It was time to take our first train ride in Burma. Even buying the ticket was an example of the amazing hospitality we were to experience throughout Myanmar, after queuing at the ticket window, we were ushered round the back into the office and each given a chair to sit on whilst we filled out the necessary paperwork for a "foreigner ticket". We had read that trains were often delayed, but we left Mawlaymine promptly and set off out into the countryside. Being...

Seeing statues of Buddhas was a becoming a daily occurrence. Mawlamyine was no exception and numerous temples were scattered around the small town. We'd come to see one statue in particular though, a reclining Buddha measuring 180 metres in length and 30 metres in height. This was the worlds largest reclining Buddha and was amazing to behold. To add to the spectacle you could walk around inside the giant structure and witness the story of Buddhism. This was disp...

It's not often you get to charter your own boat, it wasn't exactly luxury but there was plenty of legroom and on board drinks, well a bottle of water in case we got thirsty. The best thing was though that it was our boat, this meant we could choose when it left and go at our own pace. To reduce the cost a little we travelled with Cushla our new kiwi friend. It worked out to be $20 each, expensive by Burmese standards but cheap overall. As we pulled away from Hp...

The Soe Brothers hostel came highly recommended, not only for somewhere to stay but also because they offer excellent tours. At $5 each they offered a full days tour of Hap-an and the surrounding countryside. What a bargain! As we boarded our six person Tuk Tuk and made our way out of town. The road conditions got worse and worse, as we bumped and banged our way across pot hole laden tracks we wondered what we'd got ourselves into. We were extremely great full t...

As we had started to plan how we were going to get to Burma, it seemed the only way there from Thailand was to fly in from Bangkok or Chiang Mai. Though after much reading online trip planning we came across some forum posts suggesting it might soon become possible to cross over the land border from Thailand as they were due to be reopened now the conflict in the areas had subsided. This should have happened from June, but appeared to have slipped and was loo...