Travelogue
The Road to Bagan - 5 July 2011
When the agent at Seven Diamonds travel booked my bus ticket I distinctly heard the English word “foreigner” mentioned. I paid 1000 kyat more than at my hotel for the ticket to Bagan but the hotel charged 2000 kyat to take you to the bus station whereas Seven Diamonds’ fee included the pick-up. The agent told me the bus took five hours, though this turned out to be incorrect. No one in Myanmar seemed to know how long it took to get anywhere by bus, and if you had a guide book, they were wrong also sometimes by as much as 100 percent. During the tourist high season a speed boat runs from Mandalay to the ancient centre of Bagan, Myanmar’s version of Angkor. The journey takes a few hours and costs US$40. At low season however, there is the local boat. It takes 17 hours, costs US$10 and leaves at 5am. You spend all day sitting on the wooden floor. The boat pulls in at various stops along the river and halts for up to an hour before continuing on. It can be a long and very uncomfortable day. Then there is the bus, one at 8am with air-con and one at 8.30 without. The former costs 12,000 kyat, depending on where you buy your ticket. The bus was the local, a battered old Japanese doubtless destined for the wreckers in the land of Nippon, but granted a reprieve and shipped to needy Myanmar instead. There was minimal legroom especially for lanky Europeans so with some seat rearranging, the crew of three placed four of us tourists in the back row. One other guy
Mandalay - The City of Gems - 2 July 2011
Mandalay is home to one million people and is the second-largest city in Myanmar. The city is regarded as the commercial hub of the north of the country. It was Burma’s last royal capital, and has been immortalised in books, poetry and song. “The Road to Mandalay” coined by Rudyard Kipling, refers to the journey up the Ayeyarwaddy River
Yangon - The End of Strife - 28 June 2011
A visitor once described swooping down to Rangoon and central Burma’s “flat green, soggy plains overwhelmed by angry monsoon clouds in unbearable heat.” Yangon formerly known as Rangoon, is barely more than an hour by plane from Bangkok and six-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT but in some ways is light years away from the rest of the world, a
Burmese Days - 24 June 2011
Practical Information - Republic of the Union of Myanmar – Visitor GuideMany visitors I met using guidebooks complained that information on cost and travel, especially travel times, was incorrect, so here's an update.VisasVisitors to Myanmar require a visa. This can be either a tourist of business visa. Visas are available from the Embassy
Langkawi - The Jewel of Kedah - 22 June 2011
The chatty and helpful lady at the Penang Tourist Office by the dockside sold me my ticket to Langkawi. “Be sure to arrive at least 30 minutes before sailing” she said “and ask the bus driver to drop you here outside the door, not at the bus stop, which is someway down the road.” I did and he did. All Penang’s modern bus fleet, air-conditioned
Penang - Pearl of the Orient - 18 June 2011
Penang was Britain’s oldest colonial possession in Southeast Asia, the place where Raffles had started his overseas career with the East India Company. It was also breathtakingly beautiful. It was said that few places merited the title Pearl of the Orient as much as Penang, with its fringe of perfect beaches, its variegated interior of spice
Kuala Lumpur - City of Towers - 14 June 2011
In the 1850s Malaysia’s future capital, Kuala Lumpur, was a mining settlement fought over by rival Chinese gangs. The conflict often resulted in open warfare, prompting the British who then ruled the Federation of Malaya to step in, least the lucrative work at the mines ceased altogether. During its early times, Kuala Lumpur had many
Melaka - Guns, God, and Museums - 12 June 2011
One of the wonders of travel is that you go somewhere you’ve never been before anywhere in the world, know not a soul, arrive tired, hungry and with nowhere to sleep, and within a relatively short space of time be settled in like you’ve been there all your life. I can’t replicate the appreciation of that doing anything
Singapore - Waiting To Exhale - 9 June 2011
Singapore is a sea-level blip barely north of the Equator. Once upon a time it was sparsely populated, disease-infested island ringed by mangrove swamps. Needless to say it had one of the unhealthiest climates in the world and was the kind of graveyard that killed off people in their droves. Until the early 1800s it was a backwater, a
