We met our driver Chennai and headed off through the mountains of Manipur. This felt a lot more like a former British colony. The notices are all in English (first time we have seen the Roman alphabet everywhere since Estonia), cars drive on the left and there was a plethora of churches. The most shocking addition to that was the number of armed men, some of whom were clearly military guarding a checkpoint while others wore no clear uniform and rode in the back o...

Our journey to the border was a long but comfortable 22-hour coach ride. This is yet another crossing where you can't trust everything you read on the internet. There were some horror stories of foreigners being turned away and other posts saying that international travellers had to use a different checkpoint. We simply got off the coach and were asked by a tuk-tuk driver if we wanted to go to the border and he knew exactly where to take us, which seemed to be th...

Myanmar is very complicated. As we have travelled through, we have met very friendly locals who give you lifts for free, smiling children and people who just want to have a photo with you. We have never felt more welcomed into a country and we have always felt safe. We had originally planned to visit Inle Lake, hoping to travel North and visit Mandalay before catching a bus to the Indian border. When we looked online for tickets, we couldn't find any, instead ha...

Our journey here was by boat, sailing leisurely down the river. We took this journey later than planned due to a bought of food poisoning from a restaurant. In previous countries we have eaten street food quite freely but here we were warned to be a bit more cautious. Upon arrival we discovered that a few of our fellow passengers were staying at the same guest house so we went out for a meal together and welcomed in the new year. The celebrations in the town her...

Upon arrival in Myanmar the differences were striking, with so much more noise and bustle than ever seen in Thailand. The men in their longyis would spit on the ground in a way not seen since China. However, we also saw a religious diversity with even this small town having Buddhist, Christian, Islamic and Hindi buildings. This would hold true in all the places we visited in Myanmar. We had planned to stay in the border town of Myawaddy and followed our map unti...