The dusty plains of Bagan gave way to completely different scenery which we hadn't yet seen in Myanmar. The mini van climbed windy mountain roads with hills thickly clad with trees. We were definitely heading into trekking country. Kalaw is a town where you don't really want to linger. The restaurant offerings were just about sufficient for our one night stay. Thankfully within an hour of arriving we had found a hotel for the night, booked a trek, ordered lunch...

Ah, Bagan. A lovely place with its dusty plains pepper potted with palm trees and positively teeming with red brick pagodas and temples. Despite being one of the areas in Myanmar that sees the most tourism, the town still retains a dusty backwater charm, albeit with a great choice of restaurants, with local farming life going on as it always has. Shepherds herd their cattle in between the pagodas, horses and carts kick up dust storms, fields are ploughed using ox...

Two days in one of the most traffic congested cities I have ever visited. To give an idea of how bad the traffic is, the bus station is 20k out of town and the hotel advise to allow two hours for the journey. The taxi actually took an hour and a half. Crazy traffic! The bus station is also crazy. It's like a miniature town it's that big! There is no point taking taxis or other modes of transport downtown as traffic doesn't move and it is far quicker to walk. Wa...

28th January Today has been a very good food day!!! I have to say I'm not really fond of the Burmese cuisine so the three food establishments we have visited today have been amazing! The day started with a trip to the Chinese tea shop that the hotel owner told us about. It wasn't that dissimilar to the Indian tea house we frequented in Dawei. That is to say it looks very scruffy with paint peeling off the walls, bare concrete floor, dimly lit and the cabinets t...

26th January Yesterday it was 32degrees, today it's 18, wet and feeling rather chilly. We're spending the day in the hotel room watching movies, sorting photos and updating the blog. Today we finally managed to withdraw our first lot of kyat since arriving two days ago. There are four cash machines in town. These were only introduced to Myanmar in 2012 and are frequently broken. Sure enough, here in Dawei, two are broken and they don't know when they will be ...