We didn’t really know too much about Hoi Ann when we arrived, as usual and this was becoming sort of annoying, the bus dropped off in front of a hotel and immediately we had people trying to sell us rides into town (why didn’t the bus drop us off in town?) and the hotel staff were trying to tell us that the they had the cheapest accommodation and there were no others and blaah blah blah!  I swear, if we didn’t have our guide book to sort through the onslaught of tourist eaters life wouldn’t be as grand as it was on our tour of Asia. Annnywho, of course anyone we talk to tells us that the town is far away, but we manage to figure out we are using town signs and our map. Oh hey, looks like we’re not too far off. This is the usual procedure whenever you get dropped off in somewhere random, find out where you are, and don’t rely on those that are trying to take you into town unless you really need to. Annnnyway, so myself, Ange, a random and another random we saw far too many times in random places throughout Vietnam started heading into town!! Or so we thought. =\ Turns out, we knew where we were but we headed in the wrong direction eheheh, some 20 minutes later we were back in the same position we had been and headed down the other direction, some 10 minutes on foot after that we were in town and sorting out accommodation.

Another destination to the journey of life.

Team Mitchange had already picked out our accommodation in the frenzy that took places after we got our bags off the bus but they were full so we found another random place that wasn’t listed. Turned out to be alright! Buuut, we had to wait for our rooms to become ready, people were still in there so they had to check out and they had to be cleaned. This took AGES! I swear, we were in the lobby room for such a long time! We checked our emails and facebook on the computers, then had breakfast and read books and looked into tours and the attractions of the area, by this time we were HALF way into our wait we found. Needless to say when we got into our room, after a shitty night sleep on the bus we went straight for showers and naps.

Old town looks like it could use a make over. ="

Fast forward after nap time, we headed out to see old town Hoi Ann! Hoi Ann, is famous for a few things. Tombs, a Japanese bridge, a mountain, their tailors, old town and the beach. Tailors most importantly are what made Hoi Ann so attractive to many foreigners! You’d come in drop a hundred dollars and come out with a fantastic tailor made suit with a few shirts and pants and whatnot. In fact, the tailors of the day were so popular and successful that this has led to every son and his grandma opening up tailorshops that don’t exactly make the cut in Hoi Ann and are generally crap, so as a general rule of thumb, don’t trust your hostel too much when they recommend a tailor. ASK around! You need to ask other foreigners and soon you’ll see that many have horror stories. But that aside there are many good tailors and whatnot in Hoi Ann, you can get leather boots, suits, shirts, pants, dresses and pretty much anything made up by these guys! All fitted perfectly for a fraction of the western price. These things usually take days so make sure you set aside the time. Ange and me were completely ignorant of this when we arrived and got nothing made! Not that we could have if we knew, for we’d have to carry it around for the rest of the trip. If there had been some reliable postal options we would have got some things made up and sent them home had we known.

The local brew was quite good!

Ahh all that aside, as mentioned another attraction is the world heritage site “Old Town”. Now, I think you’re supposed to pay a levy or fee to enter here but you really don’t. There are only two ‘ticket boxes’ on two entrances, now this is two entrances out of like 30+ entrances into Hoi Ann. All the same we were able to just walk past the ticketing place when we got there, it early afternoon by the time we arrived. We had read about great cocktails and beers in Hoi Ann so we went to check it out, and sure enough we found some good things. It wasn’t even nightfall yet but we had managed about 5 places with a drink or two at each and Ange even got a crepe / pancake thing at one. It was around this time that we headed back to our hostel for reasons unknown, I think it was to grab a beer or something. Anywho, this is where we met Adam and Franzi sitting outside we started talking to these two and before you knew it we were walking back into town talking about motorbikes and Vietnam and how Adam could teach me how to ride one!!

Something I’d be dieing to do for aages. (we had even spoke to hostel staff bout hiring motorbikes xD) We ended up in one of the places were in earlier that afternoon on our recommendation to watch one of the World Cup games and play some pool. I don’t know if we actually ate anything that night, it’s sort of confusing now that I try to remember it.. but we played a bit of pool, drank some beer and watched the game! It was generally a good night. The next morning at round 11ish, Adam got me on the back of his bike and did a lap around the block. Ohohhh, I forgot to mention that Adam and Franzi had met on the road and were doing the Ho Chi Mihn City to Hanoi stretch on motorbike like the Top Gear episode I mentioned in a previous post!! So yeah, this being something I want to do now I was pretty keen to learn from him and hear about how the roads have been so far. (because quite frankly it looks scary as all hell breaking loose!)

I was down, up and ready!

Ahhh but yes! He showed me the controls and sure enough I was RIDING A MOTORBIKE!! Switching up and down gears and generally MOVING and not falling off. Hehehe it was GREAT, in fact! So great that I was convinced that today’s adventure, where I had planned to hire a motorbike (for 2-3 dollars) and take myself and Ange exploring the area and to check out the beach! Well, we did just that and it was so so sooo cool. ^^ heheh awww, navigating the traffic was crazy and Ange is the worst backseat bike rider ever!! She barks commands to slow down and be careful every 3.654 seconds! But yes, the 20 minute bike ride to the beach was awesome and we got sunburned but it was AWESOME. xD

The sand was too hot for my liking. FAR TOO HOT!!

