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 Myanmar travel tales
Our customers share their travelling experiences in Myanmar.
Read about first hand stories on travel tips and guides, events, entertainment,shopping, food, business and transportation.
Also, you might want to read our
Bagan city guide,
Inle Lake city guide,
Mandalay city guide,
and Yangon(Rangoon) city guide.
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| L Rogers |
14 March 2005 |
Stayed at Thande Hotel Old Bagan - Bagan, Myanmar.
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On arrival into Bagan airport have USD$10 readily available, in order to pay for the Temple sight's entry fee. Flight time from Mandalay to Bagan 20mins. Bagan to Yangon 1hr 10mins. There are several ways to explore the temples of Bagan either by taxi, horse cart (4 pax) motorbike or bicycle, all readily available for hire. The scale of the city with 2,000 temples is just amazing, I would quite happiy have stayed for 3-4 nights in order to pace my temple experience with a round a golf, bike ride, shopping for laqueur ware, swim etc. Next time!
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| K Chatwin |
07 March 2005 |
Stayed at Savoy Hotel Yangon - Yangon, Myanmar.
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Having just completed a tour of Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar, the latter was our favourite and Yangon our favourite city in it. Wandering around Chinatown, the old market (not Aung San, which is a tourist trap at its worst), around Sule Paya and Shwedagon were just awesome and we found the people more genuine than other places visited.
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| L Kenyon |
21 February 2005 |
Stayed at Grand Plaza Parkroyal Yangon - Yangon, Myanmar.
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Augustines near Green Elephant Restaurant is still the best for antiques. Ask for Mark!
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| V C quinn |
13 February 2005 |
Stayed at Traders Hotel Yangon - Yangon, Myanmar.
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This maybe relatively new info: we entered Myanmar during the Chinese New Year (Rooster) without being required to exchange their worthless Foreign Exchange Certificates (FECs) with USD! We are avid Lonely Planet readers and I also have some acquaintances who go there quite often and as far as we have expected and were told before going there, all tourists are expected to buy FECs. So it was something good. However, we also found out that since about late fall 2004, Myanmar has forbidden any transactions using any credit cards. If you are going to Myanmar in near future, bring enough cash since you won't be able to get cash anywhere. We are very grateful that our hotel was booked thru asiahotels.com at a prepaid basis...otherwise, we would have less disposable money to spend while vacationing there.
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| J Stachnik |
01 February 2005 |
Stayed at Paradise Hotel - Nyaung Shwe, Myanmar.
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The Inle Lake area turned out to be one of the highlights of my visit to Myanmar. Because the ecosystem is so unusual, boating on the lake is a unique experience, and highly recommended. I also enjoyed the half-day hike I took into the hill country, and can recommend Soe Naing Oo as a trekking guide. When he's not trekking, Soe pedals trishaw #44 in Nyaungshwe village.
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| E Inafuku |
31 January 2005 |
Stayed at Sedona Hotel Yangon - Yangon, Myanmar.
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Restaurant to recommend: "Million Coins" is near the airport. Serves Chinese-style food. My Asian friend ate a meat and vegetable noodle dish called "Jaeo" (pronounced jay-o), which was about 900 khats (US$1) and promptly declared, "This is the most delicious noodle dish I have ever eaten!"
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| L Riley |
29 January 2005 |
Stayed at Golden Rock Hotel - Kyaikhtiyo, Myanmar.
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The view is worth the trek and this hotel is situated about half way up. If you stay here overnight you can watch the sunset and walk back up to watch the sunrise in the morn. The main base town is a nightmare and no one speaks English! You have to climb on board the back of a truck to get to the next section of the climb (the truck has several thin planks of timber to sit on and there is very little space between for your legs) - as you are a foreigner they think you want to sit in front with the driver so they charge 1000 kyat whereas the back is 500. We paid to sit in the front but was shoved behind the seats on a bench three deep with more in the front seats. Beware, we sat like this for two and a half hours until the truck finally left so we missed sunset! Trucks generally won't leave until they have a min of 45 people on them. If you do jump in the back with everyone else, it's worth being a part of thier day to day life and they appreciate you doing it. Going up sit as far to the front as possible so you don't get sqashed and the reverse for the trip down. It's very squashy in these! The hotel is only about 10 mins walk up the 45 deg road from stage two. To get to the top it's another 45min and the road doesn't change. Take water, good shoes and it does get cold at night early morn. Would only be around 10 tourists there. Bus from Yangon bus station takes around 5hrs and pre-book to get onboard - you can book the return once you get there.
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| M Smith |
25 January 2005 |
Stayed at Thamada Hotel - Yangon, Myanmar.
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Started our independent tour of Burma (Myanmar) in Rangoon (Yangon), using the historic Burmese train system - a real adventure! Train info at www.seat61.com/Burma.htm. Rangoon is a fascinating city - the Shwedagon pagoda, lots of colonial architecture. Taxis about 1,000 - 1,500 kyatt (about 67p - £1) a ride.
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| R Martin |
24 January 2005 |
Stayed at Hotel Nikko Royal Lake Yangon - Yangon, Myanmar.
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For travelers with the spirit of adventure, Myanmar is a very interesting destination. If you love places like India, you will love Myanmar. The people are friendly and welcoming; the Temples and Pagodas are amazing, and the food...well the food isn't so good. But food aside, Myanmar has a high WOW factor. If you go, you can't miss the Temples of Bagon. Bagon is about as spectacular as Angkor Wat...it is quite stunning and relaxing. I traveled to Yangon, Mandalay, and Bagon. Yangon was great for sightseeing and shopping. Mandalay is overrated and deserves only two days. I didn't run into anyone who liked it. Bagon, like I said earlier, is not to be missed.
Bring only US cash as they don't accept credit cards anywhere in the country, even in five star hotels. There are no ATM's in Myanmar either...which means that you need to plan ahead with your cash management. One hundred dollar bills will get you the best exchange rates while smaller bills will net you up to 7% less in exchange. Almost everywhere people will come up to you and say "change money"? If you try to cash traveler's checks, banks only accept a select few and even then, they will take a 20% commission on cashing them. Bottom line...bring Dollars. Euro's are almost impossible to exchange.
Internet service in Myanmar is a joke. Remember back to your 14.4 modem? Myanmar is slower than that! It took me 38 minutes to send one email. Also, the govenrment blocks MSN Hotmail and Yahoo mail so you will need to pay for a service that latches onto the government's server (draw your own conclusions on the reasons for this). I fortunately use a lesser known web-based mail and it wasn't blocked at all but because it was so slow, I hardly ever used it. Traveling throughout Myanmar can be trying at times but you will be well rewarded for your efforts.
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| E Blundell |
22 January 2005 |
Stayed at Sedona Hotel Mandalay - Mandalay, Myanmar.
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Mandalay and the nearby mountains (about 2 hours drive) have many interesting sights to visit. We would recommend using a private (tour) taxi as you can get to places that are not accessible by tour coach. The drivers also are very knowledgible and can provide a lot of information and help, e.g places to eat. You can usually hire by the day and cost ranges between about US$30 to US$50.
We found the modern Mandalay airport a refreshing change from the outdated and poor condition Yangon airport.
When arriving make sure to purchase a ticket that allows foreign tourist entry for most of the attractions/sights in the Mandalay area. The cost is US$10 per person but can save a lot of money over paying at each individual sight. Be prepared for additional charges for the use of still cameras and video cameras. These vary from place to place and are usually paid in local currency.
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