Myanmar is definitely right up there with Vietnam and Japan that I definitely want to visit again within the next 5 years. Yet, for Myanmar I would either like to go in the next 6 months before a lot of the change starts to happen or at the end of 5 years to see how much this country has changed.
Brief Background on Myanmar (don't quote me because I only heard this once, but this is the gist):
Myanmar (Burma) has essentially been under military control for the last 50-60 years. Which is why its name is disputed. Burma is the country's colonial name during its rule under the British I believe. Shortly after the country got its independence from the British, it was taken over and essentially closed by its military government. The US and a lot of the west put sanctions on the country and the country also closed its self off from the world in terms of development for a long time. While under the military government, they changed the name of the country to Myanmar which means fast and strong people, but this is not recognized by most of the world because the government is an oppressive military regime. Over the past 20 years, the country has been open for investment by Asian countries, but has just recently been opened up for investment to the west. To go back about 20 years, there was an election and the NLD (democratic party) won the election. The president of the party is a women and is essentially the hope of the country. However, after the election, the military put her on house arrest and filled the government with ex-military officials. She has been on house arrest (some of this time being served in an actual prison) for the last 20 years, waiting in an nonviolent matter. Side note, we had a talk about Ghandi and King and there nonviolent methods of change and the conversation flowed into Myanmar and how the lady (how the president of the democratic party is known) is like a modern day version of those two. Anyways, there was another election recently, and the NLD won again with an 88% majority and the military is slowing releasing power. This election just happened in November and the lady should be appointed officially in March, so this whole situation is still very new and the world is waiting to see how it plays out this time. The lady has been the hope of the country for many years now and her father was know as the father of the country before he was assassinated many years ago.
Definitely a topic worth researching some more. I plan on doing so when I get back since the internet on this ship is terrible.
Anyways, I'll get to how I spent my days here. I definitely spent more time on vacation in this port than any other, but still got to talk with locals and see the real conditions. This country, along with Vietnam are places in where I saw real poverty and I know India is next where poverty will be even worse, but it really is enlightening to see these things. You hear about poverty in these 3rd world countries and you are able to brush it off because it is so far away, but when you are in it and you see the conditions and somewhat experience the conditions...it makes you look at the world in a new light.
Also, the people of Myanmar were even nicer than those in Vietnam. They were always happy and willing to help without expecting anything in return. This quality, I would guess, comes from the Bhuddist teachings in this country where a large majority of the population is Bhuddist, As we learned from the Unan the monk we had on board, the teachings of Bhudda are more centralized in man than a God per say. A perfect quote from him, which I was going to use last, but I guess it fits here; "Happiness. I am trying to find happiness inside. I try to realize the nature of peoples 'badness'. Let yourself be happy. Happiness depends on your own heart. If your heart is happy, you will be too." - Unan. I won't go into the different sects of Bhuddism, but they all basically say for monks to not have desire, to not want, to not become reliant on physical objects, but to be happy, to not let others effect your perceptions, and to help others.
If you can't tell, Myanmar, its people, and its religion fascinate me. But to my itinerary...
Day 1:
The first day, we got into port around 1300. We actually arrived at one of the country's largest industrial ports and had to have a shuttle that took us 5 minutes to get to the gate of the port, then there was another shuttle which took us between 1-2 hours to get to the city center of Yangon (Rangoon) depending on traffic. I'll talk about the traffic story in day 2, but its all pretty interesting since Myanmar just started getting a ton of cars in 2012 when international sanctions were lifted. Anyways, I had a program this night and didn't have enough time to get to the city and back before the program left so I ended up staying on the ship until 1715. I kind of regret this decision in buying the program in general and also in staying on the ship until the program because I ended up spending the majority of my time in the country at Ngwe Saung Beach which was 5 hours away from the port. So I wished I had had more time to spend in the city and also at the festival which was about 10 minutes away from our port by taxi. So I also wished that I had got off the ship as soon as I got into port and went to the festival because I heard it was very interesting between the shopping options, the man-rotated ferris wheels, and the children that constantly came up to other SASers (semester at sea students) with buckets asking for money. Unfortunately, I stayed on the ship and took a nap before my program which was a really nice dinner at a restaurant in the city. I also had a field lab the next day, so I had to be back on the ship by 0000. The dinner was at a really nice restaurant and we ate outside on like a lawn. There was also a traditional dance performance while we ate. Honestly, it was the best bread and butter I have ever had in my life, like life changing bread and butter. The rest of the meal was good too, but a lot of people were pretty full from the bread and butter because we kept asking for more. It took about an hour to get back to the ship and we got back right around 1030. That was it for my night.
