Our trip to Inle Lake was a great way to wrap up our two weeks in Myanmar. The lake is located in the middle of the country, about a 12 hour bus ride northeast of Yangon. We spent our time here relaxing after our trek, enjoying time on the water, and soaking in the areas around the lake (including a beautiful winery)! Here are our favorite activities from our time at Inle: Taking a Boat Ride Around Inle Lake Hiring a boat to…
Planning The Trek The trek (aka hike) from Kalaw to Inle Lake is about 40 miles and is one of the more popular tourist activities in Myanmar. This is the only region in Myanmar where overnight trekking without prior permits and approval from the government is needed, so it’s easy for your average traveler to do it without too much planning. We learned there are over 80 tour companies operating the trek out of Kalaw, a small mountain town of about 20,000…
Bagan is, hands down, our favorite stop on the trip so far. Located about 8 hours by bus northwest of Yangon, it’s a region with over 2,000 temples concentrated in a small area. The highlight of any trip to Bagan is exploring as many temples as possible, especially the ones with second and third stories that offer panoramic views of the thousands of temples dotting the skyline. We arrived in Bagan just in time for dinner on December 31st and…
The first afternoon after arriving in Yangon, Myanmar, we sped over to Shwedagon Pagoda, arguably the city’s most important and well-known sight, to check out the hype. The pagoda is beautiful and serves as both a religious monument and as a community center of sorts, with lots of locals hanging out, praying, and spending time with one another. As we were walking around, we were stopped by a smiling monk who asked us where we were from. We chatted for a few…
Our trip to Koh Tao started with a 5:00am taxi ride to the Lomprayah bus stop near Khao San Road where we took a 6 hour bus to Chumpon and a nearly two hour catamaran ferry to Koh Tao island. It was a long travel day and recent bad weather made the ferry ride particularly rough. Ferry staff started passing out plastic bags as soon as we sat down and many passengers around us put them to good use. Thankfully…