myanmar
a hidden treasure
WHAT TO DO IN MYANMAR
The most famous attraction in Myanmar is without a doubt the old city of Bagan, with its more than 2000 pagodas and once visited by Marco Polo itself.
Other important sights you won’t want to miss are the city of Mandalay, with its famous U Bein bridge and a vast amount of monasteries and temples.
The hike between Kalaw and Inle Lake, which beholds a night over in a local village and another night in a Buddhist monastery.
Inle Lake itself with its floating, arts and crafts village.
Yangon and the famous Shwedagon Pagoda complex.
And If you still have enough time, get some free-of-temples-relax time and head up to the gorgeous paradisiac beaches and the green and dense sacred pilgrimage hills around Yangon and Mandalay.
MANDALAY
If you’ve just arrived in the country, I advise you to start in Mandalay, the last Royal Capital of Myanmar, and the inspiration for many songs as the colonialist “On The Road to Mandalay” from Frank Sinatra and the Robbie Williams “The Road to Mandalay”. Either one of them is interesting to listen on the way from the airport to the city center.
If you’re on a solo backpacking trip like I was, stay in Ostello Bello, really cool hostel and they serve free pasta some times a day. They also have it in Bagan and Inle Lake.
You have so many things to see in Mandalay, therefore, I advise you to ask for a tourist map at the reception, hire a motorbike local and go to all of the places. Whatever you do during the day, don’t miss U Bein Bridge at sunset.
It is the longest teakwood bridge in the world and it’s just beautiful, you can take beautiful silhouette photos with the sun setting behind and Buddhist monks passing by.
In fact, there are so many monks passing by and they are all so friendly that you usually get asked to take photos with them. They are really curious about the world outside of Myanmar and especially curious about football! Most of them really enjoy the sport, and being from Portugal, Ronaldo was, of course, the main topic.
After visiting the U Bein Bridge, a young monk invited me and an Italian friend of mine to go to his monastery and see where he lives and studies. Really amazing!
Other beautiful sights around Mandalay are the Kuthodaw Pagoda with its 729 kyauksa gu or stone-inscription caves, also known as the World’s Largest Book, each containing a marble slab inscribed on both sides with a page of the sacred Buddhist text from the Tripitaka, the entire Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhism.
The Hsinbuyme Pagoda Mingun, a very interesting temple, built on the image of the cosmic Mount Meru, the sacred five-peaked mountain of Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist cosmology. Also famous for its Architecture and beautiful wavy white shapes. If you’re a photographer, here’s the place to go!
bagan
The famous city of Bagan. Visited since centuries by travelers from all around the world, was formerly known as Pagan, the capital of the Kingdom of Pagan and was built from the 9th to the 13th centuries by many different kings. At its height, between the 11th and the 13th centuries, the city had more than 10.000 Buddhist temples, pagodas, and monasteries.
Nowadays due to the region’s many earthquakes and histories own events, only around 2000 structures remain.
Since 2016, when a massive earthquake hit the city, many structures were damaged beyond repair and the fame that existed that one could visit and climb most of the remaining temples started disappearing.
If you want to get a chance to climb those pagodas I advise you to go there quickly.
As I heard, the government is creating small artificial hills so that one can watch the famous sunsets and sunrises from there and not from the top of the ancient structures.
It might be bad for tourism but it’s a measure to protect History and it is worthwhile.
The main attractions in Bagan are the Sunrises with Balloons and the Sunsets.
Between all the 2000 temples and pagodas it’s hard to find where is the best place to watch these fabled events. If you’re planning on going there just send me a message and I’ll put you through my personal guide Shein, and he will take you to the best spots both to watch the sunsets and sunrises and the best photography spots inside the temples.
The most famous temples and pagodas in Bagan are:
- Ananda Temple
- Dhammayangyi Temple
- Shwezigon Pagoda
- Shwesandaw Pagoda
- Thatbyinnyu Temple
- Sulamani Temple
- Lawkanandar Pagoda
- Bupaya Pagoda
kalaw - inle lake (hike)
From Bagan take a bus to Kalaw and from there you can start an amazing 3 days hike to Inle Lake, one of the must see’s in Myanmar. I totally advise the Jungle King treks, our guide Nixon was just fantastic.
If you’re like me and on a tight schedule try getting a night bus to arrive in the morning just right before the trek starts.
My bus got to Kalaw at 3 am and after a bit of research on Tripadvisor, I found a homestay that sometimes let hikers sleep for free for a couple of hours before their hikes started. I arrived at the gates and the owner let me sleep on a small storage room that had a mattress on the floor. Amazing. It gave me the strengths to start the first day of the hike. In the morning I was even offered a free breakfast and since I hadn’t pay for the accommodation I promptly refused and thanked them a lot and went to register for the hike.
The hike was divided between 3 days, making it a 50km’s hike, not that easy for some. We did 20km’s on the first day, 15 on the second one and other 15kms on the last one.