Day 2:
The second day I had a field lab for my finance class. This included a trip to the World Bank office in Myanmar and also a local grain farmer/ business owner. The trip to the World Bank was very insightful because it gave light to the financial background of Myanmar during its time as a closed country and a more recent picture of the country's financial affairs. Myanmar, like I said before, had just been opened to investment from the west and we could see how opening the country's borders caused a huge inflow of automobiles, but the infrastructure such as roads are not advanced enough to handle all of these new cars. Thus, there was a lot of traffic getting to and from this field lab and getting to and from the city in general. Some of the most important take-aways from the visit to the World Bank was that there are entities like the World Bank and its subgroup, the IFC, that are putting money into the country, but it only amounts to $1.4 billion dollars worth of projects so far. And if you know anything about how much it costs to make roads, you'd know that $1.4 billion is not going to get you a ton of road. But the investment is coming in and its also coming from other Asian countries. Additionally, at the grain farmer/ business owners office, he explained how he ad two office locations and he would go to he market every day from 10am to 1pm and try to sell his grains along with the other 2000 grain producers. He also talked about how he is undercut by others and how small corporations are formed between foreign sellers and domestic sellers because foreign sellers aren't allowed to sell grain in Myanmar. Last fun fact is that only 10% of the grain produced in Myanmar is used in country, the other 90% is exported. Great stuff, I had to write a field lab report on the trip, so I'm kind of tired of writing about it. SO, on to the fun stuff. We got back to the ship from the field lab right around 1730 which was perfect because some people had 2000 and 2100 buses that they had to catch back past the city and plus an additional hour. I relaxed for a bit, and then headed out with my group of 6 as it as one person's birthday, so her bestfriend planned a trip to a beach about 5 hours away from the port. We left the ship pretty late because we thought we were gonna get a hotel in the city, then travel the 5 hours on the first bus in the morning to Ngwe Saung beach. That did not happen. Not even close. So, we left the ship late like I said and decided to get some dinner because most of us were starving. We got to the city centre on a free shuttle provided by SAS before 2200 and started to look for a place that had wifi and food. SOme of the group had gone out on Day 1, so they had a place in mind, and we went straight there after getting slightly lost. During dinner, we almost booked a hotel but then suddenly changed our minds because the bus station was one hour away from our current location and the bus was at like 700. So like what sense did it make paying for a hotel if we only needed to be there for 6 hours. Why not just find a 24 hour establishment and just hang out there?! Well this is technically where day 2 ends because it was 0000 when we left the restaurant.