Ummm so yeah we made the drive to the beach in one piece and were asking how much it’d cost to get a sunbed, eventually we found a nice place for a reasonable price and we set up camp! We got our beds together, laid back and enjoyed the heat and the books we were reading. Took a few dips in the ocean and then went back to reading. It was a nice relaxing day and I’m sure it added lots of tan points to Ange’s body, which is like, the most important thing in the world to women when they go to the beach. I eventually finished MY book and was reduced to reading the guide book.. which sure enough got a bit boring after a while. And well, apparently I don’t like the beach cos I can’t swim that well which is a complete lie but yes after hours we eventually left only to come back that night for the England vs. Germany World Cup match.

From the beach we ended up going to a secluded spot and this is where Ange learned to ride the motorbike under my supreme tutelage. I’ve gotta say though, seeing Ange riding a motorbike was scary, jumping on the back and doing laps with her while hearing her cackling with glee was even more horrific. I can never look at her the same now. Needless to say, that was the last time she rode on our trip as it was quite terrifying and being the man I am, come on, I’m all you need as a motorbike driver guy. We drove around a bit more and it started raining at one point a lil bit and that made Ange almost cry in panic, telling me to slow down twice as fast as she did previously! But all in all it was super fun! It’s quite easy to learn to ride a motorbike too! BUT, horror! When we got back we found out that Adam got into an accident and had completely messed up his hands!! He was testing out Franzi’s bike and it had dodgy breaks so he clipped the back of Franzi who was riding on Adam’s bike. Needless to say, he went to the doctors who stiched up his hands and he pretty much lost a ton of skin on his fingers. This accident didn’t help well with my whole convincing Ange to hire a bike again in the future to go places and do all sorts of other cool epic things that can be done with the aid of a motorbike. Baaah.

Pretty little sunset that we saw.. because of the motorbike!! (all hail motorbike!)

We met up with Adam and Franzi for some Indian food which was long overdue, missing those days in Japan where we’d go to New Delhi, and Franzi showed off her new dress that she got done. We piled into a cab with a few other people and headed off to the pub/ club where we were going to watch the game. It had a massive projector screen which was, and I repeat, massive and it was perfectly located on the beach. Stars, projector screen and a bunch of guys shouting at the screen.  It was an important match, England vs. Germany. Being a Commonwealth citizen I had to root for the motherland despite everyone seeming to know they’d lose. Ahh well, it was a good night. We met a HUGE number of Germans, bloody hell they’re everywhere.

The next morning we had to jump on a bus for a few hours up to Hue. This bus was a sleeper bus even though we were only travelling for a few hours. At one of our pit stops we went for food at some random joint away from everywhere else and met a well versed Vietnamese man who loved the World  Cup and served us. Back onto the bus and we almost at Hue, oh Hue.

Take me now Hue! take me noooowww.

Our bus was heading into Nha Trang, we were wide awake.. sort of, we didn’t really sleep -that- well. Night buses, arrrgh.. but it was a 9 dollar fare and it got us 9 hours away. Sort of cool right? Nha Trang! one of the many beach paradises of Vietnam and we were there, much to the delight of Ange. You see, me being the awesome person I am, I live on the Gold Coast which has some of the best beaches in the world, so going to the beach or going to some beach paradise isn’t much of a deal to me, because I have on them my doorstep. Anywho, Annge coming from … the UK, which isn’t really renowned for its beaches, but rather for its miserable weather.. baah anyway, beaches are the second greatest thing in the world to her.

So we arrived bleary eyed at some random place, pulled out our map and started walking, we had booked a place via HostelWorld and had to find it cos we really really wanted to crash. We kind of walked past it due to umm… navigations errors but surely enough we rocked up 5 minutes later. It was early in the morning, about 7 to 8 ish and we were ready for a good nap. Walked into our place and the reception was very nice, the lady was nice too! she led us up to our room and we walked into a massive room with 2 double beds and a balcony, all for 13 dollars a night. Not bad! we promptly got out of our sweaty clothes and went to bed. Around 1pm ish, we were up, showered and ready to take on the world a little. Explore Nha Trang! this was Vietnam baby, out of the city and in a beach paradise! but we were hungry! so that all had to wait, so we went down to the beach, to a restaurant on the beach and had some food. I can still remember the seafood fried noodles that I ordered, they were amazing. Arrrgh what I would do for some of that now. We sat and enjoyed our food as the heat came down on every unshaded bit of everything we could see. I wasn’t looking forward to walking out and about, Ange couldn’t be happier. The time had come to do that terrible walking in the heat thing and it wasn’t so bad. We decided we’d walk along the beach and then eventually go in towards town for an ATM and see if we could find a travel agency. Got our money out and we were hassled by an old lady trying to sell her glasses, Ange bought a pair but me being the non glasses wearing hipster that I am declined after thinking about it for a second, we found a travel agency and started talking to a nice lady about her tour and bus deals. We left with a tour booked for tomorrow and a bus ticket that would get us from Nha Trang to Hoi Ann to Hue to Hanoi~! the weird old lady was still waiting outside, hoping I’d buy some glasses and kept following me. I had a bit of fun haggling with the lady and got a nice price for some sunglasses.. I think? you can never know.

