Myanmar Expectations

You might recognize the name Myanmar (pronounced me-an-mar, AKA Burma) as it has been in the news quite a lot recently because of Aung San Suu Kyi. Over the past few years there has been considerable changes and reform happening in the country. The military is slowly loosening its grip and the roots of democracy are supposedly taking hold, however frail they might be. For these reasons we have been wavering on whether to visit Myanmar or not. As we have traveled over the past few months we have ran into some travelers and talked to friends who have visited Myanmar and they have all said the same thing: “You have to go to Myanmar!”

In our research prior to deciding to go to Myanmar, we found out that the infrastructure in the country is poor and it is the least developed out of any of the South East Asian countries; traveling there is like going back in time.  A New Zealand couple we met in Vietnam mentioned how friendly everyone was and what a great experience they had. Wowed by all the wonderful stories, we decided that we must go to Myanmar before it changes too much.

As soon as our friend from LA, Justin, arrived in Bangkok we started to make plans. At 8:15 am we were at the Republic Of The Union Of Myanmar consulate in Bangkok to get our same-day visas (1260 Baht or 40USD) and we bought our plane tickets to Yangon, the largest city of Myanmar and the major port of entry into the country. After getting our visas and booking our flight for the next day, we started to read more about Myanmar and quickly realized that no foreign banking is allowed in the country. In Myanmar,  there is exactly one ATM and it only works with a Myanmar bank. You can not pay with credit card because no one takes credit card except for the most expensive hotels in Yangon. To put it another way, when you arrive in Myanmar you are completely isolated from your money, the only money you have is what is in your pocket.  On top of that, every message board we were reading mentioned that the US dollars you bring in has to be crisp without a crease or wrinkle, otherwise, they won't exchange it or it will be exchanged at an even poorer rate.

So the three of us frantically maxed out our withdrawal limits for two days in Bangkok. Being in Thiland, we withdrew Thai Baht from the ATM, paying a $5 ATM withdrawal fee and a currency conversion fee from US to Thai Baht. Then we had to exchange our Thai Baht back to USD since the only currency that all currency exchange places in Myanmar took US dollars (and perhaps Euros or Singapore dollars).  And finally in Myanmar we converted our USD into Kyats (pronounced chyet or jyet).  Just as a tip for anyone wanting to do something similar, at BKK airport you can withdraw a maximum of $500 USD at any of the airside ATMs.  Also, while it is best to have a couple of smaller bills, when you exchange to Kyats, the best exchange rate will be crisp $100 bills.  Plus, the best exchange rate to Kyats is at the Yangon international airport; better than any of the other smaller airports we flew into.

With the stress of getting a one day visa and the concern that we were going to run out of money in the middle of Myanmar, our trip was starting off on the wrong foot.

Thailand and Myanmar Cities

Darin and I have bought our return ticket to LAX on June 27th.  In the mean time, we plan on visiting Siem Reap, Cambodia and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  But this tally will just count the cities we've visited in Thailand and Myanmar.  Our country count is now at 7.

Our last city count ending in Ha Long Bay in Vietnam had us at 29 cities.
30. Bangkok
31. Phuket
32. Khao Sok National Park
--   returned to Bangkok
33. Yangon, Myanmar
34. Bagan, Myanmar
35. Mt Popa, Myanmar
36. Nyaung Shwe (Inle Lake), Myanmar
--   returned to Yangon
--   returned to Bangkok
37. Koh Samui, Thailand
--   returned to Bangkok

Map of Thailand

Zoomed In Map of S Thailand

Map of Myanmar

Zoomed in Map of Myanmar Cities

Getting around, we did the following:
Plane from Hanoi to Bangkok
Plane from Bangkok to Phuket
Bus from Phuket to Khao Sok NP
Van from Khao Sok to Surat Thani Airport
Plane from Surat Thani to Bangkok
Plane from Bangkok to Yangon, Myanmar
Plane from Yangon to Bagan
Car from Bagan to Mt Popa
Car from Mt Popa to Nyaung Shwe
Plane from Nyaung Shwe to Yangon
Plane from Yangon to Bangkok
Plane from Yangon to Koh Samui
Plane from Koh Samui to Bangkok

Plane rides: 17 (previously at 8, plus 9 above)
Car/Van rides: 13 (previously at 10, plus 3 above)
Bus rides: still at 5
Ferry/boat rides: still at 5
Train rides: still at 17

Just to give you an idea of how much travelling we've done, here is a little calendar that shows which cities we were in on which dates:

Khao Sok Thailand

The bus rocked side to side for the five hour ride form Phuket, Thailand to Khao Sok, Thailand. From the beach town of sin, sex tourism and partying to the unknown national park of unspoiled rainforest. “Khao Sok”, the bus driver called out, a rugged looking backpacker, Anthony and I are the only ones to get off.  The three of us hire a truck, the only one around, to drive us down the only road around. The town is small with two general stores, a few restaurants and five resorts catering to the only industry.  The road dead ends at Khao Sok National Park.

