The Road to Mandalay

The road to Mandalay...via Naypyitaw not your usual tourist route.

An early start ..wake up call 5:30am for pick up by car to go to the bus station at 7 ...Micasa had arranged a breakfast hamper for us to take...excellent.. Cheese sandwich fresh fruit and water , but also included a knife and fork, how thoughtful .

On arrival at the muddy Yangon bus station we were eagerly greeted and escorted to the waiting room where we were offered sweet coffee after the check in formalities.

Time to board, lovely clean bus with good tyres, nice staff, and complimentary bottled water, oh and a cotton blanket, which came in handy when the air con temp dropped!

Yangon bus terminal

At the 79 mile mark the bus stopped , men to the right ladies to the left.....no I didn't get off!

Once on the four lane concrete road with wide divider the landscape became fairly uniform.... Plantations of a couple of different species. A few bananas and maybe mangoes and later I thought possibly oil palm because it may have been the rolling hills were once tropical rain forest perhaps including teak, perhaps to help pay for the generals'whim for the new capital city we were headed to.

Yes the road was flooded too

Along the road settlements were sparse, and small police compounds regular and apparently a copy of each other. But there were still people all along the road mowing grass, repairing bridges and generally wandering along he road side. Presumably they were mostly residents of the regular settlements of thatched humpies mostly on stilts visible along the way. We presumed the few with corrugated iron over the thatch roofs were the  "rich" guys ...  All is relative.

Apart from the very impressive mile posts every furlong I think we worked out ... Eight to a mile some of the other roadside furniture included big hoardings showing quite graphic road cashes, obviously reinforcing the road safety message.

Next stop was a refreshment break at the 115 mile rest camp a big car/bus park with half a dozen restaurants attached...we chose a slightly less crowded one and tucked into some fried rice (Gina) and fried rice with some fried beef ... Tasty but tough as an old boot and cold (that could have been the mistake leading to a minor case of runs overnight)

What not to eat.....

Nearing Naypyitaw the land flattened out again and rice paddies took over from the plantations populations also increased as we got closer to the 201 mile peg where we turned off the road to Mandalay still with no sight of the capital on the plains. Its not a very long connection road to the city though and it quickly became clear where the reputed $ 50 billion bill went ... Or is still going.

Compared to the other settled areas we've seen in Myanmar or all of Asia for that matter there's space everywhere ... And the street scape designers must have had a look at Canberra to come up with the amazing array of roundabouts.

Tungapuri hotel

The bus station was a drift back to bedlam as motorbike taxi drivers competed for potential fares.. But like clockwork (aside from my bargain time piece, which had already proven not overly reliable) our driver stood aside a little with appropriate sign albeit with a minor misspelling and we were on our way back along the hotel sector to our digs .... A a little less ostentatious the Tungapuri... Looked fine at first blush and was clean and the very friendly staff ever attentive. But the finish indicated it was built in a hurry like the whole place. some of the building sites showed signs the hurry was not continuing to the same extent.

Traditional workers

Vast road system

   We checked out the recommended restaurant Thai kitchen, which does local shan dishes along with its namesake,almost next door for a beer and booked for dinner. That was totally satisfactory though ordering by pictures a little confusing.  The potato , rice,, tomato and herbs balls were very nice but could not work out how they were cooked .... Or more likely reheated after the constituents were cooked separately... We didn't over eat and with a bottle of Italian Sangiovese were out of there for kyat 32,000 ... Or about $38.

Gem Museum