Day 3:
So we leave the restaurant and start walking aimlessly to find the 24 hour place that had wifi and things. By 0100 hours everyone is pretty tired of looking for this place and some people have to go to the bathroom. Apparently, while we were trying to find this place, some strange guy that we passed started following us for a couple blocks ( I didn't see this happen or think it happened because when I turned around there was no one there or he had stopped following us). But we had passed a couple of hotels and kinda gave up on this 24 hour place that we couldnt find. So, we tried to go back to one of the hotels so we could go to the bathroom and probably end up getting a room because everyone was tired and its extremely muggy in Myanmar so everyone wanted to shower. We had passed a hotel like 15 minutes prior and started to walk back towards it but found a bigger and better hotel on the way back and by then it was around 0130. The hotel had a worker walking around serving juice to people in the lobby because there was another group that was much larger than ours that was in the process of checking in to the hotel. Those who had to go to the bathroom, went and the rest of us went to the front desk to ask for the price of a room. The rooms were super expensive, like $150-$160 for the night and we only needed it for like 4.5 hours by now. So there was a divide in the group of whether to go to a different hotel to try to find a room or just stay in the nice, air conditioned, mosquito free lobby until they kicked us out and then look for another place from there. We ended up leaving immediately, much to my discontent, and started walking to find this 24 hour place/ a hotel to stay in. Turns out, we had walked past the 24 hour place...or at least where it used to be. The place was under construction. Absolutely tragic. It was 0200. We almost split up the group because people were tired an irrational but eventually ended up walking around to find another hotel. And if you can believe it, we actually had walked in a huge circle that brought us back to the ATM where we had started our journey in search for the hotel. This was just a couple blocks from the city centre where we were originally dropped off from the SAS shuttle. So we saw the hotel that we had walked past when we were getting money form the ATM earlier and tried to go in there get a room. They were out of rooms, so we left in search of a hotel with rooms available for just a few short hours before we had to go to the bus station. After stopping at 3 more hotels and being told that it was either too expensive or there were no rooms open, we tried going back to the hotel near the ATM and we asked if they could call us a cab to the bus station. Its 0300. So we wake up the guy at the front desk to ask him for a taxi and he calls a couple different places until he finally gets a person that will be there in 30min. We go to sit on the couches and some people have a problem with taking the taxi out to the bus station because its late and the bus station isnt near a city centre. So, we end up cancelling the taxi and try to wait in the lobby for a reasonable time to go to the bus station. However, the security guard of this hotel gets extremely passive aggressive and we decide to leave before anything happens. So its around 0315 ish and we're walking down one of the main street and end up deciding on going back to the city center and just waiting. So, we're outside at a bus stop, with rats crawling near us, mosquitos flying around us, and the occasional bat flying over head. During this time we see a person getting driving lessons in the bus stop area and he was struggling with the manual shift. Next, around 0400, we see 4 kids start to play soccer in the streets using shoes as their goals. Keep in mind its still very dark outside. Then more kids join and soon there is a 6 on 6 game of soccer going on. Around 0430 we decide to walk down the main street and see a pretty big hotel. After going through the metal detector, we ask the employee about the bus station that was an hour away and if he could call us a taxi to get there. The worker at this hotel says you have to buy tickets for the bus a day in advance and that there was probably no way that we would be getting on a bus that day and we would have to wait until tomorrow. We asked him if he could call the company to see if there were any seats available. He said that they didn't open until 0530, but he would call then and said that we could stay in the massive lobby until then. Full of relief we went to sit down and most of us dozed off for the 45min to an hour we had to wait. Turns out the employee was correct and there weren't any more seats on the bus but he said that our little group of 6 could get a private taxi for like $300 to the beach. At this point we decided to take the offer since we had already booked hotel rooms for this night. We ended up getting a better deal of $250 and the taxi got there at 0615. So we started the journey to Ngwe Saung beach and within minutes of leaving the hotel we were all dead asleep. Most of us woke up around 1100 to find that we were still an hour and a half away so we just starred out the windows until we got there. The roads were tiny and could not really fit two way car traffic, so one car would have to pull slightly off the road when they passed each other. And when there was a bus coming, it was either pull completely off the road or get your car destroyed. Driving customs are very different in Myanmar and they also had vehicles where the driver was on the right side of the car, but they also drove on the right side of the road which was pretty interesting. We eventually got there and enjoyed the best hotel in the area. We were a bit early for check in, but one of the rooms we got was ready and we all just went there, put on our bathing suits, and went down to the beach. After was the swimming pool and there was also a village/shopping area about a ten minute walk away from our hotel. So we went there, then came back to swim a bit more until the pool closed and got dinner. The food at this hotel was some of the best I've ever had for such low prices. After dinner we took a walk in the opposite direction on the village and thats a story for another time.
