29th March: This was the start of our first day at Inle Lake. After our exerting hike we decided to take it easy and hired bikes for the day to explore the lake, and particuarly a water village. We had a lovely cycle through the local countryside passing villages and only the odd ox and cart along the way. we arrived at the water village and had to walk along a beautiful long teak bridge to get to the village passing rice and tomato fields along the way watchi...

26th March: We had another lovely bus journey today for 11 hours this time to get us from Bagan to Kawlaw in one of those fun mini buses! The next day we arrange to do a 2 day hike into the sourrounding hills with our guide, a shikh called Rambo!!?? The sourroundings we walked through were beautiful and although it was much cooler than India we really, really struggled wiht the walk - aching muscles, blisters and generally by the end of day one we were exhauste...

21st March: We left Mandalay for Bagan by local bus on a supposid 6 hour journey. the bus was a 20 seater mini bus with windows for air. Not only were the seats half the width of normal ones they also, as the journey progressed, proceded to pack the bus full literally to the brim, with plastic stools all down the isles for people to sit on, there were about five people sitting up front with the driver and bout five more on the entrance steps. In addition the r...

17th March: After a 13 hour bus journey which wasnt too bad, smooth, air-con and english films we arrived in Mandalay. We did another walking tour here and visited a lovely small paya called the Shwekymyiny paya, it was very quiet, calm and beautiful. LAter on we got teh Burmese version of a tuk tuk to the top of Mandalay Hill to watch the sun set, it was quite a walk but worth it for the great view of the city. The next day unfortunatly Charlotte was really poo...

15th MArch: After five days in Bangkok catching up on emails, laundry, McDonalds ;0) adn generally feeding up on pad thai and green curry we fewlo to Yangon in Mynamar for three weeks. After arricving at the very new airport we got a cab to ythe guest house, even from that drice i knew i was going to love this country. Everyone was waving and smilling at us and the city was suprisingly much more built up than i expected - but not to the point of being spoilt. ...