Amazing myanmar: the country of the smile

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.