Mandalay, Myanmar

I got on the overnight bus (10,000 Kyat), found my seat and got comfortable. The bus didn't sound too healthy but we lurched off anyway. I knew I would get no sleep; for me it's impossible on sitting buses so I plugged myself into my mp3 player and closed my eyes. I've almost developed a musical meditation state that gets me through the night.  We travelled not 100 metres when the engine groaned and we stopped in a cloud of brown smoke. For an hour the driver, conductor and technical passengers crowded around the stricken engine, banging stuff and trying to start it. At one point someone actually climbed into the engine bay. Eventually it roared to life, everyone jumped on and we quickly set off! Everything was sweet then for hours until we hit the hills, when the engine sounded awful, like two very old, rusty, robots arm-wrestling. Stopping at a service station it decided it'd had enough and again everyone crowded around the back of the bus, this time for many hours.

We arrived in Mandalay only three hours over schedule. Extremely tired I asked the tuk-tuk driver to take me to the cheapest room he knew. At the ET hotel I shared a twin room with a 19 year old English journalist, Chris, for $5 each. Many people told me they didn't like Mandalay, that it was dirty and busy, with nothing to do. I really like it! For one its drier than Yangon, and less busy. The roads are in an interesting grid formation which looks easy on a map, but the amount of times we got lost is ridiculous. I called MandalayMotorbike@gmail.com (092014265) to get some out-of-town action but they were $5 more than some bloke on the street, who offered his motorbike for $10 a day. My motorbike had no speedometer, no mirrors, and didn't like the electric start, but my journalist buddy's bike was good. Biking around Mandalay itself is intense, and for Chris this was baptism by fire - first time on a motorbike, ever! I felt a little responsible and kept an eye on him (being the now experienced rider I am - ahem), but he quickly picked it up and before long we were out of town and cruising brand new tarmac, completely devoid of other traffic. We had no maps, and got lost several times, but the beautiful people of Myanmar happily pointed us in the right directions, or literally jumped on their bikes and told us to follow them down winding dirt roads and riverside paths! Stopping at a village cafe for snacks we were soon surrounded by what seemed like the whole village; they sat and watched us eat. I'm guessing not many tourists have ever been here. We found the snake temple, the teak bridge and the other tourist sites, but the best thing was just being out there in the wilds, meeting the people!

Sunken temple

Curious village kids 

Are you sure we should ride these bikes through the river??

Maybe you'd like crab for lunch?

Who lives in a house like this?

Beautiful wilderness of Myanmar

Back in Mandalay we dodged the busy traffic up to Mandalay hill. A wonderful and never-ending set of steps through Monasteries and Shrines to the top of the hill gives some spectacular views of the flooded plains and distant hills. The sun glimmering on the Buddhist gold and jewels on the Temple at the top is blinding.

Breathtaking views and shimmering gold temples

Chris, as he's just here for a few weeks writing about Myanmar, came straight from England. He wasn't particularly interested in Burmese food, partly because the chances of getting sick are quite high. For this reason we ate mostly at Western style venues; burgers, chips and coke (I've never seen anyone drink so much coke) being the main diet. In Mandalay there's a place called V-club that caters for the weak-stomached!

We both wanted to get as far away from the main areas as possible (even though there was hardly anybody about anyway). Lasho is the furthest east you can possibly go before you get to military checkpoints, and ultimately the Chinese border; we decided this was the place to go. At Mandalay railway station we find a train to Lasho and tell the clerk we'd like to go there. The journey will cost $30 (one-way) and will take 18 hours. He suggested we take first class. I pulled out a $100 note and he inspected it at great length, eventually deciding that he didn't like the serial number sequence. Bewildered, I offered others, but being in the same sequence range he refused them also. We had enough money if we used all of our Kyats and a $20 note that Chris had. Unfortunately the $20 note had a slight mark on it and he refused that also. He told us to come back to the station later; I had no idea why this would be different but we huffed and left. 

Back at the station at 8pm and the same clerk straight away accepted my $100 bill. I wondered what sequence of events had occurred since. It can only have been government decided. Maybe they needed to check something, maybe us? Was it to do with the distant destination? We now had our tickets and were to catch the train at 4am the next morning.

