Step 1: Learning how to drive a motorcycle

Apologies in advance to my dad...

Allie and I learned how to drive a motorcycle in Myanmar!!!  By our friend who could barely speak English!  He took us out to a soccer field and showed us how, then let us ride around the field for a while.  The villagers just stood there smiling at us as children know how to drive a motorcycle there.  I absolutely loved it and after all the motorcycle rides I've had here, it makes me want to buy a motorcycle or scooter.  Watch out roads of California, here I come!!!

Mai Chau love

If there is a heaven, I'm pretty sure mine would be the color green. And it would rain and have fog on occasion.  Mai Chau is about 4 hours outside of Hanoi up in the mountains.  It was suggested to go there instead of Sapa as it is now filled with tourists.  I really loved Mai Chau as it was very relaxed, had several guest houses and you could ride a bicycle everywhere... except mine broke... twice.  It's filled with rice paddies, beautifully steep and green mountains with hiking trails, tropical flora, small villages, particularly rhythmic drum beats at sundown, traditional village music and dancing for the tourists, and nights filled with loud, Vietnamese karaoke music in the air (coupled with really bad singing).  Mai Chau was such a wonderful, relaxing getaway from the craziness of Hanoi and away from the usual tourist spot.

Preparations for a wedding that evening.  It was like Coachella with pumping music all night!

Kids playing some tunes for the wedding later

Aggressive little monkey!  Tried to kick a curious calf in the face...

And pull on strangers pant legs and shoes! 

Then it would chew on a lighter as it guarded its owners laundry

Local villagers make scarves

One of he guest house's puppies that I temporarily adopted - LOVE!
Funny thing, villagers laughed at me for carrying it like a baby as they
 just don't treat their animals the same way we do our pets.

The son of our guest house host... an absolute cutie but a little terror to small animals

Every inch counts

Hanoi is a fast-paced city with it’s heart in the old quarter.  What Hanoi is are lots of cars and motorcycles that are honking at each other and where pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, cars, buses, taxis and such all share the same road… because there are no sidewalks since the motorcycles are all parked on them.  To cross the insanity of Asian drivers at their craziest, the ultimate feat is to simply (though very carefully) cross the street.  Remain relaxed and alert, look in all directions on either side of the street that you’re on because it doesn’t matter what side your on as there is something coming at you from all directions, and inch your way across the street like you’re in a game of Frogger – every inch counts because buses, motorcycles and cars alike will nearly graze you by an inch or two.  You just start walking slowly and everybody adapts to you and occasionally you need to stop for the larger vehicles.  The bigger you are on the road, the more others move out of your way.  There is no such thing as pedestrians having the right of way anywhere in Asia.  On any given day, you can witness at least a few accidents, the majority of them involving motorcycles.  Also, most streets don’t have lines on the road and if there are lines painted on the road, they are merely suggestions… because people drive on the sidewalk too. 

Hanoi does have its charms in the old quarter though.  My friend said it reminded him of New Orleans, I felt like it had an old French flair to it as well.  It’s filled with small twisted streets, souvenir and silk shops, lots of cute restaurants, plenty of food carts with child-sized tables and chairs lining the sidewalks, and lastly, countless motorcycle taxis and street vendors selling their services, doughnuts, cigarettes, fruit and such that just don’t seem to stop aggressively harassing tourists.  Ever.

One thing's for certain, I had a great time at the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel there on Ma May.  It's new, large, clean, entertaining, activities every night, has Western food, good tour programs, nice lounge/deck area, cool staff and great times.  It's also where I met a bunch of great people I ended up traveling with for most of Vietnam.  Highly recommended!

Awesome tree at a small temple in the old quarter

Detail of the tree

Random large island in the middle of the city where there are lots of crops and places to swim

More crops on the island in Hanoi...  The island is only accessible by bike, motorcycle, or walking

Yup.

If only there were a travel agent for real life... but so far so good on this journey in the mysterious land of life!

