Before moving onto our next country, we decided to head all the way south on a 12-hour night bus to arrive in Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar. This was in principle our last night bus experience, and boy were we happy. We spent the night listening to a rhino snoring, a local lady eating donuts with chocolate followed by violent and repeated throwing up, and a “friendly” lady sitting behind Martina who thought she was alone, yelling on her cell phone as of 2 AM accompanied by the wonderful music she played for all of us on loud speakers…. Well, we arrived in Yangon safe, but exhausted!

Again, we were warned that there was not much to do or to see here. Yet, once more Yangon proved this wrong. In fact, amongst other things, we found there to be the most spectacular pagoda we have seen in SE Asia.

On our first day as we were quite tired from the fantastic night bus, we took it easy and headed to the Bogyoke Aung San Market. This market is located in a beautiful colonial building and surrounded by cobble stone streets, having its own charm to it. After wandering around and seeing that the large majority of shops were actually meant for tourists, with one souvenir after another, we decided to purchase our own set of longyi’s. A longyi is a traditional cloth here in Myanmar worn by almost everyone, almost like a long skirt. Children under the age of 12 do not have to wear longyi’s, however all others should.

In the evening, following our stroll around the city center and visit to the Sule Pagoda, we decided to treat ourselves to a wonderful dinner. In fact, the chef who had given us our cooking course in Lake Inle used to work at this fancy hotel/restaurant in Yangon, the Sule Shangri-La. After taking a look at the exquisite buffet, quite possibly the most complete and top quality selection we had seen in this trip, we couldn’t walk away. It was very reasonably priced, especially for Western standards, and a great opportunity to enjoy a delicious meal.

The following morning we decided to take the Circle Line tour. This tour consisted in taking the local train around the “metropolitan” area of Yangon, where we saw the countryside as well as parts of the city that normally remain more hidden to tourists. This three-hour train ride was very nice with authentic scenes and pictures to be taken, starting even just at the train station. The best part of the tour was undoubtedly meeting a group of very nice and friendly local Burmese students with whom we ended up spending the day and who showed us around their city.

After the train ride, our new friends brought us to a great local restaurant where we ate our favorite, Shan noodles, and after we headed off to some tour sites. We started by visiting the immense reclining Buddha at the Chauk Htat Gyi Pagoda. This buddha measures 65 meters in length and 16 meters in height, and is known to be one of the largest in the world. It was definitely very impressive in both size and design.

Following this, we were brought to the beautiful Kandawgyi Lake, where we took a nice walk and our friends shared many interesting things about Myanmar culture and traditions with us. In fact, one of the most curious things we learned was that they do not have last names. Their names are given based on the day of the week they are born, so it’s a composition of the day of the week plus another name, and simply no last name. They told us how difficult it is in fact when they have to fill out foreign documents due to this!

Our day ended at the Shwedagon Pagoda, which was for us arguably one of the most beautiful and impressive pagodas in all of SE Asia. It is actually like a city of pagodas, the majority with a golden color, surrounding a massive golden pagoda that sits in the center. At nighttime, when the whole scene is illuminated, it becomes very impressive. Once the visit was over we had to say goodbye to our new friends. Having met them was truly a privilege and we couldn’t be more thankful for their great hospitality. We wish you guys lots of luck with everything!

Myanmar was, for us, by far the most authentic and untouched country we have seen in SE Asia, and all of this accompanied by such wonderful and friendly people, among the nicest we have met. This country really has something very special and unique…

Next destination: Moving south to the country with the largest number of islands in the world.