Country Info
- Yangon (Rangoon)
- Capital
- kyat (MMK)
- Currency
- 41,994,678
- Population
- MM
- Country Code
Myanmar Slideshow
Myanmar
Travel Blogs from Myanmar
The ancient cities
This is a top pick! Up early for the visit to the 3 ancient Cities. We headed of towards Sagaing, but as this is Myanmar, there was an entry fee for these 3 and also the 4th City, Mingun. There was not much left of the old place with the highlight being Kaunghmudaw Paya. It ...
Burma/Myanmar and the Trick of Getting There
This is a top pick! Sarom whipped his steed from atop our horse-drawn carriage and frantically yelled, "Heeyah" as we charged up to the gothic-like temple. "We must hurry. The sun will be up soon." he said. Our frenetic approach reminded me of Jonathan Harker's ...
The Temples of Bagan
This is a top pick! ... , nothing new from the rest of the Myanmar really but the view from the top was superb. It was a fantastic day out. It was time to move on again. Next stop is Mandalay, Myanmar's second city with four ancient cities to explore in the surrounding ...
Mandalay
This is a top pick! ... cheap internet access, 500 Kyat / min. (Still not cheaper than China though). Can't escape the Chinese politics! In Myanmar, there is a large population of Chinese. It is especially prevalent in Mandalay. We walked into a Chinese restaurant in ...
On the road to Mandalay
This is a top pick! ... take us into the city. We found one, and as he was driving us to our hotel, he did the hard sell, wanting us to do a tour of Myanmar in his car. We considered it, but decided to go our own way. On the way in, we did see Shwedagon in the night all lit up, ...
Myanmar
This is a top pick! Hi Guys, You can read our update from Ranong in our entry from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia entitled 'Travel Rehab!'. Cheers, K & ...
Toungoo via Bago
This is a top pick! ... we visited a pagoda with a 4-face budda. It was about 6hrs drive to Toungoo where we spent the night in the Myanmar Beauty guesthouse. This is a family run place overlooking paddy fields. They grow many vegetables and fruits in the garden - mangos, ...
Pyay
This is a top pick! Pyay is just an over-night on your way back to Yangon. There is not much to do here except visit the pagoda and see the statue of Aung Sang on horseback. Just out of town there is the "glasses" budda. It is a sitting budda with spectacles, whehey! ...
An unlikely venue
This is a top pick! The big 26! Closer to 30 than 20 now. A year earlier I'd never have guessed I'd be celebrating my birthday in Mandalay. Luckily I had some friends to celebrate with, Susan and Guy, who were my co-travellers in Hsipaw and Namhsan. When we arrived at ...
Escape from Pyay
This is a top pick! ... the size of a blackbird. I'd keep a careful lookout behind me on the way back to my Guest House I think! One of the curiosities of Myanmar is the chewing of Betel Nut. Everyone is at it. They get a 'Betel Nut', which I guess comes from a Betel tree or ...
We are in Yangon
This is a top pick! ... cafe until we get to Mandalay though. Colonial Decay and Mix of Religion Yangon, or Rangoon, is the capital of Myanmar. It's filled with beautiful but decaying old colonial buildings, mixed with ugly modern concrete condos. The streets are lined ...
It was supposed to be a 5-hour ferry trip...
This is a top pick! ... passageway on one of my rounds to find a relatively dry place to stand. We had a very typical conversation for my 4 weeks in Myanmar; usually someone would approach shyly (more often than not, a young man), and if I made eye contact and smiled, I guess ...
A lakes, a hike and a city
This is a top pick! The next destination was Inle Lake, which was an 18 hour bus ride on a fairly bumpy road. Conveniently, the bus arrived at our destihnation at 5am. The lake itself was very beautiful & I spent a few days boating around the lake visiting a floating ...
An exotic ring but not so exotic feel
This is a top pick! Mandalay. The name itself conjured images of an exotic city covered in gold in my mind. However, the reality that is Burma's second largest city couldn't have been further from this image. I learnt this almost as soon as I arrived in the city, at ...
Final Thoughts
This is a top pick! ... the people believe that their money is not safe there. Instead people who have some money buy gold, jade, jewellery, cars and property. Myanmar is the only country I know of where the value of a car goes up instead of down. The government limits the ...
