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I spent a month there in 2003, so won't waste time giving you dated information on prices and other time-sensitive information. There's a well-trod tourist quadrangle, with Yangon, Inle Lake (Taunggyi), Mandalay, and Bagan (Nyaung U) at its vertices. The Golden Pagoda at Kyaiktiyo is pretty cool, gilded and impossibly perched atop a giant boulder. It's a few hours south of Yangon. Headed north from Yangon, Bago is a cool little city to kill a night on the way to Inle Lake. At Inle Lake, I loved the Jumping Cat Monastery, but I'm a cat person. The lake itself is a really cool place to unwind for a while, not that you'll really need to unwind in Myanmar. Mandalay is definitely overrated - I thought it was hot and dusty, without much to see. On the other hand, the nearby hill station of Pyin U Lwin is worth visiting, after you decide that Mandalay sucks. Bagan is spectacular - my favorite ruins site in mainland southeast Asia. Overland travel is arduous. When I was there, I took semi-private buses whenever possible, in order not to put hard currency into the hands of the ruling junta. That is obviously not so much an issue today. I've heard the trains are fun, if slow. There are probably reasonable internal flights now too, that you can take with a clear conscience. People are awesome - the most gracious and outgoing I experienced anywhere in Asia. It was beyond my imagination how they had managed to produce such a monstrous regime.
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Apr 6, 2016 16:42
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Nexal posted:Mont lin ma yar in inle lake next to massage place is probably th tastiest snack ive had in my life. I will book a flight to myanmar just for that sometime in life again. I love cats, and could spend all day at the Jumping Cat Monastery on Inle Lake.
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Jun 14, 2016 13:28
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webmeister posted:The Jumping Cat Monastery is no more - the monk who was training them passed away earlier this year, and nobody has picked up the hoop since. You can still go there (it'll be scheduled on the tour), but there's nothing hugely interesting to see unless you've never visited a Buddhist monastery before. That's really sad - I'm a cat freak, and spent almost an entire day at that monastery in 2003. Sounds like I wouldn't even recognize the country now. I got there the day after Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested in Mogok in mid-2003. I flew in with the English-language newspaper from Bangkok, which carried news of the arrest on its front page. For the next month in the country, most of the people had no idea she'd been arrested. There were no cell phones, no Internet, no ATMs. I carried my entire month's budget in US dollars, changing them to insanely cheap black-market kyat as necessary, after bribing the airport customs lady to avoid having to buy worthless Foreign Exchange Certificates. What are expenses like now? I was eating and drinking well on a backpacker budget of $20-25 per day.
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Dec 13, 2016 17:23
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Mandalay posted:There are flights from Mandalay to BKK if you must. Also from Chiang Mai to Mandalay. TheImmigrant fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 00:43
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