The first day’s objective was to reach one local Pa’o Village (probably a different village in other groups since we were alone and there were more groups departing to different directions from Kalaw), have dinner there and stay through the night.
The second day started with a quite early sunrise watch that was well worth it. Imagine waking up on a freezing dark night and seeing in the distance the silhouettes of countless cloud-covered valleys, and as the sun rises, all of the previously dark, cold and gloomy landscape is flooded with light and color. After a brief 10 minutes everything was alive, everything turned green, and you could hear the birds and all the animals in the village waking up. Magic! P.s. It was still cold.
We then followed onto an adventure to find a mystical hard-to-reach Buddhist Monastery on top of a mountain, and on the third day, we finally arrived at Inle Lake.
The hike’s highlights are the beautiful colored hills full of chili, ginger, green tea, and many other fruits and vegetables.
The beautiful waterfalls and rivers appear all of a sudden. They are always kind and happy locals, many of them playing football with Real Madrid and Ronaldo t-shirts.
The great number of buffalos and cows (among other smaller animals), that the locals treated as their pets. Every buffalo had its name.
The beautiful architecture of the villages, many made with bamboo, created an amazing environment inside when the light would come through, and other houses were made with terracotta and wooden doors and windows painted with different vivid colors.
In the end, the most epic experience was reaching the Monastery on the 2nd day, after a long hike, through forests, rice fields, and mountains, climbing quite steep rocks to reach an isolated wooden monastery, full of kid monks, some playing football, some brooming the terrain around the monastery, all very curious about their visitors.
After watching an amazing sunset we were welcomed into the main building of the monastery and meditated with one of the older monks and got our palms read by another one. Nixon, our guide, translated it for us.
All the experience was truly remarkable. What he said to everybody was jaw-dropping and intriguing the least. Having my future read by a Buddhist monk in a mysterious sacred monastery on a far far away hill in the middle of Asia was something for sure not to forget!
We all slept inside the main building that night and left the next day on our way to Inle Lake.
At Inle Lake I advise you to do a floating villages tour and visit the silk and lotus weavers as also the tobacco cigarettes artisans, quite a nice experience and you can buy souvenirs and beautiful cloth pieces although quite expensive.
If you’re interested you can also visit the long-necked women, who I guess are there for tourism purposes since the long-necked women were mainly living in tiger-filled regions of Myanmar, mostly next to Laos and Thailand, for they had to protect their necks from Tiger attacks.
Also, another small tip, don’t be caught taking photos of the posing fishermen with their fishing baskets in the lake since they then come next to you and ask for money, as you can see in the photos at the end of this post.
yangon
After Inle Lake, you can take a bus to Yangon, the capital of Myanmar until 2006 and still the largest city and the biggest economic center of the country. Since 2006 the government decided to pass the capital to Naypyidaw, a new city made for that purpose in the middle of Myanmar.
It’s a very busy city, with a lot of traffic. It took me more than an hour to reach the center by taxi.
Here you can visit the Shwedagon Pagoda, a huge complex with hundreds of stupas and pagodas. Many different styles of Buddha statues and a great pilgrimage complex, with dozens of relics from different Buddhas.
If you have time try to visit the Sule Pagoda, some of the lakes and many museums in the city and try to experience the buzzing nightlife of Yangon.
other places to go
As I only had one week in Myanmar, the places I’ve shown you is what I had time to visit. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to visit this incredible country.
You have beautiful paradisiac beaches, such as the Ngapali Beach on the western coast of Myanmar, the Ngwe Saung Beach and the Gwa and Kanthaya beaches.
If you’re more interested in green landscapes and pilgrimage places, head onto Mount Popa, Myanmar’s Mount Olympus, next to Mandalay, an extinct volcano, 1500 meters high, with multiple temples and relic sites on top.
Next to it its the mountain Taung Kalat and at its top an amazing Monastery, like Meteora in Greece surrounded by lots of green vegetation and with a beautiful panoramic view to Bagan.
You can also visit the Kyaiktiyo Pagoda, with its famous Golden Rock, next to Yangon.
Tells the legend that Buddha, on one of his many visits gave a strand of his hair to a hermit who then gave it to his king that then decided to place a massive golden boulder on top of this mountain to venerate it. The legend says that the Buddha’s hair was then enshrined next to the boulder and its what’s preventing it to fall down the mountain.
You can also try and check the episode 6 of Netflix‘s show Dark Tourism and maybe feel interested in visiting the new capital city of Naypyidaw.
old bagan
kalaw's hike
the monastery
inle lake
I will for sure return to Myanmar, it was an amazing experience, but a very short one. This country has a lot to offer and it’s still quite unexplored and tourist free.
Give it a chance, be amazed!
Hope you enjoyed the post and until then,
The Portuguese Traveler
