Heading North

After a couple of days we decided to bite the bullet and head north. We had had enough of cities so rather than bus/train it straight to Mandalay, up in the north of the country, we decided to break the journey half way in a small town called Meiktila. The snag was that the journey was 9-12 hours and the buses all left mid to late afternoon.....do the maths and you will see that the proposed arrival time was not ideal.

So, after a night dozing on the bus, we arrived at around half past three in the morning and unloaded our bikes. There was NOTHING going on in Meiktila and, unsurprisingly, everything was closed. So, we decided to get the bikes together, which took a couple of hours, and then head off.

We were on the road by dawn and it was wonderfully exciting to finally be on our way, heading through the countryside with fields of rice, dried river beds, groves of trees, small thatched houses and the occasional temple with gilded roofs glinting in the sun. Initially the road was fairly busy, but it turns out that all traffic in Myanmar is between dusk and dawn, so within half an hour, it had pretty much died down and we had the road to ourselves apart from the odd bike.

By midday we had been cycling close on six hours and had managed to cover somewhere in the region of about 35km (there had been a few stops along the way). Meg had had enough, as had the rest of us. Truth be told, this was actually the first time we had ridden the bikes with loaded panniers and with the kids, and we all felt we had done pretty well, though the distance covered may not indicate this!

We stopped under a tree and decided to hitch the rest of the way. The third vehicle to pass by was a forestry lorry loaded, for some reason, with clay braziers, and they stopped for us. We passed the bikes up onto the back of the lorry and climbed in behind them and carried on our way.  A little while later we passed through a cross roads with a 'truck stop' Myanmar style and were offloaded as the truck was going off in a different direction. As mentioned, everyone travels at dawn, dusk or during the night and the drivers spend the hottest part of the day relaxing in a cafe. So we joined them and found a palm thatch 'bed' to clamber on and all promptly fell asleep.

The owner was a friendly guy and we were proving great novelty value (the kids, not Mike and I) so they asked us to spend the night, and vacated the family house so that we could do so. This was a little naughty as you are only meant to sleep in registered places, but we were exhausted and the family were nice, so we stayed. All great, apart from the fact that Sam was attacked by bed  bugs or mosquitos and came away sporting 34 bites on his back and legs whilst the rest of us were fine.

Arriving in Myanmar

Well, here we are, two weeks into our stay in Myanmar and it is just wonderful. Arriving into Yangon from Bangkok was a huge relief – we had had our fill of the backpacker district, and Yangon is pure Asia. I hadn't anticipated that Myanmar would be a cross between India and South East Asia, though I guess its location between the two should have been a clue, but it emphatically is.

On the first night we headed into town and ate our fill of cauliflower pakora and sweet Indian tea, sitting on tiny chairs on the edge of a busy road. Sam and Meg were agog at the noise, the hustle and the bustle.  We spent two days in Yangon, during which we reassembled the bikes and took them for a couple of test rides around town.  At first it was VERY hot, VERY sweaty and pretty busy but after a while we found ourselves in some small side streets and meandered along with the roads to ourselves, people waving and double-taking as we passed. As we cycle along the reaction is always the same – people spot Mike and Sam and all get very excited, stepping out into the road to keep watching. I then career along behind trying to avoid the crowds, before people realise that I have Meg on the back, and then all start giggling madly and calling at us as well and trying to touch Meg.

Internet Access in Myanmar

We can't access the blog from Myanmar so Mum is posting the following for us from the UK.

Blog, Map & Zoo Update ....

Mike

In an effort to put a little more info down on what we are doing, day to day. We have altered the map to show 'Pins' that outline our daily log. It is not always going to be up to date, but we will attempt to keep it moving.

You will need to click the larger map [ Underneath _ ] so that you can read the comments properly. Otherwise they are somewhat blocked out.

However.

The Pleasants go to the Zoo : Keep your eye on Liddy but wait for the last few frames & Meggles reaction

And you certainly cant fault the Dusit Zoo for not getting you up close and personal with the animals...

Off to Burma............

Liddy

Thank you for the comments everyone, we are really enjoying them.

Well this is just a quick post as bed is calling. We got back to Bangkok today and picked up our Burmese visas, which was a great relief (various forum postings had been stating that visas were being refused because of the elections that took place yesterday). We fly tomorrow.

Rumour has it that there has been a massive cyber attack on Burma (to do with the elections) with the result that much of the internet is down so we may go off signal for a few weeks. We are due back in Bangkok on around the 8th December but hopefully will be posting in the interim!

Dinner in a Brothel anyone??

