to see thru collection of lovely old Buddha statues. What we remember best, five years later, is our long conversation with a monk there about politics.

So often in Burma I found that the object of my visit became a footnote because of fascinating interactions with locals.

Yes, the conversations with the people are always the best. It can give such insights into any country.