After that we went down to the beach and sat on some seats in the shade and started reading a bit, until another old lady came along trying to sell us bracelets. Ange was loving this, having the shops come to her. A bit later we had some bracelets and whatnot and continued on reading. Ange went off in search of ice cream and before you knew it we had a perfect moment on those seats, staring out at the ocean with our ice creams and with each other. A cloud came overhead and took away most of the heat so we decided to move to the beach proper, laying down and setting our bag aside we started reading our books. We must have been completely engrossed in them as we didn’t notice our bag was missing when we went to look for it again. It was right next to us a second ago wasn’t it? … oh no. Our bag had been stolen, a bag, with our camera, Ange’s wallet which included a million dong, her cards and some photos. To make matters worst our camera had all the photos and videos of our entire trip! priceless memories. We were in panic mode, how could this happen? who would dare take a bag from someone who was sitting right next to it? how did we not notice? ahh so many questions. The only thing we had to take away the pain was that everything was we didn’t lose much. Couple hundred dollars worth of stuff, mostly just the camera and Ange’s wallet. I still had my wallet in my pocket with my cards so we were okay, the passport was with the reception and I had backed up all of our photos online in Bangkok not 3 days ago. So we just lost our videos, Ange’s bag which was quite special, her wallet with some printed photos and a bit of money.

We did the usual searching around, looking in a few bins and bushes and came up empty handed, it was a real tragedy, we went to a information booth on the beach and they directed us to a police station quite a walk away. First we went off in direction of the travel agency, and unfortunately there was a new girl there, it took a while but we explained that our tickets were stolen for the bus and she used her receipts to give us a new tickets which was nice, off to the police station then. We got there and then they got us to fill out a form and wanted passport copies. We had to go out ourselves and find a copier because the police station didn’t have one, not only that but the copier across the street had no power. There were frequent power outages in Nha Trang. So Ange filled out the report, and we set off with our passports after retrieving them from our hotel in search of a copy machine. After about 15 to 20 minutes searching, we went into an ISP shop and asked and sure enough they let us use their copier machine free of charge. They were so nice about it too.  We returned to the police station, nobody there spoke English, we were using a tourist police as a translator over the phone. We asked for a copy of the report with stamps and whatnot and they told us to get an envelope and appropriate stamps so they could send it to us. I wrote down my address because I would need it for the insurance but they never sent it through, now I’m a few hundred dollars out of pocket because of their incompetence and a bit of my laziness. Next time I know how to handle things better there. We went home disheartened, had a bit of a nap as it’d been quite an exhausting couple of hours, then ordered some pizza and watched some TV before going to bed.

Next day, we had the tour, but we were still feeling a bit down. The tour started real early and someone was to pick us  up so we were ready downstairs waiting and we were promptly picked up, it was our first Vietnamese tour and we didn’t know what to expect. Simply put it was magical and exactly what we needed, jumped onto the pretty packed boat, visited an aquarium, met two Aussies, Dean and Ash who were holidaying with their parents for a few weeks in Vietnam. Next was snorkelling, we hung out with Ash and Dean and they explained that they had had their camera stolen recently too. Turns out, in touristy places its not all too uncommon. Shame! but all the same, it made me feel like less of idiot as it was mostly my fault because I had used the bag as a pillow then sat up and continued reading. Anyway, after snorkelling we had lunch on the boat and there was some karaoke, then tubes in the water. This was fun, we were able to jump off the boat and there was free alcohol, which turned out to be the worst wine ever so we only had one ‘shot’ of it. Instead we paid to have beer thrown at us as we sat in our tubes and floated about.

Neeext was a little island with a beach on it, little fee to pay by the docks which seemed ridiculous and then we were off into the water. Ash looked after our stuff as myself, Ange and Dean went into the water. Ange kept thinking she was being attacked by something and complained of a sore ankle but not long before she started verbally abusing Australia and Dean came to the rescue. Before long, it was time to be back on the boat, they set out an afternoon snack of an assortment of fruits. When that was done the day was done too! we were back at shore, and they were putting us into vans. We had agreed with Ash and Dean to meet up at a pub later that evening and we did just that. After a quick, wash and change of clothes we were at the pub ahead of time playing pool. The power was out again so alot of the businesses were resorting to generators, seemed like the norm. Midway through one of our games, Dean, Ash and their parents show up and we introduced ourselves and ordered food, drink and got group games for pool going. I’m pretty sure we won too! And food arrived and we talked of this and that. Eventually it was night time and they had to go catch a plane so they were off, leaving me and Ange a stroll along the beach at night and catching a nice sundae of sorts at that first restaurant we came to on our first day. It was nice, relaxed and a surprisingly cool evening. We went to bed knowing tomorrow was our last day in Nha Trang, the day was good one and we knew there was more to do.

