Indo Trip 2016

Well after giving the buses a miss as I reckoned it was going to take around 12 hours to get to Inle from Bagan, I splurged and got a plane with a flight time of 30 minutes and a transfer from the airport to my accommodation taking 45 minutes it was a good choice,arrived the hotel at midday and have spent the afternoon walking around looking at the sights and checking out the action on the canal that leads to the lake and it hectic

After my $4 lunch of chicken salad and a beer went and haggled with the local boat men for tour of the lake tomorrow prices ranged from $11 to $17 and ending going with one for $15,this is just me and the boatman no other tourists and goes for about 9 hours so reckon it is good value along with the fact he speaks a bit of English

It is the quite season here at the moment and a lot boats with no tourists the complete opposite of high season when you can't even get accommodation so is a good time to be here,the weather is a bit cooler than Bagan with quite a few showers coming through to cool things down which is good

Well today is the last day here in Bagan and spent more time on the E Bike and clocked up about 50 km mainly on dirt roads and and a lot of sandy patches to make life more challenging,on a normal dirt squiter you wouldn't of even blinked at the sand but on these E bikes the wheels are small 10 inch things and about as wide as match!! So was full throttle in 1st and both feet down as out riggers at god fearing speed of 10 kph-living life on the edge?

Still amazed by the history and the age of Padgodas and Stuppas that I looked at again today,quite a few you can climb up internal stairs to get a brilliant view of surrounding countyside,and you wonder how many other people have done the same thing over the last 1300 odd years,the stairways are very steep and you need to keep your head down,reckon we all must be a bit taller these days

Saw a young backer have stack on an e bike today and quite few others that were very close to go arse up,after I dropped my back to the rental company I was walking back to my digs when I came across a bewildered Korean tourist with a flat front tyre,all bikes have a phone number of the rental company on the front,so don't know how long he had be stranded ,so called up the company to come to his rescue-my good deed for the day !!

Tomorrow I am catching a plane to Heho which is the airport at Inle Lake and will be there for at least 3 nights and that folks is about my day,the weather is still very hot,this morning was overcast but has cleared up and now is bloody hot ,must be high 30's so have been giving my lily whites a does of slip slop slap?

Well the river Irrawaddy is still causing havoc,the only way in and out of my accommodation is by canoe!but other than that it is a pretty nice place,went to an traditional Burmese puppet show which was okay

But the highlight so far has been visiting the plains of Bagan they are filled with all types of historical temples and ruins dating back to 5AD to around 14AD looked liked the neighbors trying to out do each other it is truly a site worth seeing,they ranged in size from small ,the size of single garage to absolutely huge buildings, the large ones were buil between 9-13AD and are a testament to the people that built them ,all I think a built with brick but some I looked at were like stone

To get stout the site there were a few options,A/C car to expensive,horse and cart feel sorry for the horse,bicycle got to be dreaming and finally my choice an electric scooter cost about. $15 for the the day with scary top speed of 17kph they look just like a little moped and the beauty was the actually went a lot of spots that a car or the horse couldn't , once you got away from the tourist sites the road was more like a single walking track so was a cool way to get of the beaten track

Not sure what the plan is for tomorrow but am thinking a boat cruise and need to find the post office and send some souvenirs tack to ME

Well after another breakfast of eggs and toast!! It was time to get out of Mandalay for the day and visit Pyin U Lwin which is about 1-1/2 hours outside Mandalay up in the mountain area which is a part of the old golden triangle and also where the British went to escape the heat during colonial rule,bit like The Blue Mountain, it is about 1150 metres above sea level and the temperature was terrific a pleasant 23' compared to now in Mandalay which is 35' and sticking hot due to bloody humidity

The trip upto the hills was well worth it,lots of Mandalays fruit and vegetables are grown up there so there were lots of terraced fields ,visited a cave which was full of yep you guessed it Buddha's which was pretty neat,also visited a small waterfall and another Padgoda but the highlight would be the botanical Gardens set on 350 odd acres it was really nice

Tomorrow (Saturday) and getting a bus to Bagon and plan to spend a few days there before travelling to to Inle,so no up date tomorrow as I will be on bus
again

I have been taking quite a few photos on the Canon DSLR and when time and and I find a computer I will up load as I am typing all this on my phone hence the spelling/sentence errors ?

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Well after another breakfast of eggs toast and coffee my driver Bo Bo picked my up and after talking with him today he does it quite hard which was different to what I thought

He and his wife and both parents on the wife side live in a 1 bedroom traditional thatch house,half sleeping half living area,farther in law got a bonus after a life on the railway from the government 20 years ago and the have slowly upgraded cars to get the current one which is a few olds told but is owned by the father inlaw,so the the $50 bucks today I paid gets split between him and the father inlaw

Got to visit lots of sights outside Mandalay today,was picked up @8am and dropped back to the hotel @ 4:30pm so not a bad $50 I reckon , but quite a few of the places were still affected by the monsoon rain from a few days ago which has made the Irrawaddy break its banks in the low lying areas

But the country side is green so that is nice except the bloody humidity think my thermostat could do with a rested(that's for you Jim Gimbel) I am of to the mountains tomorrow for a reprieve from the heat ,but still having a blast the photos below and mainly from the Buddhist training area about 40 minutes from here