Day 4:
We started the day early with a trip to a place where we got to ride elephants that was about 30 minutes away from our hotel. Afterwards we got to feed the elephants sugar cane which was a lot of fun and we took a ton of pictures. We got back to the hotel and we were going to go do some water sports that the hotel offered but it was pretty expensive and not everyone wanted to do it. We ended up hanging around and taking naps for the next couple or hours then having lunch. But we did get the chance to ride ATVs for 1hr30min on the beach. We went all the way down the beach front, then on our way back, stopped at this sand bar called lover's island where the path was only available during low tide. It was a ton of fun and costs less than $15 for the 1hr30min, but I did here some other people who got to ride motor bikes for the whole day for just $2 for the day. Anyways, after we got back, we relaxed some more, sat by the pool and then had dinner for the birthday girl. Dinner ended super late though and we were supposed to go out, but all of us ended up passing out. Also, we were originally gonna leave on a bus around 8am on day 5, but during the day decided that we would stay until around 1pm and then take our private shuttle back to the ship. It only ended up costing like $150 total going back, but thats for day 5.
Day 5:
With all of our excess time since we were leaving at 1-2pm now and it was a 5-6 hour drive and on ship time wasnt until 10pm, we decided to make our last day pretty exciting. Or at least 2 of us did. We took an early morning boat out to an island about 45min away to go snorkeling. Originally we were gonna go scuba diving but we didnt really have the time for it because I've never been trained before so I would have had to go through the session and it took way to long. It was also cheaper for snorkeling, so we decided on that. It was quite amazing and we saw a ton of fish. At one point the current got kinda strong and smashed us into to some semi sharp rocks so we were bleeding a bit, luckily there were no sharks around. But we ended up snorkeling for about 1hr30min then decided to head back so we would have time for a quick swim, shower, and lunch. I also had time for a one hour Thai massage which was life changing even though I was kinda of sleep through most of it. The lunch was great as it had been during our whole stay and we got into the private shuttle and headed back to the ship. It did get a little stressful because the trip ended up taking 7 hours instead of 6 hours because of the terrible traffic and our driver was driving slowly, but we made it with 45minutes to spare before 10pm and we did not get dock time!
Thats pretty much it for Myanmar, I do hope to visit again soon!
Brief Background on Myanmar (don't quote me because I only heard this once, but this is the gist):
Myanmar (Burma) has essentially been under military control for the last 50-60 years. Which is why its name is disputed. Burma is the country's colonial name during its rule under the British I believe. Shortly after the country got its independence from the British, it was taken over and essentially closed by its military government. The US and a lot of the west put sanctions on the country and the country also closed its self off from the world in terms of development for a long time. While under the military government, they changed the name of the country to Myanmar which means fast and strong people, but this is not recognized by most of the world because the government is an oppressive military regime. Over the past 20 years, the country has been open for investment by Asian countries, but has just recently been opened up for investment to the west. To go back about 20 years, there was an election and the NLD (democratic party) won the election. The president of the party is a women and is essentially the hope of the country. However, after the election, the military put her on house arrest and filled the government with ex-military officials. She has been on house arrest (some of this time being served in an actual prison) for the last 20 years, waiting in an nonviolent matter. Side note, we had a talk about Ghandi and King and there nonviolent methods of change and the conversation flowed into Myanmar and how the lady (how the president of the democratic party is known) is like a modern day version of those two. Anyways, there was another election recently, and the NLD won again with an 88% majority and the military is slowing releasing power. This election just happened in November and the lady should be appointed officially in March, so this whole situation is still very new and the world is waiting to see how it plays out this time. The lady has been the hope of the country for many years now and her father was know as the father of the country before he was assassinated many years ago.
Definitely a topic worth researching some more. I plan on doing so when I get back since the internet on this ship is terrible.
Anyways, I'll get to how I spent my days here. I definitely spent more time on vacation in this port than any other, but still got to talk with locals and see the real conditions. This country, along with Vietnam are places in where I saw real poverty and I know India is next where poverty will be even worse, but it really is enlightening to see these things. You hear about poverty in these 3rd world countries and you are able to brush it off because it is so far away, but when you are in it and you see the conditions and somewhat experience the conditions...it makes you look at the world in a new light.