Home in Chuang Tha, Myanmar

Chuang Tha inadvertently became mine and Allie’s home for a week.  We just became so comfortable there and allowed ourselves to experience what the locals experience that it was hard to leave, even when we were craving cheese, AC, clean (non-smelly) water to bathe in, and working internet.  While the two drawbacks of this little piece of home only has electricity provided by the government from 6pm-10pm (so no AC/fan, lights, internet (!!) for 20 hours a day when it’s super hot) and the water that everyone bathes in and does laundry in is in fact from the lake, this place has soooo many great qualities and charm to it.  Many of these include: locals and Chinese tourists all wear clothing from head to toe in the sun and water, the breezy beaches with big straw umbrellas that we mostly slept and read under all afternoon, gentle waves, ocean water so warm you’d think you were in a bath, small fireworks that go off every night on the beach, women selling foods like fried fish, prawns, lobster and coconut rice dishes on little tables balanced on their heads, children selling the release of sand crabs they captured into the ocean (only to go and capture them again and try to sell their freedom to another unsuspecting tourist), those same children curious about Westerners, learning to read English, and learn more about our electronic gadgets like tablets and iPhones (and teaching them how to play Angry Birds), going to a local Caribbean bar where locals play in a live band singing Burmese rock songs, getting invited by our new local friends for payaya shakes, going to the market to buy fish, and out for dinner and drinks and never expecting anything in return, learning more about the Myanmar culture and politics (along with the unspoken racism that exists there) and the remarkable changes that are soon to come and really change their world for the better, meeting an Italian woman who bought some land there and is building a house to create a more tourist friendly experience and helping out her local friends, having our local host at the guest house help us with some “special” Burmese medicine to help Allie with her food poisoning, and a local who showed us where to get the best pastires in town in his little village and who taught us how to drive motorcycles (sorry Dad!  I really wanted to learn!!).

So many memories, not enough time to write them all here.  But I will never forget my experience in Myanmar and all of the wonderful people I met, all the smiling faces and genuinely warm greetings, the wonderful food, and the new friends I’ve made.  I am unbelieveably excited for Myanmar during this time of great change for them, the new government that they’re about to have and all of the new opportunities sprinting in their direction.

Yep, people even go in the ocean with a shower cap on

And they go in fully clothed

Local coconut hat vendor

I thought it strange at first to ride a bike on the beach, but it seems to be rather successful

Another hat vendor

The BEST pastries in town!!  Of course you have to go into a little village to get them.  (Chef in the background)

Fried-just-about-anything is available for sale along with coconut water

A real treat! We went with our friend to the fish market to select these.  The pastry chef grilled them to PERFECTION!

The kids love playing with the digital camera and seeing the pictures of each other

To help Allie with her food poisoning... but it really did work!!

Our friend who adopted us and showed us around, had a bbq, ate pastries with, and taught us to ride a motorcycle

Our guest house friend who loves singing American music and learning English

Deliciousness

I'm not sure if that's a word, but it is in my book when thinking of these delicious little treats in Myanmar. In all honesty, I have no idea what they're called, but if you see them should you come here I highly recommend buying one or five.  Essentially, they're made of rice flour and are a cross between a pizza and a pancake cooked on a terra cotta pot.  For the savory ones, they add things like beans, parsley, egg, and hot peppers.  For the sweet ones, they add peanut sauce.  All have a hot sauce on the side too.  So f'n good and only cost something like $0.25 each.  Have two and you're full!

One thing you don't see here is that off to our left, there are about 10 villagers who are sitting there with smiles on their faces watching us enjoy our food.  

Bottom picture is made with peanut sauce

The warm underbelly of Myanmar

Magwe and Pyay (Two cities that can be pronounced at least 4 different ways depending on who you ask)

Magwe was the first city that Allie and I started doing the bus portion of our adventures in Myanmar.  While neither had anything truly spectacular to look at from a tourist's perspective, the one thing they both really showed us was just how warm and caring the Burmese people are.  At both of the guest houses we stayed in, we were extremely skeptical at first impression.  In Magwe, the guest house was by most American standards for accommodations extremely scary looking aesthetically (it looked like really shady auto repair warehouse) but we decided it had the basic essentials that we were looking for (safe, mostly clean-ish, and with either a mosquito net, fan or AC) and cheap so we took it.  For Pyay, it looked like a typical guest house/motel, but the owners were not on their A-game, plus power went out fairly frequently.  So while we were not in ideal conditions, both owners made sure to look out for us, give us great recommendations, assist us with food including us bringing in our own, gave insider info on pricing and went out of their way to arrange taxis and tickets for us that were at very fair/local pricing (including arguing with locals for fair pricing), and the owner in Pyay wanting Allie to marry her son who lives in Malaysia because she wanted an American daughter and really liked Allie.

