Friday, 3 May 2013
Chang Mai
After spending a few too many days in Bangkok, we were all relieved to take the night train to Chang Mai. Although it's still quite a large city, the day trip just outside to the surrounding countryside to cuddle tigers and kiss snakes has made this trip already a huge success! Let alone with the trek tomorrow to the elephants and waterfalls that we still have to come!
Bangkok
While the sights in Bangkok were a good day trip, its hard to compare it to anything Bianca and I had previously seen in Burma, none the less we have had a lovely time seeing the Grand Palace and various other temples and sights around town. Needless to say however, being a group of 6 girls, the wonderful extensive markets were always going to be the biggest draw!
And so to Thailand!
After an absolutely wonderful 3 weeks in Burma, we are now moving on to Bangkok to meet Harriet, Gaby, Lara and Bunny.
Mandalay
We only had a short stay planned for Mandalay this time as we had stopped over previously, but unfortunately we had been ill. We didn't want to miss anythin though, so we picked out the Teak Wood Bridge and the Golden Buddah to get up early to see before leaving to go on to Thailand that day. Although we had to wake up at 4:30am, the sunrise over the river with monks walking across to get their breakfast and the huge golden Buddah that is now deformed due to the sheer amount of gold leaf layered on by worshipping buddists absolutely made it worth our while!
Cooking Myanmar Style
After tasting all the delicious food along our travels through Myanmar, Bianca and I decided we had better try cooking things up for ourselves! We found a lovely little course near Inle Lake and booked ourselves onto it. Turning up at a little village house with an outdoor kitchen sheltered by bamboo was bliss enough, but being the only two doing the course made it so much better! We learnt how to make fish curry, vegetable curry, a classic Myanmar tomato salad (which has been our favourite dish so far so we were thrilled to learn the secret ingredients!), lettuce root salad and pea leaf salad all of which, if I say so myself, were delicious! Just to top off the day with an absolutely adorable family, they had two little fluff balls of puppies which we ended up spending hours playing with!
Bagan
After expecting a big city filled with tourists and their big cameras, we were thrilled with the dotted villages that separated the small towns of old and new Bagan. Our hotel sat in between the two towns and had panoramic views from the swimming pool of the expanse of thousands of temples and pagodas that filled the Bagan area. With temples piled on top of each other, it is impossible to look anywhere without having an eye-full of some sort of amazing intricate architecture inspired by one culture or another that kings dating back centuries had loved and brought over. The whole experience was awe inspiring and other than the scorching heat I would love to have stayed as long as i possibly could!
Monday, 22 April 2013
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