Also, the people of Myanmar were even nicer than those in Vietnam. They were always happy and willing to help without expecting anything in return. This quality, I would guess, comes from the Bhuddist teachings in this country where a large majority of the population is Bhuddist, As we learned from the Unan the monk we had on board, the teachings of Bhudda are more centralized in man than a God per say. A perfect quote from him, which I was going to use last, but I guess it fits here; "Happiness. I am trying to find happiness inside. I try to realize the nature of peoples 'badness'. Let yourself be happy. Happiness depends on your own heart. If your heart is happy, you will be too." - Unan. I won't go into the different sects of Bhuddism, but they all basically say for monks to not have desire, to not want, to not become reliant on physical objects, but to be happy, to not let others effect your perceptions, and to help others.
If you can't tell, Myanmar, its people, and its religion fascinate me. But to my itinerary...
Day 1:
The first day, we got into port around 1300. We actually arrived at one of the country's largest industrial ports and had to have a shuttle that took us 5 minutes to get to the gate of the port, then there was another shuttle which took us between 1-2 hours to get to the city center of Yangon (Rangoon) depending on traffic. I'll talk about the traffic story in day 2, but its all pretty interesting since Myanmar just started getting a ton of cars in 2012 when international sanctions were lifted. Anyways, I had a program this night and didn't have enough time to get to the city and back before the program left so I ended up staying on the ship until 1715. I kind of regret this decision in buying the program in general and also in staying on the ship until the program because I ended up spending the majority of my time in the country at Ngwe Saung Beach which was 5 hours away from the port. So I wished I had had more time to spend in the city and also at the festival which was about 10 minutes away from our port by taxi. So I also wished that I had got off the ship as soon as I got into port and went to the festival because I heard it was very interesting between the shopping options, the man-rotated ferris wheels, and the children that constantly came up to other SASers (semester at sea students) with buckets asking for money. Unfortunately, I stayed on the ship and took a nap before my program which was a really nice dinner at a restaurant in the city. I also had a field lab the next day, so I had to be back on the ship by 0000. The dinner was at a really nice restaurant and we ate outside on like a lawn. There was also a traditional dance performance while we ate. Honestly, it was the best bread and butter I have ever had in my life, like life changing bread and butter. The rest of the meal was good too, but a lot of people were pretty full from the bread and butter because we kept asking for more. It took about an hour to get back to the ship and we got back right around 1030. That was it for my night.
Day 2:
The second day I had a field lab for my finance class. This included a trip to the World Bank office in Myanmar and also a local grain farmer/ business owner. The trip to the World Bank was very insightful because it gave light to the financial background of Myanmar during its time as a closed country and a more recent picture of the country's financial affairs. Myanmar, like I said before, had just been opened to investment from the west and we could see how opening the country's borders caused a huge inflow of automobiles, but the infrastructure such as roads are not advanced enough to handle all of these new cars. Thus, there was a lot of traffic getting to and from this field lab and getting to and from the city in general. Some of the most important take-aways from the visit to the World Bank was that there are entities like the World Bank and its subgroup, the IFC, that are putting money into the country, but it only amounts to $1.4 billion dollars worth of projects so far. And if you know anything about how much it costs to make roads, you'd know that $1.4 billion is not going to get you a ton of road. But the investment is coming in and its also coming from other Asian countries. Additionally, at the grain farmer/ business owners office, he explained how he ad two office locations and he would go to he market every day from 10am to 1pm and try to sell his grains along with the other 2000 grain producers. He also talked about how he is undercut by others and how small corporations are formed between foreign sellers and domestic sellers because foreign sellers aren't allowed to sell grain in Myanmar. Last fun fact is that only 10% of the grain produced in Myanmar is used in country, the other 90% is exported. Great stuff, I had to write a field lab report on the trip, so I'm kind of tired of writing about it. SO, on to the fun stuff. We got back to the ship from the field lab right around 1730 which was perfect because some people had 2000 and 2100 buses that they had to catch back past the city and plus an additional hour. I relaxed for a bit, and then headed out with my group of 6 as it as one person's birthday, so her bestfriend planned a trip to a beach about 5 hours away from the port. We left the ship pretty late because we thought we were gonna get a hotel in the city, then travel the 5 hours on the first bus in the morning to Ngwe Saung beach. That did not happen. Not even close. So, we left the ship late like I said and decided to get some dinner because most of us were starving. We got to the city centre on a free shuttle provided by SAS before 2200 and started to look for a place that had wifi and food. SOme of the group had gone out on Day 1, so they had a place in mind, and we went straight there after getting slightly lost. During dinner, we almost booked a hotel but then suddenly changed our minds because the bus station was one hour away from our current location and the bus was at like 700. So like what sense did it make paying for a hotel if we only needed to be there for 6 hours. Why not just find a 24 hour establishment and just hang out there?! Well this is technically where day 2 ends because it was 0000 when we left the restaurant.