In the morning of day one we scheduled an elephant ride for 900 Baht/person (~$30), cliché I know. Being Americans we expected some sort of safety briefing when we arrived, don’t shout, no flash and no sudden movements. Being Thailand, the staff simply gestured toward an elephant and we hopped on. 

An elephant is not the smoothest of animals, both in texture of skin and ride comfort. Their skin is thick and coarse with bristly hairs and we rocked side to side in our seat as we headed into the jungle. Despite the rocking, an elephant ride is pretty cool and it was made even better by the fact that we were taken into the rain-forest. Through streams, over rocks and past trees until we hopped off and got to spend a few minutes at a waterfall. On the way back, this being a rain forest, water fell from the sky as if someone was spraying a water hose at us. We huddled under some umbrellas and laughed in aww of the rain. Afterwards, for 20 Baht (<$1) we treated our elephant to some pineapple. 

On our second day, Anthony was feeling a little tired and stayed in as I walked out one morning to the park. There is a 200 Bhat (~7USD) entrance fee that I was happy to pay. Khao Sok is some of the oldest rainforest in the world and receives around 3.5meters of rainfall a year. Just walking through the paths without a guide I could see a number of interesting animals including, spiders, snakes, ants, birds and leeches. 

Ha Long Bay: The Best of Vietnam and Worst of Tourism

I've never been the type of person that likes being part of a tour group.  I find it too restricting and doing things that you don't want to do.  But tour groups can not be avoided.  It makes some things easier and definitely can be more economical in certain areas and this is definitely the case for Ha Long Bay.  Ha Long Bay is located about 3 1/2 hour drive NE of Hanoi and has been newly minted as one of the "New 7 Wonders of the World."  It's a bay dotted with around 2,000 islands, which beats the Hundred Islands that we visited in the Philippines.  What it also has over the Hundred Islands are a lot more people and a lot more boats.  And this is the downside of tourism.  Good and bad, beautiful places draws a lot of people and you have to deal with the crowds to enjoy the site.  (Yes, I understand that we too add to the crowds and spoiling the beautiful scenery.)

And with so many people, the only way to handle the crowd is to have them join tour groups.  And that is what we did. The options to visit Ha Long Bay are either a day trip, a 2 day/1 night trip, a 3 day/2 night trip, and private boat.  All online guides that Darin and I read recommend the 3 day/2 night option and for $200 USD per person, we booked our tour and we were off.  We were picked up in Hanoi and 3-ish hours later, we were in Ha Long city boarding a boat that will take us to our home for the next two nights.  

The boat that brought us to our "home" on Ha Long Bay

Not our boat, bus similar.  Ours didn't have the fake sails.

On the top deck of our tour boat

And true to form, our first afternoon/evening on the boat is like every bad tour group come to life.  We had 1 hour to kayak and we were all corralled to go to specific areas.  We then went back to the boat and had 10 minutes to gather our stuff to go to Tee Top Island to spend time at the beach.  And the beach was nothing compared to the gorgeous beaches we've been to.  But the view from the top was nice.

 Though we were enjoying the view and the bay, we were dreading our time because we felt very constricted and regimented.  It wasn't very fun and we left comments saying as such.  The start of day 2 was similar to the previous afternoon where we were corralled again to go visit a cave.  After caving in Sagada just a month previous, this was very lackluster and not worth a picture or further comment.

After visiting the cave was when the best of Vietnam showed itself.  Sharing the tour boat with us were 15 other people that only signed up for the 2 day tour.  So we said our good-byes to our fellow passenger and boarded a smaller boat for our 2nd day trip.  And this is why the tour books recommend doing 3 days on a boat in Ha Long Bay.  We got on a boat that can hold 10 people comfortably, yet we were the only ones on the boat.  Our "day trip" boat took us out further in the bay, where we saw 2 other boats at a time carrying no more than 2-4 tourists each.  We were in heaven.  Far far less people and far far far less other boats.  So we were left to our own to enjoy this beautiful piece of nature.  And we had no set agenda.  We could jump off our boat and take a swim, we can kayak for as long as we wanted.  We were even suppose to visit a pearl farm and Cat Ba Island, but we fell asleep on our boat and napped for as long as we wanted.

