Currently Listening to: Random hostel music
On Monday morning I woke up before Tom in hopes of getting to FaceTime with my family. My dad’s birthday was two days later and I knew they were having a small family get together to celebrate. In typical Burmese fashion, the wifi was the literal worst and all I got to do was see faces and wave. As this was happening at 4:20am, our taxi showed up 40 minutes early. I had gone to the lobby to FaceTime home, as I had figured the wifi would be strongest there. Rather than come up to me to tell me our taxi had arrived, the man at reception called sleeping Tom. This annoyed me and I marched on over. He told me that the taxi was here and time to go. I told him, “No. Taxi early by 40 minutes and he wait until 5”. I said this about three times and then walked away. Just before 5am we started the checkout process. The hotel tried to charge us for using the glasses in the room and wanted to charge us extra for using the e-bike the previous day for sunrise. It was early, I had no coffee, and they already annoyed me with the taxi situation. I was in no mood to be putting up with these surprise charges. I argued that you can just surprise people with charges and I refused to pay them, so I told him he had no choice and had to remove them. I’m almost positive that between my stern voice and my epic morning resting bitch face, that he knew it was pointless and just gave up immediately. This was a rather disappointing end to Bagan. I loved how peaceful Bagan was and the first time people tried to take advantage of us as tourists had to happen in the city I loved the most.
View from the top of Mandalay Hill
Sunset selfie on Mandalay Hill
Our favorite 8-year-old waiters
The Moustache Brothers
We took the 20-minute taxi ride to the river and boarded a boat with 5 other people on it and from the Bagan region we would travel for 11 hours north to Mandalay. They served us coffee and we sat on the top deck as we watched the sunrise. We napped, read, sun bathed, and even made some rum and cokes with a bottle of rum we had bought the night before. It was the most relaxing travel day I’ve had this entire trip.
We left Bagan at 5:30am and arrived in Mandalay at 4:40pm. Upon arriving, the first thing I noticed about Mandalay was how dusty it was. My phone, my bags, even I was covered in a layer of dust. It was also a much drier heat than I have been experiencing here in Southeast Asia. Monday night we did what we always do when getting to a new city. We checked in, dropped our bags, found food, and then wandered. We found small night market and eventually found a beer station, which is a restaurant that has cheap beer on draft. Two or three beers later we were exhausted and called it a night.
After spending the next morning working out some travel arrangements, we took off in search of the palace. As we were making our way there, we met a local taxi driver. He told us not to give the corrupt government our money that we should instead pay him to be our driver for the day. He spoke great English and had also told us that he us d to be an English teacher, but years ago had been arrested and jailed by the government for three years for speaking out against the Burmese government. After finishing his three year sentence, he lost his teaching job and then became a taxi driver. He also promised to tell lots of jokes. We negotiated a price and decided to have him drive us to all of the other sights in Mandalay. Over the course of the day we saw the longest teak bridge in the world, which is where we found a fortune teller. He told me lots of depressing things. He said both my first and last name are bad names (Thanks, Mom and Dad). He also said that I won’t marry until I’m 35. My future husband will be older than me, and he will be an alcoholic and that no matter what I will try to do, I won’t be able to stop that. He also said I’m going to have three kids, that I’ll have heart disease, and somehow he slyly mentioned that I’m overweight and shouldn’t eat pork. It was a great experience! From the bridge we visited another pagoda, had lunch at a delicious and very cheap bbq place and then off to see more pagodas. We ended the day at the steps of Mandalay Hill. It is a large hill that you climb steps up to see a gorgeous view of sprawling Mandalay. As you climb the 760ft to the top you pass through several smaller pagodas. We made it to the top for a spectacular sunset and we were able to speak to several young monks for a while. The monks go there at sunset to practice their English with the westerners. The group of teenaged monks was from Inle Lake. They had been in Mandalay studying for about a year and would return to Inle Lake in about two to three years.
That evening, after sunset and the climb down the hill, we went to see the Moustache Brothers performance. The Moustache Brothers were at one point a comedy trio. They perform an odd show that involves traditional Burmese dance, and jokes about their totalitarian government. At times their accents made it difficult to understand, but overall it was very entertaining. We found out that the third “Brother” passed away several years ago of lead poisoning while serving a prison sentence for making jokes against the government. Burma is beautiful and the government is great at keeping its dark secrets away from the westerners traveling through the country, so this was something that was eye opening, but rather a strong reminder of what is really going on.
The following day we did some more sightseeing and it was rather underwhelming, so we decided to cut our losses and found a hotel that would let us pay to use the pool. We swam for a bit and eventually decided to have dinner at the beer station we visited two nights prior. The little 8-year-old boys that help serve customers remembered us and kept trying to get us to drink faster and more beer. They spoke very little English and we practiced counting to 10 with them. We also started making funny faces with them. They thought we were hilarious.
Our last full day in Burma was fun. We rented a motorbike and Tom drove us through Mandalay and over the bridge to Mingun to see the world’s largest uncracked bell and a few more pagodas, including a pretty all white one. It was great to ride through the villages past the kids on their push bikes and around the random cows along the road. That night we once again went to our usual beer station and this time the boys decided to take pictures with us. They would high five us as they walked past our table and one of them found some stickers to give us. It was a perfect way to end our adventures in Burma.
That last morning we woke up, packed and were off to the airport and headed to Cambodia. Of course, leaving Burma wasn’t easy. Our first flight was delayed over an hour and at one point they didn’t think we would make our connection flight in Bangkok to Phnom Penh. We got to Bangkok and rushed to the gate thinking we were barely going to make the connection. Guess what guys… That flight was delayed too! In the end, we arrived in Cambodia about 4 hours late and both desperately wanting a beer.

Strange Trails 