Myanmar, Part 1: the journey there, plus Bagan

I've been meaning to do a post on our trip to Myanmar at Christmas since, well, the moment we got back. And here I am, finally getting to it seven months later...

In any case, I've had a handful of people ask after our itinerary, so I'll start there and include the highlights along the way. Most of my trips to Asia start in Singapore, where most of my relatives live, and this time, we also stopped off in Thailand to spend Christmas with one of Elliot's best friends who lives in Phuket. Below is just the Myanmar portion of our trip.

December 27 - Bangkok (DMK) to Yangon (RGN) on Air Asia
Our flight from Phuket to Bangkok was so delayed we very nearly missed our flight to Yangon, despite having allowed ourself four hours for the connection! However, we convinced them to let us carry our bags on, made a mad dash through the airport and, yes, were the very last ones onto the plane. There was an American couple that were making the same connections as us, and we later found out they had placed fifth in the CBS TV show The Amazing Race!

Our plan in Myanmar was to 'wing it' where possible, travelling like backpackers, but as Yangon is the former capital of Myanmar and its largets city, we thought we'd book our hotel there in advance. We arrived in the city at around 7pm and after checking in to our hotel (the May Shan, which was fine but nothing special, though the wifi in the lobby was a treat), we headed out to explore.

We discovered we were moments away from the Sule Paya (or Sule Pagoda), which is more than 2500 years old – older than the Shwedagon Pagoda!

We then headed to the night market, where there were lots of interesting fruits that I didn't recognize – including these, which I believe are wax apples

Our first trip on a bicycle rickshaw, which are common in Myanmar and seat 2 passengers, back-to-back. 

December 28 - We had opted early on to only spend one night in Yangon, at least at the beginning of our time in Myanmar. Having been in Singapore, Bangkok and Phuket, we thought we'd be more eager to get out of the big cities and onto the more adventurous portion of our trip.

Early on the morning of the 28th, then, we boarded an Air Mandalay flight to Nyaung U (also spelled Nyaung Oo), the nearest town to Bagan, an area renowned for its thousands of Buddhist temples. A Christmas Day flight from Yangon to Heho (another city in the Shan State, where Bagan is) that had crashed and killed two and injured 11 left us feeling a bit worried; the tiny airport where almost everything was done manually (not a computer or conveyor belt in sight) didn't really help.

Nevertheless, we got to Nyaung U in one piece!

Nyaung U, Old Bagan, and New Bagan are the three towns where travellers to the area normally stay. We decided to look for a hotel in Nyaung U based on the advice of a few blogs we had read that identified it as the busiest town of the trio. Definitely good advice - it was already pretty small and dusty!

We arrived mid-morning and wandered around until we found a hotel. We had started hearing rumours in Yangon about difficulties finding accommodation (given the peak season and rising popularity of Myanmar as a tourist destination in general) and had already met quite a few single travellers who confirmed this. However, of the five hotels we stopped in at, three could accommodate us and one had room but turned us away as foreigners! Apparently, there was a religious festival happening that weekend so hundreds of Myanmar people were expected to travel to the area, with all its thousands of temples!

In any case, we ended up staying at the Eden Motel for three nights, at a cost of USD $25 per night. Not cheap – but accommodation in Myanmar generally isn't (at least not yet).

We did have an enormous room, though!

Our first view of Nyaung U, from the front steps of our hotel

Initially, we had planned to spend New Year's Eve in Bagan, based on the following Lonely Planet description:

A bustling river town with more happening than you’ll find elsewhere in Bagan, Nyaung U is where most independent travellers hang their hat (or backpack). Roaming the back roads towards the jetty or stopping at scrappy teashops will attract friendly wide-eyed looks. There are a handful of temples to see, including the Shwezigon Paya, and a lively market. Visitors staying in New or Old Bagan tend to make it here, if not for the restaurant scene (the closest the Bagan area gets to nightlife) then for the transport links.

Don't get me wrong – we loved Bagan and had an amazing time exploring the temples by horse cart and going on a cruise of the Ayerwaddy River – but Nyaung U was hardly "bustling"!

We weren't expecting a big New Year's Eve party, but given that it was peak season (and three days before NYE!), we thought Bagan would be rife with other travellers who would at least be keen to ring in the new year in the traditional western way, i.e. with a toast and countdown at midnight! Not so.

In the end, we decided to spend two days exploring the region, then head to Inle Lake.

The market in Nyaung U

Myanmar people doing their washing on the banks of the river. This was our view from The Beach Bagan restaurant, which was a lovely restaurant about a 10-minute walk (or 5-minute horse cart ride) from the main thoroughfare of Nyaung U.

