BURMA/MYANMAR • TRAVEL

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Total km biked: 605 kilometers

Days biked: 9 days

Overall the road conditions in Burma are not super, but in our opinion it is probably better to be on a bike than a bus. We took a bus from Rangoon to the north to start cycling since we only had two weeks in Burma. The ride covered about 450 km in 20 hours. The roads are pretty narrow, with a mixture of pavement, rocks, dirt and potholes - totally navigatable on a bike, but tougher with a large bus, especially since there are also motorcycles, bikes and cars on the road. Two vehicles traveling in opposite directions can cause a big slow down. We were there in February, which is also the dry season, so dust is a significant concern; we wore masks everyday while cycling.

Each day in Burma was fairly hot, though it felt a bit drier to us than Thailand, where we were before flying to Burma.

Food was easy to find in Burma. We ate mainly fried vegetables and rice for lunch/dinner. Usually every hotel we stayed at included breakfast in the room price, so we never bought breakfast anywhere. Fried vegetables ranged from 500-2,000 kyat, depending on where you ate and how touristy the area was. In larger tourist areas like Inle Lake and Bagan there are many restaurant serving Burmese, Thai, Chinese, Indian and Italian food among others. Water was available everywhere.

Due to the government restraints in Burma, camping is officially not allowed. Neither is staying with local people. You are however, allowed to stay in monasteries, though we have heard varying reports as to if this puts the monks in a precarious situation with the government. We were only there for two weeks so we just stayed in hotels and guesthouses. The average price for a room for two people for one night was about US $10, a bit expensive we thought. The rooms were clean and like we mentioned, always included breakfast which would probably cost US $2-4 (we eat alot). Some hotels/guesthouses have much better breakfasts than others, so you could always ask in advance. We did. We are hungry when cycling so the quantity of breakfast sometimes factored into where we chose to stay.

We found a Burma map near Khao San Road in Thailand. It wasn't very good and didn't provide any distances from town to town, but it worked out okay and was generally accurate, although it did not include all the smaller roads that we would have liked. It would be a good idea to get a decent map beforehand.

The Burmese people were really amazing. You always hear people saying this, but in our opinion it was true. We met Ayo on a bus ride to the north. We arrived in Mandalay at 1:00 am and she helped us find a place to stay and them came the next two days at 6:30 am before school to bring us a breakfast of traditional Burmese food. She then invited us to dinner with her family the night before we left. She was amazing!

There is a lot of uncertainty in Burma about which roads are "open" and "closed" to foreigners. From Inle Lake, we were told there was a road heading north to Mandalay. This road wasn't on our map and we were told by numerous people that it was "closed" to foreigners. We weren't planning on going this route, but when we reached the turn-off just before Kalaw we saw some police parked on the side of the road and decided to ask them about the road, just to see their response. We showed them the map, asked about the road and they were surprisingly receptive. They told us the road was very bad (lots of large loose rocks) but it was open and there were a few places we could stay along the way. Not what we were expecting. We aren't sure if this is true or we just happened to meet the right people?

We had no trouble cycling from Inlay (Nuangshwe) to Kalaw, Thazi, Meiktila, Bagan, Pakkoku, Monywa to Mandalay though this is a pretty well-traveled tourist track. We were only in Burma for two weeks, so we didn't have time to cycle north from Rangoon up to Inle. We hear that parts of this area is where multiple cyclists have had trouble with police and been forced to take buses for sections of the route to reach towns with authorized guesthouses. We can't comment on this fact, as we didn't experience it ourselves.

Meredith got a very bad sinus infection when in Burma. It lasted for nearly two weeks and didn't even flinch after a round of Amoxycillin and she never takes antibiotics. It took nearly three weeks of antibiotics (Amoxy and Cipro (really strong but that is all we had)) to see much improvement. Granted we did continue to cycle, but we took it really easy, short days/slow riding, but it was nasty. We would definitely wear a mask when cycling in Burma, especially in the dry season.