The next day was a slow paced relaxing one, we had breakfast at some nice little eatery on the same street we went to the other day to play pool. Something we had noticed was that those that are trying to sell something (hawkers?) weren’t very polite. From a little boy who tried to sell you books on his bike, to the glasses lady to someone who tries pestering you when your in a restaurant eating breakfast. They’re quite persistent and a bit rude, I don’t mean to generalize but 9 out of 10 you’ll find it’s the truth. Anywho, breakfast was good and we had started late. We had already checked out even and our bags were in the lobby behind the reception desk. We went to a general store and picked up some goodies, chips and ice creams and went down to the beach to jump onto a sun bed and enjoy our last day. We did some more reading and time seemed to fly by, I’m sure Ange scored some tan points in her bikini and maybe even me as well but time had flew and it was time for a last meal and to wrap some things up. We grabbed a meal or something I think and found a computer cafe where we could use Skype and such, Vietnam has Facebook blocked but we used a proxy to jump around it and we relaxed there for an hour or so catching up on life. Then of course we returned to the hotel for our bags and waited out front for the bus to come. It didn’t come, we waited for ages and nothing came, so we asked the reception to call them for us and see what was going on. They were just late luckily, and eventually almost an hour late someone picked us up and took us to the bus. Things don’t run smoothly when you travel and you just gotta go with the flow, we jumped onto the bus. It was our first time on a sleeper bus! we didn’t want to use normal buses because of the Ho Chi Mihn to Nha Trang journey so we were supposedly in for a treat, except for these little sleeper unit things were TINY but it was better. But that was that, we were on our way to Hoi Ann. There were a few stops during the night and that was that.

Oh, and one night at the hotel the power was out and we used candles for light. It was cool, the candles burnt down to nothing through the night. I wish I could use candles more in my life.

Waaahhh and so we fly to Vietnam! WOW you guys must be rich!! no actually we aren’t. AIR ASIA ROCKS. Yes. Anywho, we flew into Ho Chi Minh and by the time we were outside of the airport it was about 6pm ish. The flight was great, I got to eat Ange’s food cos it was an asian dish with tiny little fishies and everything was perfect! except it was 6pm and we didn’t know how to get to the hostel we booked. Uhmmm. After exiting the terminal we found an ATM and withdrew.. millions.. of dong, which was cool and made us feel rich! hehe.. then we started figuring out how to get to our hostel. Apparently the cheapo bus stops at 6pm (conveniently for those who told us) but it turns out this was true! we found two British girls by the name of Holly and the other I forget, I think it was Kate. Anywho, they had no idea what was going on so we offered for them to jump into a cab with us and see if they could find a hostel near us.  As usual Ange starts chatting along and they all share some uniquely British perspectives and I couldn’t help chuckle to myself but before long I looked outside and noticed the awesomeness that is Vietnam! motorbikes!! yayaaa. Lots of them too! like, the roads were packed with them and I was scared we were going to kill someone. We all pointed out crazy motorbike related things we saw.. like, an entire family of 4 on a motorbike!! baby included. NO HELMETS. omg.

All the same, we arrived at our place which was like the foreigner district which was all very well for us! we all were able to book in for the night and actually shared a dorm together with some other guy that was already there. We all, and by ‘we all’ I mean Ange, myself, Holly and maybe Kate, went out for some food and to check out what was happening in Ho Chi Minh City at night! we heard lots of music, managed to use some computers at a computer cafe and the other girls got some flights booked at the travel agent and we eventually got a bus to Nha Trang lined up too! we went out for dinner and I had for the first time, a massive bottle of Tiger! teehee. Anywho, we had some funs and food and went to bed as we only had one day in Ho Chi Mihn City! ahhh Ange and me, busy busy travellers we are.

Vietnam! palm trees and rice fields!

Anywho, next morning we all woke. Oh oh oh ohhh wait. Before we went to bed, the random guy had the Vietnam Top Gear episode on his iPod and I watched it for 10 minutes. Ok so anyway we woke up the next morning (yay!) and had to liiike.. DO THINGS, DO HO CHI MINH CITY and explore and stuff. Our trusty guide book directed us to a market where we did some shopping and whatnot.. from there we split from the other two and decided to meet up with them at the Reunification Palace later on, our team (me and Ange hymph) headed off for some food! unfortunately Ange got some seafood with her stir fry noodles so only picked through her meal, fortunately I was there to pick up the slack and eat it all!! (and it was DELISH. xD), we had our food, a beer and headed off to the Palace which is now a museum. The two British girls were LATE, as to be expected from British girls on a ‘gap year’ being financed abroad by daddy. But I digress, we got tickets and started our mini learning adventure. Took pictures with warplanes, tanks and then went inside to see fancy rooms and read about the uses of the palace during the war and how the city was besieged and came a crashing down into Communist hands.  That was fun and all, but we were thirsty for drinks and so headed to a mini cafe in the Palace grounds where the girls talked and talked and TALKED. We didn’t get to go to the war museum which I was later told was AWESOME. >.<

