I woke up with the bird chirping outside the room, I can’t see one, but they are hiding somewhere in the bushes. At 5.30 am in Inle Lake, the sky has slightly turned blue from the darkness of night. For every few minutes I was interupted by the sound of boat machine, fisherman going to the lake to fish. Laying on the bed lazily, I checked on emails and social medias update. I took a shower, packed my luggage and ate breakfast at the hotel lobby facing the lake. GIC serves a delicious pancake but they made a terible omelette.
Landscape at Inle Lake in the morning, Myanmar
Our boat was ready at 7 am, so we quickly started our one hour boat ride back to Nyaungshwe before it was raining. We saw beautiful landscape of mountains and fisherman, with wind blowing on our face the whole ride. At the dock, a car was ready to take us to Heho airport, one hour away. Our plane departed in 10.30, leaving us plenty of time in the airport since we arrived there at 9 am.
Boat ride back to Heho from Inle Lake
The flight from Heho to Yangon took 65 minutes, and this time we departed on time. The airport in Heho is small, the waiting room is just a bunch of seats arranged horizontally and everyone goes to the plane by bus. When we landed in Yangon our car has been waiting. We went to a railway station located 10 minutes away from the airport to take the train to central railway station in downtown.
Train Station near the airport, Yangon
The train was quite dirty and locals are getting in and out the train on the 12 station we passed by. Sometimes it smells in the train, luckily there was a fan on the locomotives. I took several decent shots, but nothing extraordinary. Since we had lunch earlier in the plane, we weren’t hungry even though it was 2 pm, but we ate shan noodles anyway.
Circular train in Yangon, Myanmar
One from many train stops from airport to Chinatown
We have the whole evening free because we already did the Yangon city tour at our first day, we decided to have a massage at the 1st rank parlor by tripadvisor. A head and body massage for 75 minutes cost 18000 kyat ($16), which is reasonable for the quality of the place and the massage itself.
Yangon Central Railway Station, Myanmar
Walking at the street from Chinatown to Sule Pagoda is quite far and took around 25 minutes, cars are honking from behind and few people apit on the ground. Yangon isn’t the best city to take a walk in Asean. After taking photos of Sule Pagoda we went to Sakura Tower, a building in front of Shangri La Hotel. Our guide tells us that there is a rooftop bar called Yangon Yangon at the 20th floor, that was where we spent our evening until sunset. The bartender and waiter are not very friendly, the drink is good though, but certainly there could be some improvement made. They could allow customer to take 360 degrees view of the city instead of allowing only 200 degrees of it, chairs and table looks and feels cheap, and the staff could smile a little bit.
Yangon Cityscape from Sakura Tower in Yangon, Myanmar
Sakura Tower, Yangon
Sule Pagoda taken from Sakura Tower, Yangon
Yangon-Yangon rooftop bar, Myanmar
We ate at the restaurant below the rooftop bar, they are serving a pork ribs for 13.000 kyat ($12), but it can’t compete with Tony Roma’s. The view is straight to Shwedagon Pagoda and we could see half of the city from behind the glass. Since we were tired and have to wake up early at 5 am tomorrow, we took a taxi for 3000 kyat ($3) to our hotel, Grand United Chinatown.
Shwedagon Pagoda at evening twilight in Yangon, Myanmar
The next day we went to Yangon international Airport, a decent airport but lacking in terms of branded boutique. We headed back to Singapore before getting back to Indonesia.
-End of Trip-
Journeyman 