Day 3:
So we leave the restaurant and start walking aimlessly to find the 24 hour place that had wifi and things. By 0100 hours everyone is pretty tired of looking for this place and some people have to go to the bathroom. Apparently, while we were trying to find this place, some strange guy that we passed started following us for a couple blocks ( I didn't see this happen or think it happened because when I turned around there was no one there or he had stopped following us). But we had passed a couple of hotels and kinda gave up on this 24 hour place that we couldnt find. So, we tried to go back to one of the hotels so we could go to the bathroom and probably end up getting a room because everyone was tired and its extremely muggy in Myanmar so everyone wanted to shower. We had passed a hotel like 15 minutes prior and started to walk back towards it but found a bigger and better hotel on the way back and by then it was around 0130. The hotel had a worker walking around serving juice to people in the lobby because there was another group that was much larger than ours that was in the process of checking in to the hotel. Those who had to go to the bathroom, went and the rest of us went to the front desk to ask for the price of a room. The rooms were super expensive, like $150-$160 for the night and we only needed it for like 4.5 hours by now. So there was a divide in the group of whether to go to a different hotel to try to find a room or just stay in the nice, air conditioned, mosquito free lobby until they kicked us out and then look for another place from there. We ended up leaving immediately, much to my discontent, and started walking to find this 24 hour place/ a hotel to stay in. Turns out, we had walked past the 24 hour place...or at least where it used to be. The place was under construction. Absolutely tragic. It was 0200. We almost split up the group because people were tired an irrational but eventually ended up walking around to find another hotel. And if you can believe it, we actually had walked in a huge circle that brought us back to the ATM where we had started our journey in search for the hotel. This was just a couple blocks from the city centre where we were originally dropped off from the SAS shuttle. So we saw the hotel that we had walked past when we were getting money form the ATM earlier and tried to go in there get a room. They were out of rooms, so we left in search of a hotel with rooms available for just a few short hours before we had to go to the bus station. After stopping at 3 more hotels and being told that it was either too expensive or there were no rooms open, we tried going back to the hotel near the ATM and we asked if they could call us a cab to the bus station. Its 0300. So we wake up the guy at the front desk to ask him for a taxi and he calls a couple different places until he finally gets a person that will be there in 30min. We go to sit on the couches and some people have a problem with taking the taxi out to the bus station because its late and the bus station isnt near a city centre. So, we end up cancelling the taxi and try to wait in the lobby for a reasonable time to go to the bus station. However, the security guard of this hotel gets extremely passive aggressive and we decide to leave before anything happens. So its around 0315 ish and we're walking down one of the main street and end up deciding on going back to the city center and just waiting. So, we're outside at a bus stop, with rats crawling near us, mosquitos flying around us, and the occasional bat flying over head. During this time we see a person getting driving lessons in the bus stop area and he was struggling with the manual shift. Next, around 0400, we see 4 kids start to play soccer in the streets using shoes as their goals. Keep in mind its still very dark outside. Then more kids join and soon there is a 6 on 6 game of soccer going on. Around 0430 we decide to walk down the main street and see a pretty big hotel. After going through the metal detector, we ask the employee about the bus station that was an hour away and if he could call us a taxi to get there. The worker at this hotel says you have to buy tickets for the bus a day in advance and that there was probably no way that we would be getting on a bus that day and we would have to wait until tomorrow. We asked him if he could call the company to see if there were any seats available. He said that they didn't open until 0530, but he would call then and said that we could stay in