Bagan is a strange place, this place was supposed to be the highlight in the Myanmar adventure and these high expectations were met without any problem. More than 2500 old temples, monatries and stupa's surround you. We explored the site with the bike for 3 days, needless to say this was again a fantastic experience. (Pictures here)
Inle lake shows Myanmar from its most authentic side, people live in small houses on poles and the only transportation possible is a canoe or a motorboat for the rich ones.
Finally last stop in Myanmar was 3 days relaxing on their paradise beach, actually only reachable by plane as the bus route towards this place is known as the 'puke' route as roads are not yet invented. Very big and beautiful resorts are ready for the flood of tourists which will hopefully come to experience this fabulous place. (paradise pics here)
After a while I found a place where I can access the blogger website, with a nice hack of course to bypass the nice restrictions as opposed by the myanmar government. There are two main attractions you immediately notice when visiting former Birma: the smile on the people's faces & their way of living sends you back in time. We arrived from Bangkok 12 days ago. First stop was the capital Yangon, capital is a strange word in Myanmar as they had different capitals in the last centuries. Actually Yangon is no longer the official capital but foreigners are not allowed to travel to the new one 'Naypyidaw'. Myanmar is really a big country which makes domestic travelling a long and hard journey. The first big trip was the train to Mandalay (the second biggest city): a seperate sleeping cabin, of course to make sure that we are completely isolated from the birmese people. After 19 hours we arrived in Mandalay, a city that really holds a nice atmosphere. It's weird to see that such a poor country is surrounded by golden stupas and nice wooden monastries. But the most warming are the people, not 'puchie' at all, always smiling and children shouting 'ming-ga-laa-ba' to you in the street, so briefly a wonderful place to be...
Some pictures here.
It's a common discussion here in Oz: you'll hear 'Melbourne is boring' in Sydney and 'Sydney sucks' in Melbourne but the truth is you have to love them both. These two cities are completely different, not only in city view but morely in life itself. The life in Melbourne is relaxing, if you feel a little bit lazy (and that happens often here) you just do nothing and hang around, enjoy the weather... The whole city just breaths music, on every corner, in all pubs you have live music and friendly people everywhere. Melbourne was my last stop in Australia this afternoon I'll fly back to Sydney and then to Bangkok. You can find some pics here.
It feels strange the first time. Your mask. Your awkward gear, a bit heavy. You ease into the water and your face slips below the surface. Inhale; the first air comes with a reassuring hiss, and for the first time, you breathe underwater. In moments, you forget your mask. Your equipment transforms to light and agile, and you're free like you've never experienced before. With that first underwater breath, the door opens to a new world. Not a world apart, but different nevertheless. Go through that door. You're life will never be the same again.
After 4 days I was certified as Open Water Diver which allowed me to go down until 18 meters under surface, but off course I wanted more and signed me up for the adventure diver's course which allowed me to go until 30 meters under surface and I had to do a dive at night with ZERO visibility, strange feeling it was...
The first day without diving was strange, I had been under water for almost 5 hours the last 3 days and I wanted to go back to swim in the big aquarium with the fishes and beautiful corals next to me. This means my Cairns days are over tomorrow I'm leaving for Melbourne, the last big ozzy city on my trip.
Some pictures
here.
Tomorrow I'm leaving this fabulous city, actually I'm sad to leave here but we move on to Cairns in the morning. My last days in Sydney were a little bit hectic, I wanted to see as much as possible but I think I managed quite well (I have to catch up some sleep tough). in short, is was great, great, great and will end my last Sydney night in style...
Some pics...
I have 3 stories to tell which give quite a good view on the way of life in Sydney:
- The first day I arrived I wandered around in the city to get some first impressions, I still had a note of 100 south african rand in my pocket(little less than 10€). When I took my camara out of my pocket the note fell on the ground without me noticing it, a girl just ran after me to say I dropped some money on the street: honest as hell!
- Most of the time I wander around with my lonely planet in my hand (those tourists!!), but as soon as I hold and look at the map in my book some ozzy just stops and asks if I'm lost and directly gives the good directions...
- Yesterday I went to a party with life music, when I came back we wanted to take the bus, the first one stopped and we asked if he stops near our place, but no bus did ride that direction so late at night, he promptly offered to ride along for free and he could drop us off a little bit closer so we didn't had to walk that far, this was a public bus!(ask 'de lijn' in Belgium to do that...)
I'm in Sydney already for 4 days and the city is amazing. The first 2 days I just walked around to get the first impressions, after that I took a surf camp on the northern beaches of Sydney, 7 mile beach. The feeling of surfing on the waves is amazing, there is a steep learning curve though but at the end it's all worthwhile, after 2 hard days (4 hours surfing a day is a lot) I could ride the waves up to 1 to 1,5 meter but some more surfing is already planned for next WE. I met a lot of people on the camp (mostly temporarily residents and students of Sydney Uni), the offered promptly to stay with them in their appartment in the middle of Sydney (King's cross). Now I can start exploring the rest of Sydney from here. Anyway some pictures of Sydney can be found here. Ohh did I forgot to say it's 30 degrees here :-)
Bagan is a strange place, this place was supposed to be the highlight in the Myanmar adventure and these high expectations were met without any problem. More than 2500 old temples, monatries and stupa's surround you. We explored the site with the bike for 3 days, needless to say this was again a fantastic experience. (Pictures here)
Finally last stop in Myanmar was 3 days relaxing on their paradise beach, actually only reachable by plane as the bus route towards this place is known as the 'puke' route as roads are not yet invented. Very big and beautiful resorts are ready for the flood of tourists which will hopefully come to experience this fabulous place. (paradise pics here)