After a glorious day on our "day trip" boat, we returned to our "home" boat where we met a new batch of tourists on a 2-day trip or the start of their 3-day trip.  And the scheduled time started again.

Don't get me wrong, our "home" boat was still spectacular.  Below is our view from our bedroom and our typical view during meals.  Not too shabby.

So if you come to Vietnam, go to Ha Long Bay.  You haven't really been to Vietnam unless you do.  And if you do go to Ha Long Bay, shell out the cash and eke out the time for the 3-day tour on the boat for both nights.  It will be well worth it and you will find out why so many people flock to this site.  

The Jaded Traveler in Sa Pa

Prior to arriving in Vietnam, we had a couple of cities in mind to visit.  It looked like we would have been able to see 4-5 cities, but would have been limited to ~2 nights at each cities w/ all the travel time in between.  So we had to decide between Sa Pa and Hue.  As you can guess from the title of this post, we opted for Sa Pa.  This is a little town in the northern hills of Vietnam, close to the Chinese border known for the rice terrace views and the minority people that live there, the Hmongs (pronounced Mongs).  We're sad to report that we might not have chosen wisely.  As beautiful as the hills and the views were, it was nothing compared to the views that we had in Sagada in the Philippines.  Sa Pa is just a little bigger than Sagada and the town is much more used to tourist as we were constantly asked to purchase a trinket or get a ride on a motorbike somewhere.  Even Cat Cat village, where you get to see the Hmong people live, felt like it was staged for the tourist.  It's pretty sad that we've become the jaded traveller and had a difficult time enjoying the beauty of Sa Pa without it's comparison to Sagada.  And we're left wondering if we would have felt the same about Sagada had we visited Sa Pa first.

We still made the most of our time in Sa Pa by renting another scooter and scooting around the little town and to a nearby waterfall.

A View at Breakfast

Love Waterfall

The other upside to our visit to Sa Pa was getting to be closer to the rice terrace and the caribiou (water buffalo).

South America...I mean, Phu Quoc Island

The beauty of having no set itinerary and the willingness to be flexible has allowed us to find small towns to visit and plan for it just a couple days in advance.  And that is exactly what happened in Vietnam.  The usual cities to visit are of course Saigon and Hanoi and then thrown into the mix are either Hue, Da Nang, Hoi An, Sa Pa, and/or Ha Long Bay.  But a place that hasn't hit the mainstream yet is a little island off the East coast of Southern Vietnam called Phu Quoc.  This little island, which is just south of Cambodia and has territorial disputes w/ Cambodia, is shaped kinda like South America and is slated to become a tourist destination...but not yet.  Plans for large resorts to be built haven't taken off yet.  So we decide to book a plane and book a resort and off we went.

Our resort has individual bungalows in a little garden that steps off onto the beach.  There are maybe a dozen resort on this beach, with each resort claiming the beach area right in front of their property.  While the sand was a little coarse and grainy (nothing close to the powder white sand that we experienced at Boracay), it was a perfect area and Darin and I were glad to have been back on the beach after a month of touring North East Asia.

Our Garden Resort, Thanh Kieu Resort

Our Resort's Private Beach

Since Phu Quoc Island doesn't have the massive amounts of people that Saigon had and that the island seemed fairly small, we decided to rent two motorbikes (at 120,000 dong or ~6 USD a piece) and tour the little island.  Having only one previous experience driving a motorbike, I was a bit excited and apprehensive at the same time.  It was wise of me to be apprehensive, since I almost crashed the bike after going only 20m.  With a little scrape on my shin and a tip from Darin, we were off again.    And after an hour, when I wasn't gripping on to dear life, I was able to look around and enjoy the beautiful scenery and feel the wind blowing through my helmet covered "beautiful hair" (the guy we rented the motorbike from apologized for having to wear a helmet and ruin my "beautiful hair").

In Phu Quoc Island, you can either stay within the city, at the beach near the city, or at the beach on the South East beach called Sao Beach.  This is the beach that the travel guide books says is more beautiful and contains only 3 resorts.  The down side is that since there isn't much else on this side of the island, you don't have much else to do except use the resort facilities and lay on the beach.  But with our rented motorbikes, we were able to visit this side of the island and get to enjoy the crystal blue waters and powder fine sand.  It's like Boracay again with a fraction of the people & resorts.

After an hour or two at Sao Beach, we jump on our motorbikes and head back to our resort.  This time, we travel along the west side of the island.  This road travels along the coast for ~12km and was the uber-highlight of our motorbike trip for the day.  This beach, known as Long Beach (but much nicer than the one in Southern California), is where the mega resorts are supposed to be built.  So perhaps one day, we can return when they're built and say, "I remember when..."