the massive lobby until then. Full of relief we went to sit down and most of us dozed off for the 45min to an hour we had to wait. Turns out the employee was correct and there weren't any more seats on the bus but he said that our little group of 6 could get a private taxi for like $300 to the beach. At this point we decided to take the offer since we had already booked hotel rooms for this night. We ended up getting a better deal of $250 and the taxi got there at 0615. So we started the journey to Ngwe Saung beach and within minutes of leaving the hotel we were all dead asleep. Most of us woke up around 1100 to find that we were still an hour and a half away so we just starred out the windows until we got there. The roads were tiny and could not really fit two way car traffic, so one car would have to pull slightly off the road when they passed each other. And when there was a bus coming, it was either pull completely off the road or get your car destroyed. Driving customs are very different in Myanmar and they also had vehicles where the driver was on the right side of the car, but they also drove on the right side of the road which was pretty interesting. We eventually got there and enjoyed the best hotel in the area. We were a bit early for check in, but one of the rooms we got was ready and we all just went there, put on our bathing suits, and went down to the beach. After was the swimming pool and there was also a village/shopping area about a ten minute walk away from our hotel. So we went there, then came back to swim a bit more until the pool closed and got dinner. The food at this hotel was some of the best I've ever had for such low prices. After dinner we took a walk in the opposite direction on the village and thats a story for another time.
Day 4:
We started the day early with a trip to a place where we got to ride elephants that was about 30 minutes away from our hotel. Afterwards we got to feed the elephants sugar cane which was a lot of fun and we took a ton of pictures. We got back to the hotel and we were going to go do some water sports that the hotel offered but it was pretty expensive and not everyone wanted to do it. We ended up hanging around and taking naps for the next couple or hours then having lunch. But we did get the chance to ride ATVs for 1hr30min on the beach. We went all the way down the beach front, then on our way back, stopped at this sand bar called lover's island where the path was only available during low tide. It was a ton of fun and costs less than $15 for the 1hr30min, but I did here some other people who got to ride motor bikes for the whole day for just $2 for the day. Anyways, after we got back, we relaxed some more, sat by the pool and then had dinner for the birthday girl. Dinner ended super late though and we were supposed to go out, but all of us ended up passing out. Also, we were originally gonna leave on a bus around 8am on day 5, but during the day decided that we would stay until around 1pm and then take our private shuttle back to the ship. It only ended up costing like $150 total going back, but thats for day 5.
Day 5:
With all of our excess time since we were leaving at 1-2pm now and it was a 5-6 hour drive and on ship time wasnt until 10pm, we decided to make our last day pretty exciting. Or at least 2 of us did. We took an early morning boat out to an island about 45min away to go snorkeling. Originally we were gonna go scuba diving but we didnt really have the time for it because I've never been trained before so I would have had to go through the session and it took way to long. It was also cheaper for snorkeling, so we decided on that. It was quite amazing and we saw a ton of fish. At one point the current got kinda strong and smashed us into to some semi sharp rocks so we were bleeding a bit, luckily there were no sharks around. But we ended up snorkeling for about 1hr30min then decided to head back so we would have time for a quick swim, shower, and lunch. I also had time for a one hour Thai massage which was life changing even though I was kinda of sleep through most of it. The lunch was great as it had been during our whole stay and we got into the private shuttle and headed back to the ship. It did get a little stressful because the trip ended up taking 7 hours instead of 6 hours because of the terrible traffic and our driver was driving slowly, but we made it with 45minutes to spare before 10pm and we did not get dock time!
Thats pretty much it for Myanmar, I do hope to visit again soon!
