The bus from Naypidaw to Yangon was smooth going, taking six hours including a short stop for lunch. Unfortunately the bus station was a long way out of the main town and it's an expensive taxi ride in. But with trusty wiki travel and a little help from some locals, Chris and I managed to find our way onto the local bus. It had to be the most rustic bus we had been on. The seats were slabs of wood held up by metal frames and the cushioned back row was barely in one piece. There were remnants of engine parts and various other mechanical goods scattered around the bus. We sat at the back as there was space for our bags but it wasn't before long that we massively regretted this decision. There was absolutely no breeze reaching us at the back and we were slowly being cooked by the heat from the engine. The journey was long, bumpy, hot and sweaty so needles to say we couldn't wait to get off and walk the last kilometre to our hostel.
We pre booked 'Ocean Pearl III' hostel which was really nothing special. A very basic twin room with clean shared facilities and a great location.
We offloaded our bags and headed straight out finding a night market to browse. Chris managed to find some smart shorts for a bargain price of just under £2. Then it just so happened that we were close by to the '999 Shan Noodle Shop' where we had previously eaten some decent food, so it was an obvious choice for dinner.

It was delightful to not have an alarm set but we were still awake at 7.30am. With the weather a tad cooler in the morning we walked through town to visit the 'Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue', the one and only synagogue in Myanmar. Neither Chris or I had ever been in a synagogue so it was something different, although not particularly exciting.
We made our way to 'Bogyoke market' which had been closed during our previous visit to Yangon. It was a really lovely market selling all sorts of souvenirs and with a surprisingly placid atmosphere. Chris enjoyed a refreshing freshly squeezed orange juice, whilst I couldn't resist an iced latte.
By now it was midday and the heat was becoming too much. It just so happened that the only KFC in Myanmar was across the road so we bought a Coke and plonked ourselves down to cool off in the AC. Inevitably this led to us eating lunch here too, but we were due some western food!
We bought some clementines for a vitamin C boost but I ended up giving some to three young boys with their mother, who was selling puppies on the road side. Our attention was aimed at the puppies in the box but I couldn't help notice one of the young boys looking at my bag of clementines. He didn't ask or gesture that he wanted one which is part of the reason why I gave one to each of the three boys. Their faces lit up and I could tell they were very grateful as they all quickly peeled the clementine and scoffed the segments into their mouths.
Chris had not been feeling particularly great so we decided to head back to the room for the afternoon. Chris had a nap and I caught up with admin.
Later that evening we strolled down the road to a small restaurant called 'LinkAge'. They provide kids from the streets training to work in a restaurant and ultimately a job to help them kick start a career. The food was very good but the restaurant was definitely lacking atmosphere.
Unfortunately the shorts Chris purchased the previous evening were much too small - despite doing the test of wrapping the waist of the shorts around his neck. So we re-visited the market stand to see if he could exchange them. The lady was lacking in stock making it a challenging job to exchange the shorts. Eventually Chris settled on some black shorts but he was straight back and out with the sewing kit to remove some trimmings around the pockets. He did an excellent job, quite the tailor!

With one final day in Myanmar we didn't want to just hang around Yangon and decided to escape the bustling city and cross the river.
We made a stop via the post office on our way to catch a ferry across the river to Dala. Having read it should cost us just 200 kyat (£0.10), we were appalled to be ushered to a tourist office and forced to pay $5. The journey was literally 5 minutes and we were bombarded by taxi drivers, trishaw drivers, and motorbike taxis as soon as we set foot on land.
We knew we wanted to travel a little further to reach a town called Twante and had read we could catch a song-thaew, but it wasn't obvious where to get one from. We decided it would be best to wait on the road heading to Twante and try to flag a truck down. However it was easier said than done with our army of various drivers following us. They really would not take no for an answer, and if some gave up, more would join. We had a crowd of trishaws and motorbikes following us up and down the road for nearly an hour. It became too much for both of us and we reached the stage of heading back to the ferry. We gave it one last try to get rid of our posse by continuing to change direction up and down the road. Amazingly this seemed to work and provided us just enough time to flag a song-thaew and escape. It was a huge sense of relief to be on our way to Twante, although both of us were feeling uptight and agitated.
From what we had read, Dala was a quaint town with minimal transportation. But so far it had been the worst place for harassment we had experienced throughout Myanmar. We tried to put the nightmare behind us and enjoy the bumpy dusty forty minute ride to Twante.
Twante is renowned for its pottery and a number of households churn out pottery pieces for agricultural supplement as well as creating on demand goods. The driver took us to his family's pottery shop and we were invited to have a look around. But with no sight of any pottery being made we wandered around the area in search of somewhere to eat. It was interesting to walk around and be welcomed by the locals. We had not seen any other tourists come this way. After about half an hour of searching we found just one option for food. A roadside street food lady cooking up various vegetables, egg, noodles and rice. She didn't speak one word of English, but with our basic Myanmar and Google translate we managed to order some food and even be shown to a toilet. She cooked us up a tasty feast and it was dirt cheap. A plate of rice, fried egg and vegetables, then she continued to bring over a huge overflowing bowl of egg and vegetable noodle soup! We even bought her in more custom from a European couple strolling around looking lost.
After a short walk around we ended up meeting the European couple again and caught a taxi with them back towards Dala, stopping at the Snake Pagoda. The pagoda was set in a lake with several walkways to reach it. I was not particularly sure about entering the pagoda hearing that there was 22 pythons loose inside. But as we approached it became clear that the pythons were all just lying around the pagoda, and would very unlikely attack. Still, we carefully and slowly moved around the pagoda and a bubbly monk kept pointing out all of the snakes. They were everywhere! And some were enormous.
The taxi continued to take us back to Dala, where we caught the ferry back to Yangon and walked to our hostel. It had been an eventful unexpected day and we didn't fancy any more unknowns, so we returned to '999 Shan Noodle shop' for a safe dinner. It is fair to say that Dala was not what we expected and had been much more stressful than Yangon itself.

Our hostel offered a free shuttle to the airport but only twice a day. However after working out the timings we decided it was worth waking up early to catch the free shuttle and we could have a leisurely breakfast at the airport. We were wrong to assume there would be options for breakfast, well there was two expensive cafes. So we ended up with a small croissant each and sharing a latte to help the long wait go by. We were reunited with a guy we met in Bagan and shared some stories from our adventures in between.
The flight to Bangkok was just an hour and we were both extremely excited to be back in one of our favourite countries for the next month....