Pyin u Lwin - Mandalay - Yangon

The ride down from Pyin u Lwin was quite thrilling - sitting on the roof of a pickup truck with 5 guys and about 400 tonnes of cauliflower. Only 2 and a half hours - the shortest journey so far in Burma. I got to Mandalay, where the mercury was now hitting 40 degrees, so I headed for the nearest bit of shade I could find - the Mandalay train station and collapsed on the marble floors for 3 hours sweaty sleep. A short Rickshaw ride later and I was on the bus to Yangon to complete the final chapters of my new book - "Why 6ft 4' people should not ride long distance busses". 15 hours and a partial spine
amputation later I arrived in Yangon for breakfast and my flight back to Bangkok.

In short:
Burma is the friendliest, most hospitable nation in south east Asia (even outdoing Laos). The people will buy you tea and cake, invite you for dinner, give you a ride for free. Try as you might you cannot force money into their hands. It is also one of the cheapest countries I have ever been to - my new record for a meal is 5 large Samosas and a cup of coffee for 10 euro cents. A single room will set you back 2 / 3 Euros. The Burmese are incredibly honest - on many occasions I have heard of people mistakingly handing over a 1000 instead of a 50 Kyat note, but have been corrected by the smiling shop owner. Burma has stunning scenery - a truely photogenic country. It also has an amazing diversity of flora and fauna - the biggest population of Asian elephants, quite a few tigers, a sprinkling of Rhinocerousesi, amazing rainforests (75% of the world's teak trees are in Burma), huge unexplored mountains and pristine coral banks in the south of the country. And much much more.

In fact Burma sounds like paradise?!

Well it would be if it weren't for the evil, brutal, nationalistic, uneducated, corrupt, egotistical, greedy (insert nasty adjective here) military junta "government", which decided in 1990 that the country didn't REALLY want their democratically elected leader (Aung San Suu Kyi), but would rather have a military dictatorship.

Actually, read it here for yourself.

It is all true, you really do see hundreds of people in chain gangs digging up the roads (esp. in the north of the country), all doing their "part for the country". I.e. forced labour. Recently the government wanted to rebuild the fort in Mandalay so it forced one person per house to toil for 16 hours every month. Young children are not spared either. Aung San Suu Kyi actually requests people not to go to Burma, but as one of the many Burmese people who I spoke to said:

"You travellers are the stars in our skies, the proof that there is a world outside of Burma, we are so so happy you come".

And then he bought me some tea...