A typical Myanmar horse cart. These are superb for exploring the temples. Sure, renting a bicycle is a cheaper but much more exhausting option, as not all of the roads are paved and the bicycles are a bit rickety! We saw more than a few tourists walking their bikes through inches of red sand... not fun!

A common view in Bagan: old, noisy trucks and vans with dozens of passengers hanging out of every window and perched on every available surface!

You can get a sense of just how many temples there are in Bagan... THOUSANDS! We visited about 15 in the course of a single day. According to the Lonely Planet:

In a 230-year building frenzy up until 1287 and the Mongol invasions, Bagan’s kings commissioned over 4000 Buddhist temples. And despite centuries of neglect, looting, erosion, and regular earthquakes, this temple-studded plain remains a remarkably impressive and unforgettable vision.

Typical temple activities. Note my scarf tied around my waist - as is the case with many religious sites around the world, you need to dress appropriately to visit the Buddhist temples in Myanmar. No skimpy tank tops or short shorts!

One very old, beautiful temple.

Temples as far as the eye can see

Amazing...

... Even more amazing after one man got down on one knee and proposed to his girlfriend! We all cheered when she said yes.

Be sure to stop at a lacquerware workshop, too, where you can learn the process of weaving, painting, and decorating lacquerware, and then buy some really beautiful Myanmar pieces.

We also rented a river boat and took a little cruise down the Ayerwaddy River. This was another highlight of our time in Nyaung U – the boat engine very noisy (as Lonely Planet did tell us would be the case), but the river is enormous and really beautiful. Our boat captain even brought us to a little beach shack for a drink!

  

That night, we decided to check out the local party our horse cart driver had been telling us about – it had something to do with the religious festival that weekend but we weren't exactly sure what. Nevertheless, we had some dinner, then rented bikes and rode about 5km toward New Bagan. 

We knew we were in the right place when we heard loud traditional Myanmar music playing and spotted all the parked scooters. (FYI, tourists are no longer allowed to rent scooters or hire scooter taxis in Bagan. We kept hearing about one incident in particular involving a female Japanese tourist who was apparently raped and stabbed to death by a male Myanmar motorcycle taxi driver that had picked her up to go sightseeing.) 

And this was the performance! It was a bit of a bizarre night – not exactly what you'd expect to draw a large crowd of around 200 Myanmar people ranging in age from 20 to 50, but cool to witness anyway. 

Stay tuned for a post on Inle Lake next...

Juice detox: the verdict

It's so good to be eating again!

I managed to finish all six days of the Nosh Detox - despite more than a few ohmigod-I'm-starving instances and a pretty rough second night.

So was it worth it (and by that, I mean the £179 and 24 bottles of juice)?

It was probably worth the experience, but I have to say, I'm not sure I'd do it again. 

I might be feeling differently if I had been feeling really run down prior to starting it, but I didn't really feel the big energy boost that was supposed to come around day 4. In fact, on day 5, the pamphlet that came in the bag of juice said, "This is how you should always feel". Hmm - the same as I usually do?

Truth be told, I can see how the juice detox would be a good way to lose weight. I'm not unhappy with my weight and don't generally struggle with it (although my metabolism definitely took a nosedive a few years ago and I do sometimes wish I didn't love ramen and burgers so much), but I actually lost 10 pounds. I went to bed last night (and was still, prior to dinner tonight) lighter than I was in high school. What?!!!

Anyway, I'm sure it'll all come back on in the next few days, especially as I have a fridge full of cheese, bread, and ingredients for all kinds of yummy things that I'm going to make. I also bought two bottles of wine. 

What I have learned, however, is that I definitely need to drink more water. I'm pretty sure my extreme headaches on day 2 were from dehydration (and the shock to my system of near-starvation), but since I basically hate water, my new routine is to put cucumber slices into a jug of water. Much tastier.

So, that's it. No big revelations but still glad I did it...

Anybody else have any other (more interesting) detox stories to share?

Juice detox, day 3

Feeling much, MUCH better today, thank god!

I don't feel quite like I've turned the corner (people always talk about feeling fantastic after a cleanse, and I'm not sure I would say that just yet), but definitely 100x better than last night.

Short post today - my juices today were:

• 11:00am: The Rehydrator. Contains grapes, strawberry, pear, apple, lime, & flaxseed. 
• 1:30pm: The Eliminator. Contains green leaves, berries, mango, oranges, & acai. 
• 4:30pm: The Healer. Contains banana, peach, pineapple, apple, & the "best green superfood in the world". Not loving these 'vague' ingredients but this was by far my favourite juice so far. The thick banana was such a treat!
• 8:00pm: The Rejuvenator. Contains goji berries, peach, mango, pineapple & lime.

More than anything, though, I really, really miss food. And on that note, how about a few snapshots of my favourite foods?!