We are so grateful that these two guest house owners (and we're positive the majority of Burmese) have gone out of their way to show us the warm underbelly of Myanmar.  It made all the difference in our experience and perceptions of Myanmar and would happily go back to their guest houses and stay with them again.

Mandalay, Myanmar - A whole lot of not much

Well, the fact that I didn’t take many pictures may give you an idea of what’s there.  To me, it’s a whole lot of city with a few pagodas that are so-so (especially after seeing so many GREAT pagodas already) and a place to stock up on supplies... but we did only spend 24 hours there so perhaps there's more to it than what we saw.  But after a place like Inle Lake, the energy of the city was just tough to deal with after days of tranquility.

One interesting thing that Allie and I did was get a palm reading... and not the warm and fuzzy kind, the kind where they tell me I'm not going to ever get married (but then the message changes based off other info he read), will have 2-3 children, have a tumor that needs an operation (so I need to eat mostly meat and vegetables and no dairy), I'll be famous and very wealthy but I have to continue to do the same job I've been doing...  It was based off of our birthdate and day of week we were born along with some other info we couldn't tell he was doing.  Basically, we took it with a grain of salt but it was interesting nonetheless.  I never had anyone break it down for me 

So here are a few pix of Mandalay for ya...

Full moon...

Full moon's seem to be the thing here in Asia.  I'm sure I could ask a local, "what day of the week is it?" and they would likely nod their head and smile at me.  Though if I were to ask them "full moon?" and point down (like it's today), then they would have a big smile and say "yes!!" like it's their birthday.  Here in Hoi An, the whole town is illuminated in beautiful lighting, colorful fabric lanterns and on a full moon, they float paper lanterns that look like glowing flowers on their river.  While I unfortunately did not get a shot, I'm here to tell you, these things are not to be missed.  Asians love their lunar calendar, and the hope for a blessed life, good fortune and health... as well as a good crop.

...and for us young Westerners, the full moon usually means a big party on the beach.

Beautiful Bagan (a.k.a. Pagoda City)

Yes, Bagan!  Bagan is pretty f’n awesome!  The instant our plane was over the area, it was nothing but pagoda, pagoda, pagoda everywhere!  All shapes and sizes.  4,000 of ‘em all over the place.  It sort of trumps most of the other pagodas that are all over Asia.  It’s S-T-U-N-N-I-N-G.  Most tourists explore by either bicycle (the best way even if you’re not in shape) or others do the tourist buses (tacky!).  Some do horse and carriage… but I just feel bad that a horse has to lug fat Americans around in  extreme heat.  While there are the top five big pagodas that you’re suggested to go to, you should try and just explore some of the other random (and I mean random!) pagodas that are there.  Most you can go up to, inside of, crawl on, sit at, sleep in.  

The big thing for the tourists to do is at sunset, go to one of the big pagodas to watch the sunset.  We decided to make it a happy hour as well.  We bought a bottle of one of Myanmar’s finest rums – Myanmar Rum (it was $3, ‘nuff said), and bought some cans of coke, a few containers of lychee juice to use as cups (definitely not to drink!) and sat on top of a pagoda with our rum and cokes and watched the sunset until it was dark.  Then we had to get down some extremely steep stairs with our little happy hour buzz and bicycle all the way back to our hotel in the dark (one headlamp didn’t even help with the road... and there may have been a slight crash into a sidewalk too) for a few miles, and then along some dirt/sand paths too.  Let’s just say, it was an adventure.  An awesome adventure!

Construction on a pagoda - the lower guy throws what the guy above him needs, higher guy catches it.  Yes, this is how things are done here.

At the same construction site, two ladies go up and down these stairs all day to deliver stuff to the guys above

Cutie kid who kept hiding under my chair and laughing, then LOVED having his picture taken and seeing it afterwards

That's HIS pose, he kept doing this one for some reason or another...

Chris playing soccer with a local boy 

Public water... if you dare drink it

Inside one of the pagodas where ALL stairways are meant for pygmy people, I had to hunch over to go up and down this

Typical Allie pose 

The EXTREMELY steep stairs of the pagodas... where of course we drank at the top and then had to get down without falling all the way down in the dark.  No, we're not that bright.

Sunset on the Ayerwaddy

Pagodas as far as the eye could see...

Travel mates Allie and Chris

This pretty much sums up the feeling and admiration of Bagan