Bellissimo Myanmar

(Editor's Note: The post was written nearly a month ago but published just now. So we are a little behind. ;))

Hello dear ones at home,

We hope you are all doing well in these wild times and that you are healthy and in good spirits! We are spending our 'Corona exile' in beautiful Sri Lanka and passing the time until our flight on Monday by reading, swimming, making macrame, and basking in the sun.

For us too, it was quite a change to not be allowed to move freely at first, because on Friday a curfew was imposed here in Sri Lanka. On the other hand, we should use this time to reflect and focus on ourselves. Mother Earth also has a bit of time to breathe and regenerate... so it all has its advantages. :)

Actually, we had planned to fly from Sri Lanka to Bali to spend our last weeks there with our dear friend Sarah, but after our flight to Bali was canceled and the situation escalated more and more around the world, we reluctantly decided to return home. It is probably the best and safest to be in one's home country... of course, we are looking forward to seeing our loved ones again, although we had imagined our homecoming to be quite different!

But now to our journey through Myanmar... In early February, we entered the country by a small wooden boat across the southernmost border in Kautwang. When we arrived, we got a stamp from immigration and took a tuk-tuk to the nearest train station to catch a train to Myeik. Here at the train station, we met the lovely Bibi, with whom we traveled more or less to Sri Lanka. Our paths crossed again and again until the final stop. :)

And then our journey through the south began... Since the south is still less developed for tourists and only a few villages have homestays that can accommodate foreigners, you spend several hours on the bus on your way to the north. At a bus stop, we made our second acquaintance with Christian, who later traveled a lot with Bibi. If you see a tourist here, it is usually a German or a French person.

Overall, Myanmar seemed to us like a mixture of India and Thailand. The locals are super nice and very curious (especially in the south). Especially the children go crazy when they see a foreigner on the street - so cute! The food was also something completely different... The famous tea leaf salad is suuuuper delicious!

After our first stop in Myeik, we took a minivan to Dawei. Here, you can still discover some amazing deserted beaches... we rode a scooter on the first day and drove halfway down the peninsula to the south, discovering small fishing villages and empty beaches. When Bibi and Christian joined us two days later, we made a joint scooter tour to the southernmost point of the peninsula... The route was super relaxed to drive and mega beautiful. You pass many small villages and hardly meet any tourists on the way... quite refreshing ;).

Christian stayed directly on the beach and we went back to Dawei with Bibi. Here we spent another day together and went on a lungi shopping tour and ate burgers :D.

The next morning at 5 o'clock, we took the slowest train in the world to Mawlamyine via Ye - it took us 8.5 hours for 160 km :D... very adventurous and damn bumpy...

Apart from the largest reclining Buddha statue, there is not much to see in Mawlamyine, so we continued to Pha An two nights later... as you can see, you spend half of the time on the bus :D.

Pha An is really beautiful, especially the landscape with its caves and temples is perfect for scooter or bike tours... there are also a lot more tourists here than in the south. Because we had to be back in Sri Lanka on the 27th and our flight was from Bangkok (cheaper), we decided not to travel further north than Yangon, so we stayed a bit longer in Pha An (Bibi and Christan joined us again after two days).

Then we continued to our final stop in Yangon. To our great joy, we saw our dear Alma again here and had a nice time with the whole crew... we broke into an old amusement park that has been decaying for years and I went to the largest and most sacred pagoda in Myanmar, the Shwedagon Pagoda, with Bibi and Christian. It was quite impressive and beautiful to see because many locals pilgrimage here to pray, creating a great spiritual atmosphere.

Then it was time to say goodbye... We have never spent so little time in a country before :).

The journey to Bangkok was long again... because our first bus to the border was 5 hours late, we missed our connection and had to wait 8 hours for the next bus... After 27 hours, we finally arrived at our dear family in Bangkok... Here we came into contact with the topic 'Corona' for the first time, as there were already several infected people in Bangkok at that time, and it was, of course, the number one topic of conversation... At that time, we had no idea how serious it would become!

On February 27th, our plane went to Colombo to meet our dear gang... Oh, we were soooo excited. Everything about that will be in the next post :).

Big hugs to all of you at home!