We are back in bangkok for 2 days after our amazing Burma adventure! and it’s official…if there is one place you should ever go to its Burma! Its an amazing amalgamation of Asia, and because its so closed off from the world its totally unspoilt by tourists (other than the 8 of us we saw like.. 5 other people the whole time we were there!)
The Burmese people are amazing- they are really friendly, even though their government (and ours) is fucking them massively- in the last like.. 200 years they have only had 6 years of democracy, they have no health service, no free education, no access to news, arnt allowed mobile phones and people disappear on a regular basis. the whole time we were there we had to monitor what we said and whether or not we were being watched or followed, which is really scary. But even though the people have all that shit and masses more they still are really friendly to you all the time, they are insanely buddist about everything!
We started in Yangon, which is a dump apart from this massive golden pagoda, then headed north for Mandalay, Bagan and Inlay lake. We were then bullied by Peter who met a guy he fancied into doing a 3 day trek (massive trauma!) which consisted of walking in trainers up and down knee deep mud tracks for 26km a day- all for what we later discovered is a 2 hour bus ride! there is bugger all infrastructure so an 80km bus ride takes 20 hours! and when we say bus what we actually mean is a pick up truck with 2 wooden benches in the back that you then get 8 people on as well as many family’s, sacks of rice, chickens and monks as you can find!!
Got back to bangkok and headed for Cambodia where I am at the moment- back on the beach! tonight we are headed to this solpherous island where we can apparently glow in the dark dive! well excited! Spent 3 days seeing Angkor WHAT?! which kinda blew my mind- though after burma and seeing 4000 temples in bagan it wasn’t all i expected it to be. though when you put it in the context of what its survived its pretty amazing. was massive fun playing tomb raider on it though!
The Cambodian people seem much more like the Burmease than the Thai- survivors!! and the affects of the khamer are pretty obvious still, with the infrastructure and the poverty of the people, as well as physical abuses.
That is all of the last 3 weeks really. sorry its not as riveting as it should be! will probally be in laos in a couple of weeks- tubing here we come!!!
zoetipler 