Luckily, as the hotel was empty, we were allowed a late check out free of charge, so we could continue to explore the city and use the hotel as a base for the day before catching our night bus to Bagan.
The first thing on the list for the day was sorting all our chores, i.e. pick up the laundry, restock the fridge with beer and pack our bags. Once this was ticked off the rest of the day was spent relaxing. I was completely blocked up with a cold and was cleaning out the hotels tissue stash, but we still made it out to explore the streets and venture down to the lake for a couple of hours.
The lake is brown, very, very brown. Browner than the Whanganui river brown. But it is still used by the locals for fishing, laundry and bathing. It is covered in long wooden boats, and all the boats look exactly the same. Although there was still a fair amount of traffic on the water most of the boats were docked on the side, assumedly because it’s low season so less tourists bumming about. It was hard to imagine how hectic ot must get if even 75% of the boats are out simaltaneously in high season.
While relaxing in the arvo with more beers on the balcony, we listened to the sound check for a free concert that was on that evening in the park across from the hotel. It was also my first experience of the trip being asked to have a photo with a local (lol).
Following checkout at around 5 pm we trudged down the road to Live Dim Sum House for dinner. What a treat. We had the half duck with pancakes, which came as a plate of sliced duck with spring onion, hoisin sauce and 8 pancakes. Bloody fantastic. We also had the pork and shittake dumplings, pumpkin dumplings and steamed veges with ginger sauce. This was washed down with a pot of ginger, lime and honey tea. It was so damn good we ordered a second pot of tea and some fried crispy duck dumplings. All up it cost around 18,000 kyat ($18) – bargain.
Full as and ready for a snooze, we made our way to the bus station. We arrived at around 7.20pm and the bus was there by 7.30 pm so we were straight on board and getting set into prime nap position.
The bus was fairly empty which provided a great opportunity to utilise the full chair recline without looking like a dick. The other key difference between this and first overnight JJ Express bus experience was that they provided cooked food at the 30 minute dinner stop instead of a snack box. Chinese noodles with chicken and Shan noodles with pork. Needless to say we didn’t get very far through it. But the green tea went down a treat.
We arrived in Bagan at around 4.30 am. We were hounded by taxi drivers once off the bus asking a ridiculous price of 15,000 kyat to get to our hotel. After making it clear of they didn’t make a semi reasonable offer we’d walk they finally got down to 7,000 kyat ($7). Still a rip as our hotel was close as but at this point we didn’t really care anymore.
After a short scare that no one had prepared for our early check-in when we turned up to a deserted hotel, the receptionist woke up, opened the locked gate and came to check us in and take us to our room. It was spacious and had a TV. We were the end room on our level and looked out on a heap of mango trees, yum. We also found out pretty quick we had a resident gecko. They make really loud annoying sounds, lucky they’re cute.
Shower, sleep.
Photos here:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/NBdm1qbmoH2ZaoPe7
Kyley on Tour 