Travelling Through Myanmar: Planning My Trip
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Myanmar is no ordinary travel destination which can be easily visited - it needs some thought and planning to explore one of the most mysterious South East Asian countries to the West
I'm heading into Myanmar in the next couple of weeks for the first time and have been busy reading up on travelling there. Now is the best time of year to visit the country weatherwise, and I've been requested to do a feature about Bagan, Myanmar's answer to Angkor Wat. As such, it seems logical to go as soon as I can. However, unlike most other countries, a trip to Myanmar can't happen just by grabbing a bag of clothes, passport and a credit card on the way out of the door. Thanks to the repression of the military junta who run the country, freedom is very restricted and the day to day business of getting from one place to another becomes unpredictable at best. Hence, preparation is everything to avoid nasty surprises.
I've already got a well thumbed copy of Lonely Planet Myanmar which I've been reading piecemeal over the last few months. (You can never buy a guidebook too early before a trip, in my experience). My route will be the standard one - fly into the capital Yangon from Bangkok, spend a few days there and explore the city and its environs, fly up to Bagan, spent several days investigating the temples, take the boat up the Arrewady river to Mandalay, and then fly out of Mandalay back down to Yangon and out to Bangkok. It should take 10 days and will give me more than enough to think about, both for the article and the full on shock and awe of visiting another country for the first time. I'll be skipping Inle Lake, one of the biggest draws for travellers - I simply don't have enough time to do it justice, and the Bagan temples have to be my focus. By spending more time doing less, I think I'll enjoy the stuff that I do get to see in Myanmar.
A couple of hours spent reading through threads on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree forum helped furnish me with most of the essential info I needed to prepare for travelling to Myanmar. It boils down to this:
- Get your visa several days in advance from the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok. You can get a 24 hour express service for extra money. You cannot get a visa on arrival.
- Forget about using credit cards, travellers cheques or ATMs in Myanmar. It's a cash society. US Dollars are used alongside the Burmese Kyat
- It's OK to bring in laptop computers, cameras and cellphones (even though you can't get any network reception in Myanmar) - customs do not search tourists on entry or confiscate items
- Internet access is slow and clunky at the best of times and only available in the big cities. Web based email providers like Hotmail, Yahoo and Gmail are technically banned by the government but most internet cafe owners know how to bypass the censor and provide access - although it'll still be slow.
- Getting into the country from Thailand is very cheap with AirAsia.com - flights between Bangkok and Yangon are about 2000 Baht each way, including taxes. You can fly pretty much everywhere in Myanmar if you need to.
- Despite the country being under worldwide sanctions and tourism there hotly debated, Myanmar appears to have a well-developed backpacker route and infrastructure, with lots of local businesses offering good value and friendly accommodation and guide services
- That said, don't try and travel on a tight schedule. Most transport is decrepit and prone to breaking down, although the airlines have notably improved. I'll be leaving room either side of my planned hops from city to city for unforeseen delays
- Bring English language books to give to monks and indeed, anyone else who asks. Because tourists are not searched by customs, they can bring books into Myanmar that otherwise cannot get here.
I found several good flashpacker hotel recommendations too, which I'll probably using as I want some peace and quiet to do some writing. There's the Yangon Savoy, the Bagan Thande and the Red Canal in Mandalay.
Other than that, preparations for going to Myanmar are pretty much the same as any other country. I'll probably take a bigger stock of over the counter medicines for headaches etc as I imagine that will be hard to find, but otherwise, it's the usual mix of clothes, books, notepad, camera and iPod. I have to confess to being excited and apprehensive all at once - Myanmar has been travelled by thousands of backpackers before me, but given the political climate, it seems like it would be very easy to get into trouble without even trying. Probably best to stay off the Myanmar beer...
Other Travelhappy posts of interest:
- My 2007 Travel Plans
- Travelling in Myanmar
- AirAsia Now Flying to Yangon, Myanmar (Burma)
- Myanmar In Pictures
- Angkor, Bagan, Sukhothai: The Legacy
[...] As I’m travelling to Myanmar myself soon, I found Peter Olszewski’s Land Of A Thousand Eyes: The Subtle Pleasures Of Everyday Life In Myanmar a fascinating introduction to everyday life within the country. Most books about Myanmar focus on listing the Myanmar military junta’s atrocities against its own people. Peter Olszewski instead simply documents his life and exploration of Myanmar during the year he spent in the country. This is not to say that Olszewski does not understand or appreciate the nature of the regime - but he does recognise that many other books have documented and continue to document Myanmar’s political nightmare and that, crucially, the people of Myanmar should not be confused with their government. Therefore this is a book that simply talks about the people Olszewski encountered while living in Yangon, working as a trainer of journalists on a local newspaper. [...]