Ummmm.. the girls talked so much the sun started going down and we had to go back to get our stuff and catch our bus! as we had been walking all day I had witnessed the awesome sight that is the Vietnamese mode of travel. Motorbikes!! I knew from this moment forward, that I would ride a motorbike in Vietnam.  Ahhhh but we went back to our hostel, found we had about an 2 hours til the bus so we said bye to the girls, went to a computer cafe for an hour then went to a Italian restaurant for a PIZZA and I found something disturbing and then Ange and myself started debating whether or not someone should be told. She was all like, it’s embarrassing!! and I was all like, this could have killed me! or is disgusting or something I don’t remember. I complained twice during our trip. Once it was disgusting and the other it was hazardous to my life! ohohohh now I remember, they didn’t peel the wrapping off the salami so each piece of salami you ate came with a special piece of plastic you had to remove from your mouth. Needless to say I wasn’t impressed and voiced that with the owner.

ANYWAY, that was Ho Chi Minh City! we caught our bus and before we knew it, we had experienced such a whirlwind rush and were out of the city before we could even feel like we had really been there to begin with! unfortunately, there isn’t any pictures of Ho Chi Minh City itself.. that will be explained next post! dun dun duuuun.. Ohh also, when we landed we had visa on arrival paperwork that had to get processed and that took ages!

Wait, what? Vietnam ALREADY? yesyes, we made the transition from Bagan in Burma to Vietnam quite easily! hopping from place to place in between. It all started with that bus ride from Bagan, we went through the guarded checkpoints, had our passports checked and some notes written down and then were on our way to a place to stop, rest and eat. Eventually we arrived in Yangon and since we had limited of the Burmese currency left (but still loads of US dollar) we wanted to see if get rid of our Burmese money using the final taxi to the airport. Well it was hard, trying to get someone to take us there for only 2 dollars, we found someone for three. The ride itself was a bit weird, the guy took us up dark roads and through abandoned streets but I guess this is what Yangon looks like in night. Dark and abandoned. Our taxi driver dropped us off at the domestic airport, which luckily was right next to the International Airport. We then had to wait for two hours or so to board our flight. We got smacked with 10 dollars departure tax each when we left which is pretty annoying but what can you do. Stupid government.

Flying!!

Weeeeeee, hours later we were in Bangkok once again! we had a night to spend in Bangkok actually because our flight to Vietnam was the next morning. Since we had arrived at about 11am, we had the whole day too. Well we didn’t do all that much day actually. IT WAS HOT OUTSIDE. As usual we stayed at LubD because it had become somewhat of a little retreat even though it was a tad on the expensive side.  I did alot of uploading our photos thus far up to Picasa Web Albums too. Eventually, we had to get some food so we headed out to a restaurant near a supermarket. The food wasn’t THAT great but it was still alright! we picked up supplies from the restaurant and went to bed to watch some movies! Bless HBC! so we watched the movie channel in bed with ice cream! just how it should be. hymph. Before we knew it, it was time for dinner. Hmmhmhmm what to do? well seeing as last time we had pizza and ice cream in bed and it was absolutely AWESOME, we decided to do that again! but with a different crust. We didn’t finish the pizza.. or the ice cream, but I reiterate the awesome epicness that was pizza and ice cream movie night! I kept uploading photos as Ange went to bed and finally finished at about 1am when I accidentally woke up Ange and went to bed myself.. knowing that we were yet to pack for the next day! ohh no matter our flight was at about noon.

Probably the worst picture of Bangkok's International Airport you've ever seen...

Wake up, eat snacks in bed, then shower and pack! we got all our stuff and hauled it a street away and waited for the airport bus, which found us some 15 minutes later. Oh yeah, we ate another ice cream. Man it WAS hot! shuttled off to the airport! exchanged some money, took some passport photos and got them done and checked in. Got onto the flight and off to Vietnam! Ho Chi Minh City we were!

With the early arrival of us in Bagan at this point in our Burma trip we knew we had 3 days to spend in this city! well, it wasn’t much of a city, back where I’m from I couldn’t even call it much of a suburb. The town of Bagan was small, yet we had to spend alot of time here. It wasn’t that hard because Bagan, the area was littered full of temples, shrines and sites of cultural importance to the Burmese people. It literally had over 4400 religious shrines / temples / monuments! so, it actually sort of became hard to pick and choose what to see and what to do. Well all of this came to us easily with our guide book, good old Lonely Planet had their recommended top 5, so for us, that was the best place to start.

Flat! just like the world should be.