Liddy

We are four days in and getting into the swing of things. Mike and I are adjusting to each other's way of doing things; I have an unfortunate tendency dating back to my travelling youth of being a total skinflint ('30p for a taxi, you have to be kidding me, I'll not pay a penny over 25 p'.......followed by hot trek across town on foot due to stubborn reluctance to pay what is probably frankly due) whilst Mike has more profligate tendecies ('Liddy, I'm on holiday, WHY can't I spend 80 pounds on a new pair of flip flops, stop being so tight'). So we are meeting in the middle and in an attempt to find a mutually satisfactory dinner venue last night, we stopped at a promising looking small restaurant; small so probably not wildly expensive, but still not a pavement shack. So, we sat down, ordered dinner and sat back to enjoy the ambience.

It soon became clear that the ambience was a little strange.

First, the restaurant was pretty much all single men apart from us. Unusual but not necessarily that unusual.
Second, the women enticing us into the restaurant were, on reflection, dressed rather more scantily than is normal.
Third, having attracted the Pleasants crew (probably rather unwillingly) the scantily dressed women disappeared back to the front and we were served by a very stoned, very manky looking woman who clearly was not used to taking dinner orders and got everything wrong.
Fourth, when the wrong dishes duly started to arrive, one of the women from out front came over and in a voice that was pure Ray Winstone, asked 'What's the Matter'.

Top Tip; when you are a woman standing about 5ft 11 high and you meet a Thai woman the same height, she is not a Thai woman.

So, the local lady boy investigates what is wrong. We soon work out that the establishment is not, strictly speaking, a restaurant and as soon as the kids finish their spaghetti bolognese (they are loving this Asian food thing) we scarper.

Back to our hotel where we all try to sleep. Meg and Sam succeed. Mike and I do not. Thumping dance beats from the bar right under our room keep us up till three. I decided to sit in the corridor for an hour from one till two; I listened to our neighbours have a screaming match in Dutch for twenty minutes, which was bearable, but when they started on the make up nookie I retreated back to our room to listen to 'We are the Champions' being belted out by the bar next door to the dance club. Fun Fun Fun. Clearly there is all manner of fun to be had in Bangkok!!

Still, apart from this, having a lovely time. We've been to Bangkok Zoo (brilliant, lots of animals that the kids loved apart from the poor little mouse that had clearly been fed into the snake cage and was running around trying to find shelter......didn't fancy his chances much......), taken lots of tuk-tuks, buzzed around in the slick Sky Train to state of the art shopping centres, hopped on local ferries to small wats (wat = temple.....cue lots of 'what wat' jokes......oh the laughs we have......!), tried to get the kids to eat rice and noodles, given up and taken them for pasta, wandered along small residential streets, taken more tuk-tuks etc etc.

We are departing for Ayuthaya, ancient Thai capital, tomorrow, still without our bikes for a couple of days. Then hopefully pick up our Myanmar (Burmese) visas on Monday and fly into Rangoon on Tuesday to start cycling.
We are all champing at the bit to get on the bikes (Sam, earlier on this evening; 'Mummy, if we are on a cycling holiday, why haven't we gone cycling yet?') but it is such a palava packing everything away into boxes, that we decided it wasn't worth it before the flight to Burma. Still, we can't wait. Not long to go now.

Sawadeeeeeeee (Hello)

Liddy
So, we've arrived. The journey wasn't absolute hell but we were all pretty frazzled by the time we arrived. Nice hotel but TINY room for the four giants that comprise the Pleasants family. We all squashed in and went for a meal before bed. We are in the heart of the backpacker district and every five metres is a loud bar with a long haired Thai man playing guitar and singing Bob Dylan, lots of bronzed blonde girls giggling and drinking whisky & coke from a bucket, and older men with wispy pony-tails and faded T shirts oggling the aforementioned girls.

We selected one of the quieter places but as soon as we ordered, the singer / guitarist had returned and started belting out the hits. Meg was next to the loud speaker, which turned out to be a god-send as she started having a tantrum and didn't finish until we'd finished the meal. Forty minutes of screaming is a long time, even for a toddler. Her egg 'wasn't comfy', she didn't want me to feed her, she did want me to feed her, she didn't want ketchup, she did want the ketchup.....normal toddler drill magnified 1000 fold because of exhaustion.

Today was much more sucessful.....we wandered through the local area, ate pad thai and cinnamon buns, swam at the hotel pool and generally had a lovely time not doing a great deal. Meg and Sam are a hit....Meg is already sustaining bruises from all the friendly pinches she is getting and Sam is quickly learning how to say hello in Thai and shake hands with complete strangers. They are both very excited by the pink taxis and the ubiquitous tuk tuks. Tomorrow we have promised a tuk tuk ride. Thus far the bikes are in storage.....will cross that bridge when we have a bit more energy!