Well I think I can speak for the both of us when I say that we were both utterly full of in trepidation getting onto this flight!! The idea of a country still relatively untouched by tourism is exciting! To put this in perspective only 7,000 people from the UK came here last year, that's only a couple of thousand more than an average attendance to a Wycombe Wanderers game!!

With no international mobile network, no ATM's or credit card machines we knew this country was going to push us into a land of backpacking we had never experienced before. The 1st inkling of this was the lack of other foreigners on our flight there; we were 2 of 7 in total. Walking through the airport generated plenty of staring, snickering & smiles in abundance.

We met our pick up fine and started the drive back to the hostel - on first impressions the roads reminded us of Goa, lots of roadside shacks, bad roads & stray dogs! Everyone time we stopped in traffic we were noticed again & given the biggest smiles & waves by the Burmese passengers. After checking into our hostel we decided, as customary, to explore our local area. So we didn't do so well at that as went completely the wrong way to the way we wanted to go but discovered some awesome things en route. Including the Botataung Paya complete with turtle pond!! Everybody wanted to say hello, wave, and smile, ask where we were from and we were both overwhelmed by how friendly and lovely the locals were. Kids would be running up to practise their "hellos" and then run away all shy again.

With little to no signage in English it was completely overwhelming when it came to picking somewhere to eat. We stuck to our usual rules of looking for somewhere busy & popular & to be fair the food was lovely.

Finding our way home after dark was more challenging as the street lighting is very low or non existent; the pavements are littered with holes down to what looks like sewerage channels. Crossing over train tracks that look utterly disused until we saw the train on them later that evening! The smells from all the street food stands (which is where the locals mainly eat) and trying to distinguish exactly what that food is!

The next day we decide to go to Shwedagon Pagoda, it was a bit far to walk so got a cab for a very small fare we were there. You walk barefoot up some steep stairs to reach the top of the temple, again greeted along the way by the locals, seemingly bemused by our very white feet (or maybe it was my bad tan lines that confused them). The area itself is just stunning with the stupa itself containing nearly 4,000 diamonds and area after area full of different stances of Buddha, full of families sharing meals together.

We spent a few hours up there and I really enjoyed hearing the lady monks chant as it was just beautiful. We turned into the star attraction as a few Burmese girls approached us to be the subject of their photos! Looking back we should have asked for one of them but we were still a little taken aback by it all.

That night we went to the 50 Street Bar & Grill as it alleged free wifi, this had to be seen!! Indeed they did and indeed it worked, we enjoyed a very dirty western meal as a treat as pretty sure we don't have that option at all once we head north. Decided to cut the stay in Yangon short a day to crack on and get up the country, booked on our 1st night bus leaving tonight!!

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