Travel to Yangon

Breakfast at the hotel doesn't vary much. I'm eating mostly western. I've been eating a lot of fried rice and rice with eggs. It's comfort food for me. 

And having a double rice.

We finish our last minute packing and head out for the airport. Aparna "destroyed" a wash cloth cleaning her sandals. I should have taken a picture. It was basically a wash cloth turned half black. They charge us 1000 kyat. 

The airport is small with two gates. We "check in" by showing a reservation number. They don't check out IDs and hand us handwritten boarding passes that don't have our names in them. 

We are told we can sit anywhere on the plane. At security they have a paper with the numbers and our names but still don't ask for IDs. They ask us our citizenship but don't require proof. Maybe the lady is just curious. 

It's a turbo prop again. Same room as before. 

Small food service again. 

Pain au chocolat, cake and a chocolate truffle. Triple sweets!  The coffee on board is instant. 

Bagan has taken its toll. 

A little over an hour and we are in Yangon. It's hotter and more humid here. Traffic is bad and it's the middle of the day. I swear a quarter of the cars on the road are taxis. We pay for a room with a view ($90/night) and it doesn't disappoint. 

The room is the nicest room yet.

Large bathroom. 

Tons of amenities. 

But only four coat hangers and two are used!

The hotel is only a year old but it already shows a lot of wear and tear. 

Lots of chips for one year. Maybe poor quality materials. 

We head to the market for an afternoon snack. We wander through the market and find the art and jewelry sections. We manage to find a Chinese restaurant but keep looking. We follow some umbrellas but that's fruits vendors. We end up out of the market and find street vendors. Aparna spots a chicken place and we go there. 

Peri Peri sounds familiar to me. Oh crap, we are at a chain and a Portegeuse place. Oh well, different flavors at least and hunger is taking over.

While we eat we examine the map and decide what to do next. Since we are here we decide to do the walking tour. Hey what is this in the corner of the map?  It's a map of the market. Oh there is the food court. Oops. If we would have went straight instead of turning when we first arrive we would have stumbled across it. 

We begin our walking tour. A lot of streets look like overcrowded poor urban areas. 

And maybe this is only poor in my mind. There is a lot of colonial architecture here. 

Our walking tour takes us into Chinatown, past Sule Pagoda and city hall. As we complete our loop the heat and our feet are getting to us. Man water is cheap here - 300 Kyat (about $.25). We catch cab and return to our hotel in time for

Not a bad view from our balcony. 

I fall asleep while trying to figure out where to have dinner. It's 7:30 and we decide to just eat at the hotel. 

Happy hour goes to 8:00 and the prices aren't crazy. Pretty good considering its on the top floor with a view. 

This is the first lunch or dinner except on a plane that I haven't had beer since lunch in Korea.  

Again with the fried rice.

Aparna has seafood noodles. For drinks and dinner is less than $31. 

Food total for the day is about $42. 

We managed to get in 12.7k steps and 4.3 miles.