Saturday, February 15, 2014
The train to Bagan was special. Hard to tell exactly how old the train carriages are, probably from the 50’s or 60’s. It sort of had an old world charm, until the train started moving. And it moved! Not only forward, but just as much from side to side and up and down. This was going to be a long 18 hour journey.
It was not long before we settled in and once we escaped the city limits we got to see a little bit of rural Myanmar life. As the sun was fading many farmers were hand watering their meager crops with buckets of water slung over their shoulders. There were fires everywhere, presumably the farmers were burning off to prepare the field for the next planting. We saw ox driven ploughs and the occasional tractor. And lots and lots of plastic rubbish.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
We arrived into Bagan about an hour behind schedule, not bad considering. Finding a reasonably priced taxi was a bit of a challenge and we finally agreed to the rather expensive $10 USD fare being asked. It was about 10kms to the hotel, and along the way we started to get a taste of the vast temple scene around Bagan. From the 9th to the 13th century the locals went on a bit of a temple building frenzy and built over 10,000 temples, pagodas and monasteries of which over 2,000 survive today. We also had to pay the $15 USD per person regional entrance fee.
The Ruby True Hotel was delightful. It was located a little outside Old Bagan town. We rented a couple of bikes and headed to the famous Irrawaddy river for lunch. I was still feeling pretty weak and food was not high on the agenda. After lunch we researched the boat service to Mandalay for later in the week and went for a short ride around the nearby temples. We watched the sunset over the valley, very nice.
Once back at the hotel and with Internet access we got the news that one of Caroline’s favourite aunts back in Belgium had passed away. This was a bit of shock. We immediately started to work out how to get back for the funeral service. The real challenge was to getting away from Bagan, and we needed a local travel agent to help with that. The travel agent would open at 9:30am the next morning. In the meantime, United had award flights back from Bangkok and Air Asia had flights from Yangon to Bangkok, so it all looked promising.
We had a very nice dinner at our hotel and Caroline toasted Tante Annie.
Monday, February 17, 2014
We rented electric motor-bikes and headed out for a little temple viewing before the heat of the day. It was a little rushed as we also wanted to be at the travel agent’s when they opened, which we were. The good news: there were seats on the evening flight to Yangon and all going well, we would make the 9:30pm connection to Bangkok. We spent the late morning organizing everything on a very slow internet that keep dropping out. But we managed to email everyone we needed to and even make a few Skype calls to send along our condolences.
We could not make the connection to Europe that night, so we needed to overnight in Bangkok. Brendan kindly reserved us a room at the Amari DMK Airport hotel. We also decided that it made sense to head back to Pattaya and get some “unneeded” things from the car which we could take to Belgium and leave there along with some “needed” things like European passports, shoes, fresh and warm clothes.
We did not have enough money to buy the air-tickets to Yangon, and the nearest ATM was 15 kms away. It took 3 ATM machines, but I finally got cash together for the airfare. Turns out Myanmar travel agents do not accept credit cards. With the air tickets issued we could relax a little. Caroline booked the United flight but we failed to secure the Air Asia flight as their website would not accept our Visa card and we had left our American Express card (for security reasons) in Pattaya, silly us. We would have to sort this out at Yangon airport.
The staff at Ruby True Hotel were very nice helping us out with taxis and advice. At 4pm we said goodbye to them and headed to Bagan airport. Our flight was a little delayed, but we made it to Yangon and were able to secure a connection to Bangkok on Nok Airlines. Around midnight we finally made it to our hotel. But we were in Bangkok, so everything else was easy now.
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
After breakfast we got a taxi for the day, to take us to Pattaya, wait 3 hours while we organized things and then bring us back to Bangkok Airport. Once at Pattaya, we had a nice lunch with Brendan and then spent a few hours in the heat of the day working out what we should take back to Belgium. I was really suffering with my stomach bug and the last few days of being sick were catching up with me. I think I was getting a little dehydrated. Once back in Bangkok, things got easier. We settled into the airline lounge before the 12 hour flight.
Everything happened quite quickly, but we felt really good about the decision to head back.