Ramen! I could eat ramen everyday. Ramen ramen ramen.

My favourite places in London are:

1) Bone Daddies in Soho

2) Tonkotsu, in Soho

3) Shoryu Ramen, on Regent Street (but surprise! They also have a pop-up in Soho)

4) Ittenbari, ALSO in Soho

I have no idea why they're all in Soho, but who cares!

#NoodleFriday is a tradition in our household (as in, Elliot and I go for noodles every Friday... a bit more difficult now that he's back in Spain but I still manage to get ramen into my system twice a week). Definitely can't wait for juice detox to be over so I can get some RAMEN!

Oh, Bone Daddies also serves this delicious sweet & spicy pork bone dish which is amazing. Definitely not one for a non-meat lover, but the sauce on these is perfectly sticky, perfectly spicy, and there's JUST enough meat on these to be perfectly worth the effort of chewing on some bones. Yum.

I also love a good BURGER. Gaaah what I wouldn't give for a burger right now!

Burgers are pretty trendy right now (still) in London—it seems to have started sometime late last spring or even earlier, I think—but the interesting thing about burgers here is that restaurants ask how you like them done. In Canada, burgers have to be fully cooked through (health officials say the 'safety' of beef all comes down to its surface area, since that's what is exposed to air—and obviously, ground beef has a lot of surface area before it's formed into patties). Here, you can get your burger medium-rare or even rare.

I didn't think I would like a medium-rare burger, but surprise! I do.

This before-and-after series is from Honest Burgers, in Soho (they also have a location in Brixton)

And this next one is from Patty & Bun, near Bond Street / Mayfair!

As you'd expect, everyone has an opinion on who serves the best burgers in London. My friend Lis swears by Patty & Bun's, but she had a lamb burger and I had a regular beef burger, and mine was far too messy. The sauce was running down my arms from the very first bite! It was still pretty good, though.

Honest Burger was, IMHO, the better of the two. Probably the best burger I've had in London, actually. We did wait 2 hours for our table (we went to a pub and had 2 bottles of wine first, so that might have helped, too), but my burger stayed intact throughout, with perfectly uniform amounts of meat, bun, vegetables, and cheese in every bite. Amazing.

I've also had a Lucky Chip Burger (yummy and great to be able to eat it outside, at Netil Market in East London) and a burger at Meat Liquor (overrated and in a room that has over-the-top slaughterhouse décor), as well as many a burger from various pubs (the Prince of Wales in East Putney does a pretty good burger). What can I say... I can't wait until I can eat burgers again, too.

Now that I'm starving and REALLY MISSING FOOD, I shall drink some cucumber-infused water and go to bed.

Juice detox, day 2

I'm lying in bed with my laptop propped at a really awkward angle, but I can't muster up the energy to fix it... I feel like I'm going to die!

Day 2 sucks. Here are the juices I had today:

• 11:00am: The Rehydrator. Contains passionfruit, strawberry, orange, parsley & flaxseed
• 1:30pm: The Eliminator. Contains acai powder, pineapple, mango, blueberries, & peach
• 4:30pm: The Healer. Contains green synergy powder, green leaves, banana, kiwi, & oranges
• 8:00pm: The Rejuvenator. Contains goji berries, passionfruit, orange, mango & lime

The first half of the day went by smoothly - I was running late this morning so the lemon & ginger tonic was slightly less offensive when I gulped it down at the train station. The Rehydrator and The Eliminator (such a terribly evocative name... a bit gross) were also fine. The Rehydrator in particular was a bit thicker in consistency, so more like a smoothie, which I was into.

My 4:30pm drinks on Days 1 and 2 have both been green, although yesterday's contained avocado and today's contained mystery "green leaves". But after that is when the day started really falling apart! 

What started out as a headache got progressively worse until I had a migraine (well, my type of migraine, anyway - I don't get the aura or sensitivity to light that some people get). When I got up to leave the office, I got clammy, had cold sweats and nearly vomited. I had one of those moments in the bathroom where you wonder if anyone will notice if you sit down on the floor in one of the stalls. :(

When I got home, I got straight into bed, only to get up 10 minutes later when the doorbell rang (yay, four more days of juice had arrived), major GRRRR, got back in bed and fell asleep for about an hour. Eventually, I got up and, since my headache had subsided slightly, I decided to try and drink the 8:00 potion. 

Rejuvenator, my ass! The first sip made me retch so I decided to take a break... which is what I'm doing now. We'll see if I get through the rest of the bottle. 

This is my sad, sad current view

My Aussie friend (whose name is Julia!) says this is normal, and that Day 2 is the worst, and that headaches are a common symptom. She also says by Day 3 things start looking up. The "detox manual" leaflet (which came with the first delivery) confirms the headaches, but not the Day-3-looking-up thing.