Sunset from the hotel roof

Singapore

The enormous bus to Singapore contained only me and the driver; how I craved this situation on much longer trips, so I might snooze on the back seats. The journey was swift with only a small jam on the bridge from Malaysia to Singapore. Customs, as expected, was extremely shiny and efficient, and before I knew it I was standing in a dusty car-park in the middle of Singapore, with military fighter planes screaming overhead, obviously celebrating my arrival. Google have just launched offline maps and I'd promptly downloaded Singapore before leaving Melaka. I switched on GPS and sweatily trudged in the general direction of my "starred" hostel with more planes zooming about above (they were actually practising for an Independence day celebrations). The maps work great, maximum credit to Google, this could change the world! The only issue being occasional GPS signal errors and the battery life of our power hungry devices, leaving you stranded - always have an old-fashioned back-up plan!

Goodbye Malaysia, hello Singapore

Just the two of us

You can go shopping... in a boat

All-seeing cows

The price jump, even from Malaysia, was dramatic. Singapore, as everyone knows, is expensive. I initially opted for one of the cheapest places I could pre-book on tripadvisor, a place called Empire hostel (17 Singapore dollars per night per dorm bed), tucked away in a back street in the northern suburbs. The hostel is clean and functional, and the other guests are friendly. Apart from a German girl in the next bunk all of the other occupants are from elsewhere in Asia, and working long-term in Singapore; this hostel being their cheapest living option. I wouldn't recommend this hostel unless you're on a particularly tight budget as it's time consuming getting to central, as well as costing a few extra dollars in transport that you could spend in a central hostel. 

I had three tasks to complete: pick up my replacement credit card, find $700 of unused, unmarked, sequential bank notes and catch a flight to Yangon. The first task I immediately crossed from my list. I don't know if It was the incompitence of English banks (most likely) or the postal system, but the card never arrived. I spent the first day gawking at giant buildings, freezing in air-conned mega-malls and dribbling at things I would never be able to afford. Priced out of the city-centre I headed for the Chinatown markets. In a cafe two friendly Japanese businessmen asked me to join them, one was the Asian director of Audi sales. They were very interested in what exactly I was doing loafing about in Chinatown. I explained the unexciting story of me loafing about in Asia generally. They kindly bought me a few beers and some food and gave me some pointers on "good" massage parlours. Later I bumped into the German girl from the hostel, who said that someone she knew told her how to get to the top of the Marina Sands hotel without paying the $20 non-resident fee. At the hotel we told the concierge that we wanted to go to the top-deck bar for a tipple, where we were able to slip past security amongst the hundreds of people milling about. The vista is breathtaking. Every night at 8pm and 9pm there's an opulent light and water show in the bay.

Japanese businessmen

The ri-donkulous Marina Sands hotel

View from the top of Marina Sands

The (rather expensive!) bar

Samah, who I'd met in Melaka, was now in Singapore. She told me she was staying in a nice central hostel. I checked out of the Empire and lugged my bags to the Treetop lodge (eco) hostel (SG$23 per night / dorm); a clean, chilled hostel with VERY helpful staff, and walking distance from everything. Samah very gracefully followed me while I scoured the money-changers and banks of Singapore, looking for those sparkling dollars that would get me through twenty-two days in Myanmar. Most banks weren't able to help; some banks contained sofas and gold toilets and wouldn't serve me; most money changers tried to give me old or marked cash, which I had to refuse. On a steamy night walking home from a long days sightseeing (and another glittering trip to the Marina Sands top-deck) I decided to have one final stab finding clean US dollars in the Raffles (mall) basement. On seeing a remarkably unassuming stall with a bored looking man wedged inside I'd pretty much given up hope, but he jolly well came up with the goods! Seven super-crisp, untouched, sequencial one-hundered dollar notes! I quickly tucked the envelope safely into my laptop, thanked the man profusely and we left.

Hookers, boats and planes here I come!! Well, maybe not

You can see all of my photos here