The Curious Incident of the Spurious H
This is a top pick! I was up at stupid O'Clock again, 6am. Rachel wasn't feeling well enough to come to Hsipaw (Pronounced Sipaw!!) so she decided to stay in Mandalay one more day before heading out. The bus ride was really beautiful over a mountain range, although it did ...
The wonders of Bagan
This is a top pick! I have always followed the letter to the law, never eat the food at any place that buses stop at. We could not find any food for the 8 hour boat ride to Bagan. So we starved. I had a bad fever and I was grumpy because I was hungry. Eventually, I ...
The Infamous Golden Triangle, Laos
This is a top pick! ... person who will teach me something new and different than the world I know. So the boat ride took us across the river to see Myanmar, but we couldn't get out of the boat. (I went into Myanmar on my own, with my guide, later at the border ...
Kalaw to Inle Lake
This is a top pick! ... , we hired a guide and did a three day trek to Inle Lake. It was one of the most enjoyable experiences we had in Myanmar. We trekked through villages of the hill tribes in the area. Besides the first village, we did not see a single foreigner. Along ...
The end of Myanmar
This is a top pick! After our last trip in the ute, Lucy was set to ride in the back, but for an extra dollar, we rode up front. Just as squashy, but nice seats. It was a 4 hour trip to Mawlamyaing. We had a brief stop in a town, Thaton. The boys needed to do some work on ...
For Hylton Cooke, our Grandad
This is a top pick! ... a very cool, cheap and tasty ciabatta street vendor. When we ask reception, it literally is just outside the hotel! In typical Myanmar fashion, we order a couple of items and our plates multiply to a table full of random dishes! The curry, ciabatta and ...
Burma's ancient city
This is a top pick! ... city was the capital of the Kingdom of Pagan, the first kingdom to unify the regions that would later constitute modern Myanmar. During the kingdom's height between the 11th and 13th centuries, over 10,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas and monasteries were ...
Christmas in Yangon
This is a top pick! ... . 3. Trekking through hillside villages around Kalaw. 4. Bagan. 5. Excellent and cheap food. Five annoying things about Myanmar 1. "What Country? Which Hotel? Change Money? Bus, train, airline tickets?" "America! You very rich!" 2. Kids in ...
Why would we want to leave Pyay?
This is a top pick! ... with a wicked Aussie accent! It turned out that the parents moved to Australia when they were young. They were travelling in Myanmar for a month on vacation. The jolly father proceed to invite us to drink "Holy Water" with him to celebrate the holiday ...
The Lake that never was
This is a top pick! ... . We had some lunch at said hotel next morning and were soon on our way back to the airport. The nine days in Myanmar flew by. A wonderful experience and I would love to go back again some day, especially to see Inle Lake and some beaches in the ...
Buddha's Burmese Birthday
This is a top pick! ... me within 100 meters of my hotel as I suffered the most crippling case of Niagara-diarhea I'd ever known. I thought about Myanmar... It was a great country with great people. Unfortunately it didn't have an equally great Government. The repressive ...
Myamar again
This is a top pick! As we had planned to be in Vietnam at this point we unexpectedly had this chance to have a better look at Burma and the places we didn't have time to visit before. We headed to Mandalay strait away to pickup where we left off. The plan this time was to ...
Border Run to Burma
This is a top pick! ... flying. Dave actually puked. From Phuket we bussed it 5 1/2 hours to Ranong. Our only mission here was to go on a visa run to Myanmar (Burma) and back as our 30 day visa was about to expire. As luck would have it, the morning of our run we were searching ...
Bagan's many payas
This is a top pick! ... Bagan, we shared a taxi to Mt. Popa. Mt. Popa is a tall hill 50 km away from Bagan. It's the holy mountain of Myanmar, home of the Nats (spirits). We would probably have been more impressed by the Mt. Popa had we not already seen the amazing mountain ...
Burma / Myanmar
This is a top pick! The journey to Burma was rather interesting. We flew with Biman Bangladesh Airlines. Who? we hear you ask. Well we were asking ourselves the same question after waiting 2 hours to check in and we were at the front of the queue! As consolation we ...