And so, we arrived in Bagan with the evening coming on strong, as soon as the ferry touched shore people boarded it trying to sell us services. We were only interested in those of the transporty type, but even then we had to be wary. Mostly because in alot of Asian countries, foreigners are targets, mostly because comparatively, we’re super duper rich. So you gotta bargain to get the right price, we agreed on a good price. (50 cents each xD) to take us to our accommodation. Turns out, our wheels was just a guy on a pushbike with us attached, no matter it would get us where we needed to go. But first, we had to register our presence in Bagan and pay the tourist fee! good work military junta =P we had no choice but to drop off 10 dollars each which in retrospect, now that I’m in my country paying 16 dollars for a pitcher of beer, isn’t that bad. =) all the same, it did seem like we were being taken advantage of which can get on your nerves when you’re traveling because your the attention of so much of it. Anywho, we made it to our chosen place of accommodation (thanks to the guide book) ended up paying 15 dollars a night for a room. It had a double bed, a single bed, TV and a fridge. We didn’t really need all that but hey, when you divide the costs in 2 it only turned out to be 7.5 which isn’t that bad at all. That’s the awesome thing about us traveling as a couple, everything gets split in two and well.. becomes smaller. It’s great! plus there are other.. added bonuses. =P anywho, it being late and all we sort of hit the hay early, I went out to buy a bottle of water and we went to bed early planning an epic adventure the next day!

Our little Bagan discovery gang.

The next day, we were up eating breakfast which is included in the price like most Burmese establishments and we met up with some other people who were at our place, that also came off the same ferry as us (one whom Ange borrowed her mango peeling knife off!) and we were able to form a group of 5 of us. The 5 of us got to know each other and met downstairs for the adventure to begin, we rented bicycles and headed off to explore Bagan! before we know it, a stranger pulled up next to us on a motorbike and offered to show us a temple. Thinking, hey what’s the worst that could happen we decided to follow this stranger and see this temple! before we knew it he had the keys, opened up the temple and we were inside climbing up to the top. This guy was really nice, but surely enough in the end he showed us his ‘hand made paintings’ and offered to sell them to us. One of our members decided she’d like some and bought some of them. It being our first day in Bagan, we didn’t know that everyone in Bagan was a painter, and everyone in Bagan had the same ‘paintings’ – which could also be bought for around a dollar or two heh. All the same, it was a great visit to that temple, but we continued on heading towards the big five recommended in the Lonely Planet guide book. We came upon the first of the day! it had four big Buddhas inside and we met a traveling monk from India. He was doing some research out here and allowed us to take some photos with him which was pretty cool.

Posing with a monk! woo~!

Ahh but after this place, uhm. We jumped onto our bikes and headed off for a hot meal! we found some random place from the book and it was another sort of buffet thing with different types of meat and lots of rice etc. It was pretty ordinary but filling and real cheap! lol. After that we headed back onto the road to conquer more of Bagans sights! I can’t tell you which sights we went to but we went to the big 5. The best place by far was the last one we went to included a massive climb up stairs to reach the top and be greeted with a spectacular view of all of Bagan. Whilst I didn’t actually take a picture of this monument I did manage to get a load of pictures of the epic views. But this wasn’t what made this monument the best one we visited! it was so awesome because we met a load of local kids that wanted to sell us postcards. It took the kids all of 5 minutes to realize we weren’t going to buy their postcards so they hung out with us and we talked about random Burma and rest of world related stuff.

I taught the one on the left the word 'sunburnt'. Contributing to society + 1

We were up there for hours, just talking to these kids! eventually more of them came and some older ones too and we just talked to them too. I had my manly chat to two guys who were ‘painters’ and we talked about Burmese pop music, motorbikes and girls. I think that maybe even today they’ll remember my sagely words. Ahh but it was fun. They were so open and talkative and told us about their ‘paintings’ and how they are from Thailand or China and how they earn money and what they learn in English class at school. But alas, it had to end. There was an important South Korea versus. Argentina game that night and we had a certain South Korean in our gang that desperately wanted to see it, so we were off back to our hotel – some 20 minutes on a bike later, we got there. We found a tea parlour with a big TV and sat down to watch the game. Ordering beers wasn’t much of a problem, one of the employees had to jump onto a motorbike and disappeared for 10 minutes before returning with our beer. Long story short, South Korea lost, but they scored one goal which meant for that brief moment our South Korean friend was ecstatic and received looks as she started jumping up and down clapping and making weird girly noises that porn has told me should be associated with the bedroom! aww, but it was a good night! at the end of which we went to bed and left the World Cup running on our TV in the bedroom.
The next few days weren’t as fun but still eventful and if you were to ask Ange! HELLISH. Baaasically, one day I thought it’d be a great fun to ride to Old Bagan, which was about 10kms away. It was sort of hilly, and well. Exhausting at times, when we arrived there wasn’t much to see or do and we basically just had to ride all the way back.  While out on our ride we stopped in at a few temples on the way and put up with the crazy heat of the day. And I swear we were even stalked for a bit by a guy with a megaphone attached to his bicycle that was on full volume complete with weird music and a booming voice. But yes, EVENTUALLY we made it to our last temple on the way back, one of the biggest and best and we were greeted upon our arrive.

