Part 1 - Bangkok & Myanmar
|
Part 1 - Bangkok & Myanmar
|
Woke up and checked out the breakfast on offer for 2,000 kyats but it didn't look good so I went to pay for the room and the woman tried to charge me for the breakfast I'd not eaten. She also told me about a trek for 39,000 which seemed ok couldn't remember the company name maybe tangle king. Walked past a church which was closed and found the market which was good as I'd heard from Sam that there is a market here only once a week. Got some watermelon for breakfast then went to Sams trekking place which was well recommended but was 45,000 for the 3 day trek plus Inle lake entrance fee. Went to check some other trek places and I met the German pair whose bus had only just arrived so they were not sure they could still do the trek that day. They had been to Eagle trek and eversmile and wanted to see another so we went to Jungle king where a Sikh man told us about their tour which seemed ok and the price of 39,000 and it turned out to be the place the lady in the hotel had suggested and the same price. The German pair who are called Marcus and Nina decided to book for the next day and check into the same hotel as me and I went back to the hotel to use the internet to see what people had said about the tour group. Turned out to be mostly positive so I tried to book with the woman in the hotel so that maybe my bags would get moved to the trekking office but she told me to book at the office so I did that while Marcus and Nina were at the hotel. Marcus had got some tips from the trekking guy for what to do in Kalaw so we started with the market which was supposed to shut at 12 and tried out some food there and looked around. Marcus and Nina both bought some wood for tannakha (they put it on their skin to stay young) from a weird guy. After we headed towards the cave which was supposedly a highlight but we didn't really know where it was. I googled the word for cave and we managed to get an approximate direction to head in. It started raining so we took brief shelter in a bakery type shop where the guy gave us a piece to try which he thought was good. Marcus bought another thing for 100 but paid with a 200 and the guy just kept the extra 100 and said it was for the other thing we tried which is not how samples work but we weren't going to argue for such a small amount. what was good about Marcus and Nina as they even spoke to each other in English even though German was their native language. The rain let up so we carried on walking and passed a sign pointing us in the right direction for the cave but back the way we had come for the bamboo pagoda. We passed a security checkpoint which didn't seem to be doing anything and carried on and were soon following a fellow tourist. After a while it seemed we were going the wrong way but Nina wanted to continue so we did and the tourist in front walked faster away from us so we couldn't ask her. We did manage to find someone on a motorbike who told us we need to head back so we did and made it to the cave which was pretty big and stuffed full of all kinds of Buddhas and had quite a bit of wet floor. Several pictures later we left the cave and pagoda and headed back to the bamboo pagoda and met the tourist from earlier who turned out to be Russian, had not wanted to hear our conversation earlier and was now planning to walk to Inle lake on her own in one day and with that off she went again. We found the bamboo pagoda which was behind another pagoda, neither of them really worth seeing and when we went back down there were 2 kids playing Chinlon and Marcus and I fancied playing so we went and joined them for a 2 vs 2 game which turned out to be a lot harder than it looks.
After we headed back to the hotel and met a girl there called Hannah who was from Konstanz in South Germany and she was volunteering in a monastery school but had a few days holiday due to the moon festival and she wanted to do a trek with a guide she knew already and was meeting tonight. I got bored so went up a hill to see another pagoda then came back and joined Marcus in drinking beer. Hannah's guide friend Cindy turned up and Hannah lifted her on her shoulders (she is pretty tiny) then I lifted Hannah on my shoulders and then she was going to lift Cindy again and I was going to lift Hannah with Cindy still on top but Cindy didn't want to do it and there were people watching. Hannah and Cindy left after recommending a restaurant which did noodles and also served beer. When we got there after a shopkeeper helped us find it they turned out not to serve beer do we asked and it was ok to buy them from a shop and drink there. Carrying on with the drinking after we went back into town and found a really dark place that only served spirit mixers but had some people playing music and getting drunk. We stayed there until late and headed back and I met Dan from Mandalay in the street.
0 Comments
|
|