Hopefully she's right.

Juice detox, day 1

I started a juice detox today. I'm not 100% sure why - I suppose as some kind of willpower test? In any case, I'm always up for trying something new!

My Aussie friend recommended a London company, Nosh Detox, to me. She had completed two of their juice programs and liked the results (she said she noticed a huge change in her energy levels), so when they had a 50% off deal on in April, I decided to give it a go.

It wasn't cheap: even with the discount, it cost £169 for six days of juice (you get four juices a day, so 24 bottles in total... yes, that's a lot of plastic), which is more than I would normally spend on food in this amount of time (I'd say I buy lunch and dinner approximately six or seven times a week in total), but these kinds of things normally are a bit of an investment, aren't they? That's what I told myself, anyway.

Side note: my new favourite packed lunch (though I've actually been doing this since November) is leafless salad, which is exactly as it sounds: everything that you'd put into a typical salad, minus the lettuce. My favourite combination is:

• avocado
• tomato
• cucumber
• a bit of cheese
• sweet corn
• chick peas (only if you feel like it - they're pretty filling)
• black beans (again, only if you feel like it as they're pretty filling, too)
• a boiled egg
• roast chicken breast or tuna 

I finish with either a handful of capers (for their saltiness) or a tablespoon of oil and vinegar dressing. Cut everything up into bite-size chunks - the second best thing about this salad is that you can eat it with a spoon! In fact, I started making this dish because I was sick of wrestling with those big, annoying (and often messy) leaves of lettuce every time I went to take a bite!

Back to Nosh.

Here are the juices I received for Day 1, snapped as I was making my last pasta supper:

The nice thing about this detox is that it's pretty mindless. It's like detoxing for dummies! Unlike some cleanses, you aren't allowed any food, but each bottle is packed with enough nutrients to sustain you and detoxify your system at the same time.

And, as you can see, each bottle says EXACTLY what time you're meant to drink it. It's simple, but it's genius!

Oh - the company also delivers the 6-day supply in two batches, so everything is pretty mindless. You just pop them in your fridge and bring the right bottles with you when you leave the next day! (This is starting to sound like a plug for Nosh, but I swear, I paid for the detox.)

I woke up kind of excited to start, but of course, as soon as you know you're not allowed to eat, food is all you can think about. I'm not a big breakfast person (I usually just have something small, unless it's the weekend, in which case, I LOVE BRUNCH), but I was starving by the time I got to work. The Lemon & Ginger Tonic I was allowed to drink at 8:30am (the tiny bottle in the front) didn't cut it, and I didn't like its flavour, either. Boo.

The rest of the day was pretty standard... the juices are timed pretty well, so by the time I was starving, it was nearly time for the next juice. Here is what was in them, in order:

• 11:00am: The Rehydrator. Contains passionfruit, strawberry, orange, parsley & flaxseed
• 1:30pm: The Eliminator. Contains acai powder, mango, pear, grapes & lemon
• 4:30pm: The Healer. Contains avocado, mango, watercress, pineapple & "green synergy powder" (the first weird-sounding thing)
• 8:00pm: The Rejuvenator. Contains goji berries, banana, berries, orange & lemon

Here are the finished juices.

I went for a run this evening (I was worried about going to the gym on an empty stomach tomorrow morning! And why not torture myself more while I'm at it?) and now, it's about three hours earlier than I would normally go to bed... and I think I'm going to go to bed.

Life's pretty boring without food.

The next five days follow the same four principles (with the same tonic each morning), so we'll see how I feel. Keep you posted.

Weekend away, part 2

Haven't had time to posting the rest of my thoughts about our Easter trip to New York, so here are the photos instead!

Lichtenstein - a good precursor to my visit to the Tate Modern, where the artist's retrospective ends in a few weeks.

The super-impressive Warhol Campbell's soup collection. Spot the cheddar cheese soup... sounds gross but also kind of delicious, no?

What! Amazing.

Edvard Munch - an obvious obsession with painting people's hands over their cheeks. Quite a good collection of his work - though I was a bit disturbed by the constant recurrence of this theme in so much of his work, to be honest.

Everyone knows I love Mondrian...

Also met my friend Susan for a lovely breakfast at Veselka, near St. Mark's Place. Love this little Ukrainian diner and the little old man that served us!

Standard view from the path that cuts through Central Park.

Sneaky pictures of the inside of the Guggenheim... they no longer let you in just to view the grand foyer - you need to buy a ticket almost immediately upon entering, and there are about 3 security guys ready to kick you out if you're loitering about for a photo!

All in all, had an amazing time – ate a lot, saw some friends, and soaked up the wide roads, the super-tall buildings, and the general feeling of openness that apparently, I've been missing here in London.