Gotta admit, it is awe inspiring.

GREETED BY SHEDEVILS! the biggest and best temple thingy is closest to the town and is home to about 5 ladies camped outside waiting for tourists, as we approached they ran up to us and gave us little badges and then showed us to their shop and showed us their things, I was reluctant to leave our shoes there as you have to when you enter these temples. While we were inside, an old lady was smoking what I assume was the biggest joint I have ever seen and then another lady tried to get us to take pictures of her and her child and pay them money for it. But apart from the people, the monument / temple was amazing. Even though it was going through a bit of construction due to the low season, it looked stunning especially with the blue sky as a backdrop that day!

Bah.. anyway, being done there we return to leave and find our shoes.. GONE, but not entirely.. moved over to one of the ladies little stand with all her touristy items laid out before it.. heh, nice try lady. Ignoring her repeated offers to sell us her stuff, we went to give them the badges that they gave to entice us to their store, to make us feel indebted to them so that we’d buy from them. We had trouble with that as it was sort of hard.. no matter, they HELPED us and took them from us as we walked back to our bikes and left for foood. What kind of food? special Bagan pizza food!! well Ange had the pizza, I was sticking to trusty noodles. Asia does noodles right, not pizza, in fact, apart from chain restaurants everywhere else in Asia seems to be pizza terribly! some may disagree but I found the pizzas too small. I AM A WESTERNER. (hear me rawr for pizzza!)

Look what happens when you trust a local who has never seen a real pizza before to make a pizza.

And that was that. We ate our pizza, got lost trying to get back to our lodgings, then caught a bus to Yangon. Admittedly, I had some troubles with the bill, because we didn’t check out in time. I argued that it was assumed we’d stay in the room til our bus would arrive as they gained commission when we booked through them. Refusing to pay, the guy said, if you don’t pay, they’ll take it out of my wage. Knowing his wage was probably nothing already, and the bus actually arriving I was forced to pay the fee. It was only 5 bucks but it was the principle of the matter! I’m a man of principle see.. =P

But, back to Yangon!

So we were off to Burma! the country with so many names, do we call it Burma or do we call it Myanmar? well I’m sticking with Burma because the people who live there call themselves Burmese. ANNNYWAY, we landed at the airport but before actually landing we got a glimpse of the crazy landscape of Burma. It’s.. well, flat. With loooads of rice paddies! makes sense when this country was once referred to as the “rice bowl of Asia”. We shuffled past the Visa on Arrival peeps and waited for what seemed like aages in the immigration line. There wasn’t many people, they just took forever to process you. Once we got out, some random guy met us and talked to us. Of course some guy trying to sell us accommodation, he gave us the hint not to exchange currency at the airport because the government gives a really really SUPER bad exchange rate. Thank you Mr. Hotel guy man, anywho, we left him and went outside and started bargaining for our trip into the city. Noticing that all the men were wearing weird dress things that were called longyi we settled for 7 dollars for a trip into the city to some a place we had picked in our trusty guide book. Asking the driver about exchange rates too, it turned out he wanted to rip us off a bit (not surprisingly) and give us a rate that we found out wasn’t the best we could get. Flying through the city, we saw many awesome sights already. The city Yangon was largely colonial and it was pretty neat-o!

Ohh Yangon, you old thing.

Getting to our selected accommodation and finding a room available we were admitted and then faced with a big fat mosquito net! yaay, we had been on malaria tablets for 2 days now but the net looked retardedly cool so we had to use it. Our guesthouse operator was a really nice guy and he gave us the low down on bus tickets that we would want and where but more importantly HOW to exchange money. We were running on USD which basically is the second currency in every country in SE Asia but it’s always best to use the local currency in case the locals try mess you over with a dodgy exchange rate. Our money exchanging experience in Burma was one characterized by dodgy backroom dealings that you would normally expect from a classic drug trade related film. We were walking around looking all foreign like in the right area when some guy showed us a calculator, typed in a number and whispered something about us wanting to exchange money. Well his hypnosis seemed to have worked cos before you know it we walked through the backstreets of this lovely yet unkempt city into the back of some shop where we waited for our what we now refer to as associate to talk to some other guys. Funnily enough, our associate and the guys in the back of the shop starting arguing a little bit and before you know it he appears with a HUGE wad of cash and hands it over to us. We started counting and although we think we came up short we still ended up a good exchange rate and some 96 notes of 1000 kyat bills to stuff into our wallet. We felt rich! we felt like we were against the government already. But above all we felt like awesome backstreet dealing druggos.

Busy streets of Yangon

Now that we had enough money to be called a small fortune by the local populace we had to be wary of ourselves and surroundings. We instantly started stuffing these notes in our wallets, pockets and all sorts of places. This again added to the feel that we were doing something illegal, which in a way I guess we were. Money exchanges are supposed to go through the government after all.

