Inle Lake was supposed to be amazing. I had read about this place a lot and I knew it’s one of the most touristy places in Myanmar and I wanted to avoid the commercial side of it. Did I manage? Not really, but still, it was amazing. The beginning was rather unpleasant. First of all, the long all night trip ...
Read More »Motorbike trip in Chiang Mai, Thailand
As you might know from our previous article about Chiang Mai, there were many things we didn’t do there… We didn’t really find a good, trustworthy travel agency to do some rafting or trekking and I couldn’t decide which elephant santuary is reliable. Almost every street in the old town of Chiang Mai has some offices selling different tours and ...
Read More »Two days stopover in Hpa An, Myanmar
We were heading to the north of the country but wanted to stop somewhere between Mawlamyine and Inle Lake. We got to the conclusion that Hpa An would be our best option after talking to some people and reading some stuff about it. It’s only 60 hours distance and we thought it might be interesting. The city itself is small ...
Read More »The biggest Reclining Buddha in the world
About 20 km of Mawlamyine is Win Sein Taw Ya, the biggest reclining Buddha in the world. It’s a gigantic 30 meters high and 180 meters long statue that can be spotted many from miles away. The entry road to the complex has 500 real sized statues of monks which gives it a surreal aspect. They have their back faced to ...
Read More »First stop in Myanmar: Mawlamyine
This was our first stop in a big city in Myanmar. We had spent the previous night in Myawaddy after a long trip from Chiang Mai in Thailand to cross the border and couldn’t visit it properly. We could however instantly realize we were in a very different country from those we’ve visited previously in our trip. The women have ...
Read More »Mawlamyine: first impressions from Myanmar
The first thought: it feels like India! A huge chaos on the road, cows wandering around, lots of stray dogs, it’s dirty, the rubbish is absolutely everywhere, darker faces, bigger religious diversity, guys are wearing traditional “dresses”. After three months in south-east Asia we are happy this country feels a bit different. The road from the border to Mawlamyine wasn’t ...
Read More »Things we didn’t do in Chiang Mai
We were back in Thailand, in the first country that we visited during this trip, 3 or 4 month ago. Only now we realized how developed, when compared to Laos or Cambodia, Thailand is, how well tourism organized is, how many restaurants with westerner food, and supermarkets with imported goods there are. After three weeks in Laos we felt like ...
Read More »Backpacker sanctuary: Pai, Thailand
We heard about Pai countless times when we were in Chiang Mai and it was almost impossible to resist the temptation of going there. So we did what we always do. Rented a scooter, took only small backpacks and got on the way for two days of exploring. The distance between both places is only 147 km by the famous ...
Read More »Border crossing: Vientiane (Laos) to Chiang Mai (Thailand)
When the time came to cross the border between Vientiane in Laos and Chiang Mai in Thailand, we asked around in several travel agencies and the lowest price we got was 34USD. We knew we could get it cheaper. Below I’ll show you the prices we got by buying the tickets separately instead of buying it in the agencies. The ...
Read More »A week in Vientiane, Laos
We spent quite a lot of time in Vientiane, as we got stuck waiting for our visas to Myanmar. We got there on Thursday afternoon, so on Friday early in the morning we rented two bicycles and went to the embassy. It turned out, though, that there was some holiday and the embassy was closed, which meant for us that ...
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