Yangon Oh my Yangon - Where have you gone?

Well I thought I'd drop a pic of the new Bangkok airport first. The Suvarnabhumi airport is really in deep shit operationally. It was so disorganised with baggages coming out of belts that are not even on the electronic screen so be forewarned about the information you get. It is better to follow the crowd. And if you're on any airline apart from Thai, you won't get to use the skybridge. It is a shambles. Immigration in Thailand and Burma were also displeased that I had an Australian passport coz I looked like one of them.

The counter staff at Singapore Airlines wasn't very helpful either - we were unable to check in our luggage 3 hours before coz they had nowhere to put them. There was another lady that had waiting for 7 hours to check in her luggage. At this point in time, I became very buddhist and let everything slide - we were afterall on vacation.

I think our flight was mostly filled with Euro travellers as they all looked so exhausted by the time they got to the boarding area. Have a look at the guy in the centre - he had such rosy cheeks. Not too sure why but I thought that it was just strange to have rosy cheeks in Bangkok in all that heat and if you move your eyes to the right, there is a guy with a goatee... I like goatees.... they all really looked exhausted. Thank god we had 3 days in Bangkok to eat and sleep - just enough time to feel that we were on our second holiday within a holiday.

We arrived in Yangon by mid morning and had lunch. The Traders Hotel was where we stayed 7 years ago and we were back there again. Dinner was US$16 with all the beer and wine you can drink with an international buffet to boot. It wasn't too bad especially with free flow of beer so we took the offer with open arms. Burma is getting busier - much more so than we had expected. Where at one point in time there were hardly any traffic, Yangon was buzzing big time.





We headed to Sule Pagoda which was just around the corner from where we stayed and eventually ended up at Scotts Bogyoke Market. It would have been good to see the markets when we there years ago - it is just too touristy now with nuns begging all over the place eventhough begging hours are supposedly around the early mornings until 9am where the monks/nuns would take their breakfast each day. These are the strays - even our guide was saying that they could just be wearing those garb to pull a fast one on us!! Who knows?

Shwedagon is still as magnificent as we remembered it to be. I can still remember how young I was when we had our first picture taken here. Not that we're ancient but it was 7 years ago - I consider being 29 rather youthful. We arrived in the evening and spent an hour waiting for the sun to set... it was different because there were loads of devotees and we really could feel the ambience this time around. It was just amazingly quiet eventhough there were people everywhere.

There were really some fantastic photo opportunities along the way. My camera though was acting up on manual so lost a couple of pics especially the evening shots but what can you do...c'est la vie. The Pro1 apparently doesn't like a polariser lens when on manual? Maybe it just needs a service? Enjoy the pics guys...from YANGON we headed to Bagan, a real early flight throughout the trip - 5am wakeup call. Till then....