Annyway! we made our way to an internet cafe, were quite surprised to find one actually, the speeds were devastatingly slow. I think you’d die if you tried to hold your breath while waiting for a page to load! it was that bad, but we trudged on anyway. Around this point in time we were feeling pretty hungry so we went for some lunch on 50′s street.. heh, an american feel but the food was amazingly great. We grabbed a pitcher of Tiger and had our respective meals. Me a modestly large burger and Ange a plate of potatoes with some weird creamy coleslaw looking stuff on top. I have no doubt that it wasn’t coleslaw or shouldn’t wouldn’t have went anywhere near it!

I promptly fell asleep after this meal.

We got back to our accommodation and they had the bus tickets already bought for us, we easily paid them and were happy that we had all that sorted. The plan was to arrive in Yangon, and leave the next day towards Mandalay. We only had a week in Burma, and since we had to enter and leave via the same place by plane we could always come back to visit Yangon at the end of our trip. Annywho, by this time it was around 4pm and we were pretty tired! we had already got up super early that morning for our flight, after going to bed super late to pack for the flight.. then we walked around a loooad that day in the blistering heat that was Burma that day. To top it off, we fulled out tummies and had a pitcher of beer together. All that combined we were sure of ourselves that a nap was  in order, plus if I recall the Australia vs. Germany game was that night and we were going to go out and watch it later, after a little nap.

Well.. the nap turned into a long sleep that left us waking up in the morning the next day, oh well. With our bus leaving to Mandalay at 5pm or so that day we still had a day to ourselves! we got up and planned our day being the prepared travelers we are and then somehow managed to have a shower with this place’s dreadful showering facilities. Soon before soon we were ready to leave, but alas the RAIN had come pouring down in an fashion that would have a super-into-it-gay fashion maker guy screaming his lungs out with disgust. That is to say, the wet season had finally caught up with us and paid us back a lil more to boot. We had borrowed an umbrella from our nice hostel staff yet this was not enough! we needed another umbrella! and of course the prices of umbrellas sky rocket when it’s raining down of which the likes have never been seen since Noah himself set off on his ark. We paid 3 dollars for another umbrella which was tiny enough to fit in my bag on our travels, this was AFTER I picked up Ange and carried her across a street that was overflowing. Yesyes, I sacrificed my shoes for the sake of hers! we were quite the show to the locals too. But we found our destination! a place where we could cook meet on a grill, a Japanese place to be precise. Those that were with us in Japan would know it was ‘the meat place’ well, this was the Burmese equivalent, it was still a Japanese restaurant but still not quite up to par with Japanese standards. After some issues with the grill, we were on our way to being satisfied with glorious meat! I squeezed my socks out under the desk and was rebuked by Ange! still holding true to her western standards, we were in Asia so it was time to let go a little. =P

I swear this was a roundabout!

Annnnyway, (how many times do I say that each blog post?) we wanted to see some cultural sites of Yangon, we had seen all of the colonial buildings but we hadn’t seen any religious monuments of anything of the sort! Well after getting a bucket load of water in our shoes, suddenly buying sandals / thongs / flip flops seemed vastly more important! so we plotted a course in our internal maps that consisted of us passing some roundabout that had a fancy golden thing and would end with us being at a nice store where we could buy some stuff. This store was a store with SET prices meaning we bought stuff at real prices, or maybe for a local, real prices plus a dollar or two. That was better than trying to buy stuff on the street as at this point we were pretty crap at valuing items! well. I got some AWESOME sandals that lasted me the ENTIRE trip. Ange’s broke but that’s for a blog post some point in the future!! teehee.

At the end of the day, I was looking a bit ragged.

After this, we returned to our accommodation because we didn’t know what else to do! we bought some provisions for the bus ride and had to wait a little bit before we were to leave. We spent the time playing a game of chess and idle chat with the employees of the place we were staying. Thankfully, one of the employees arranged a taxi for us at a fair price and before we knew it we were packing our stuff onto the bus. THEN Ange had a fit about a monk sitting near us! because you know, the guide book of ours has some notes on the cultures of this country and for that, and in Burma a woman shouldn’t sit next to a monk, yet we were in the same row as this one. He didn’t seem to mind but Ange was like omg omg omg! =P apart from that, we were on our way to Mandalay! the place where 4 out of 5 monks in Burma reside! The only things stopping us from having a nice bus ride was the ‘entertainment’ – the ‘entertainment’ consisted of some Burmese pop idol singing songs and what not that seemed to be the most cheesiest thing in the world, luckily for us they were so cheesy they actually made us laugh but unfortunately this thing was on a maximum volume which happened to be as strong a jackhammer going off meters from your person. Needless to say, we jumped onto the bus at 6 but didn’t end up going to sleep until 12. Ohhh, we also watched a really crazy traditional Burmese movie that was actually funny and gave insights to Burmese culture! (who would of thought?) my piece of pie, definitely.

And then we slept.