Just a quick, boring “I’m alive” post as the connection in this remote place is almost non-existent. I spent one night in Yangon, visited the Shwedagon Paya, an enormous temple atop a hill just outside the city centre. Next day I moved to Kinpun, a village at the foot of the “Golden Rock” which is actually covered in cladding for refurbishment at the moment so you can’t actually see the gold rock itself – nice one!
There seemed to be some sort of pilgrimage going on the other night, as there was music akin to that in a Chinese restaurant with a motivational speaker over the top of it coming through a really stratchy tannoy system ALL night, accompanied by another unfeasibly loud tannoy system from the truckstop next door to my guesthouse, where seemingly thousands of people were going up the mountain in the night. Thankfully last night it was blissfully silent…
Nonetheless it was a nice ride up and a long hike back down, passing by scores of homes on the way down, all of which double as their workplaces, be it a food stall, or a place that makes little wooden racks and guns and whatever. Amazing how they have to make a roundtrip of a few hours to get to the village, to get all of their supplies, including water!
Shortly I will embark on a 3 hour bus to Bago, lay over there for another 3.5 hours, then take another bus for 12 hours to Bagan up north, which really ought to be a lot of fun.