Myanmar 27 Jul - 2 Aug 2014 Part 1 (Yangon)

Having hobby to travel always brought me to different part of the world, and this time as the result of browsing and keep browsing brought me to Myanmar, country where less Indonesian will choose to visit. With some readings over the internet I am ready to explore Myanmar.

As usual my budget travel is via SG but this time I took a hard one. Bought ticket a year ago without thinking where i am going to, landed me in KL a night before then flying to SG within 4 hours then Myanmar the next day, lucky my coming back ticket is just Yangon SG Jakarta. Total ticket cost for me only:
Jkt - KL by LionAir IDR 450,000
KL - SG by Airasia RM 57
SG - Yangon by Tigerair SGD 43
Yangon - SG by Tigerair USD 85.59
SG - Jkt by LionAir IDR 728,000
After all, not really budget trip anymore but considered its high season and hey, free visa entry to Myanmar starting June 2014.

My plan after short readings, was visiting Yangon, Bagan and Mandalay, so to save time I booked hotels and overnight bus via internet.

Arriving in Yangon at night, drizzling..here is the look on landing into Yangon International Airport

Since it's not common visit countries, as predicted, the rate of money exchange is much better there, 1 USD = 968 kyats. After changing another 100 USD to kyats (pronounced jiat?), since we have changed previously in SG, we walked out and found just like Jakarta, a lot of drivers started offering transport but we choose to go to transport stand and booked a taxi with aircon to city center for 8000 kyats (equal to 9 USD). The rate is 7000 kyats for non AC's one. It was a lucky night, we met a taxi driver that speaks good English and we agreed to book him to drive us around Yangon the next day for 40 USD

Arriving at night, not much we can do but since we love to take pictures and I love to be model haha, brought us to the nearest spot nearby the hotel. Sule Pagoda and the city's architecture, I soon fell in love with Myanmar already.

But honestly it's hard to find food stores at around 9pm there even though in city center, the hotel recommended us to walk to China town but we were too tired after an hour of photoshoots.....so we decided to just had our Herbalife shakes, life saver for the night.

Not much can be shared about the Clover City Center hotel, apart from right in the middle of the city, its not worth the money spent which is 65 USD, but we need it. Therefore, for the last day we chose to book for the taxi for a day instead of booking another night. Not to say the bus station and airport are far from city center, and being picked up from the bus station in the early morning and dropped to the airport at the end of service for our flight was part of the 40 USD deal. 

Exploring local food is one of our hobbies. The taxi driver told us, Myanmar is well known only for their breakfast called Moh Hing Kar, so the next early morning we started looking for it around the city center before being picked up. And we found it by roadside. But honestly not the best one or at least didn't meet our expectation of delicious.

Some captures during the day light while we were walking around the city center to find our breakfast.

Firstly, we were driven to the most well known pagoda in Yangon, Shwedagon Pagoda, a gilded pagoda and stupa 99 metres (325 ft) in heigh. Legend told that it is 2,500 years old.
 
It is 8000 kyats/person to enter but it's worth the cents. Can be said the only impressive one for us for 1st day and we spent 3 hours to explore the Pagoda. The Pagoda is actually coated with gold leaves and at the very top of the spire is the diamond orb - a hollow gold sphere studded with 4351 diamonds totalling 1800 carats. On the very tip rests a single, 76-carat diamond.

There are no access found to climb up so we only took some pictures from the existing pictures in the photo museum.

The Shwedagon Pagoda is the oldest historical Pagoda in Myanmar and the world, and its listed on the Yangon City Heritage list, felt great to be able to visit and took some picture. It is a huge complex of stupas, and it was raining, stopped and raining.

Feeling hungry after 3 hours walk in Shwedagon, the driver drove us to one of well known local food center for 23,000 kyats, quite expensive for 2 of us only. 

Hmmm... Looked good in the picture I believe but honestly it was tasteless for my tongue, still eatable though.

We were driven to The Chauk Htat Gyi Pagoda (65 meters long and 16 meters high Reclining Buddha image) and passed by two dragon that interest us but since the entrance was 2 USD and the driver told us it's only a restaurant we cancelled to enter but just took a far away photo of it. Later by readings, I found out it was Kandawgyi Garden and Lake and we can actually take a picture of Shwedagon Pagoda inside on sunset, unfortunately we didn't spend any sunset in Yangon anyway.

We supposed to go to Bogyoke Aung San market but it was close so need to come back on the last day. Finished the day, still got quite a few hours before our bus, so we asked to go to a big mall just to get know Yangon's mall, so we were taken to the biggest mall in Yangon, Junction Center Maw Tin, hmm...don't expect Grand Indonesia, Senayan City or Mal Kelapa Gading, what you can expect is less that a Pluit Village. We just grabbed a durian cake, pastel and banana cake for around 2,500 kyats and mineral water for 200 kyats/bottle after all.

After a long long drive in the heavy traffic road, 2 hours drive, the bus station seemed to be far away, we arrived at Aung Mingalar bus station right at 7 pm to catch our 8pm overnight bus to Bagan.

The overnight bus costs us USD 22 + 500 kyats, but again this was bought online from Jakarta, might can get cheaper but roughly around that price supposedly. Talking about usd and kyats most of people on the road are just taking 1 USD for 1000 kyats but the rate is actually 938 -968, depends on the notes, smaller note has smaller value. So be smart in spending with kyats and USD.

While waiting for the bus, can't stop ourselves to take a peek on the mini Myanmar, the driver said if doesn't  have enough time to explore Myanmar, it's an option to see all the Pagodas in this place but to be honest when I googled it, I couldn't find more information on this one. It is just at the corner of the entrance road to Aung Mingalar bus station. We also have no idea on the entrance fee though since it's closed unfortunately, so we snapped a few photos at the entrance only.

The bus took 8-9 hours to Bagan, seems like this JJ Express bus is a popular choice for tourist although there are a lot of bus services available in the station. Quite impressed with how they handled our "checked in" bags, They were packed in plastic bag and coded with our seat numbers, half of the numbered papers were given to us to get the bag later in Bagan and surprisingly, they will not give you your bag without the numbered papers, unlike in Malaysia's bus.

Hopped up and soon we fell asleep in JJ Express bus. With 2 stops brought us to Bagan at around 6am the next day.

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