Trip Report: Myanmar
Visited in December 2024
When I made my first trips to Southeast Asia in 2011-2013, Myanmar was just becoming THE next big thing. The country was opening up to tourism, and more and more backpackers who had previously traveled through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and the like were drawn to the region’s new, unspoiled destination.
Myanmar is a country that has not been stable in recent decades. Until 2011, the country was a military dictatorship, more or less isolated from the rest of the world, although visiting as a tourist was still possible. After that, the country became a kind of fake democracy, with the military still pulling the strings in the background.
Nevertheless, this ensured that the number of tourists increased from 90,000 in 2010 to 2,500,000 in 2019. The country was taking small, slow steps toward becoming a mainstream destination… then came the pandemic. And in 2021, the military overthrew the democratically elected president. Since then, fighting has raged across the country between the military junta and the people. Myanmar is in crisis again.
At times, I was afraid that it would be impossible to travel to Myanmar because of the current civil war. However, the junta allowed tourists into the country even during the military dictatorship before 2011, and it is still possible now. After all, the junta is interested in tourist dollars. Since most tourist destinations in Myanmar are still under government control, the risks you take as a traveler are small.
In December 2024, I spent a week in Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma. The typical itinerary for Myanmar includes Yangon, Bagan, Mandalay, and Inle Lake. Ngapali Beach used to be a popular destination, but is now a territory where the fightings are happening. Since I am not a “lake person” (I usually find lake destinations uninteresting, regardless of the country), I spent my time in Yangon, Bagan and Mandalay.
Day 1-3: Yangon
I flew with Myanmar Airways from Bangkok to Yangon, the former capital of Myanmar. The one-hour flight was a bargain at 54 USD. The round trip (Mandalay to Bangkok) was the same at 75 USD.
I had a quite relaxed first day. I checked into the Pan Pacific around noon, an excellent hotel that couldn’t be more central. Pan Pacific is a luxury hotel group out of Singapore. I had never stayed in one before. The one in Yangon was an absolute jackpot: apart from the location, the staff were great, the rooms had incredible views and the breakfast buffet was what you would expect from a 5-star hotel.
If you book on short notice, you pay 50-60 USD per night for this perfect hotel. I don’t think you can get anything like this anywhere else in the world for that price.
The rest of the day I was doing organizational things. I got a SIM card, changed money and walked around downtown Yangon. The city made a chaotic but bearable impression on me.
Somehow Yangon reminded me at first glance of Kathamandu, only more modern and without motorcycles (these are banned in Yangon, reason will follow later). But it was probably the view of the pagodas from the hotel that reminded me of the stupas in the Nepalese capital, as well as all the cables hanging from houses and street poles.
Myanmar is geographically located in Southeast Asia, but to me it seemed more like a mix between China and India. This probably contributed to the comparison with Nepal, as this characteristic also applies there. Like Nepal, Myanmar borders China and India, as well as Bangladesh, Thailand, and Laos.
Downtown Yangon looked like a small India. Myanmar is a former British colony. The British brought Indians to Myanmar as a workforce, who now make up 7% of the population. Many of them now live in downtown Yangon. There were also a lot of Indian restaurants and street food in this neighborhood. The latter looked rather unappetizing. A guide later told me that it is better to stay away from street food in Myanmar because of the poor hygiene.
Incidentally, a scam almost happened to me when changing money. The hotel recommended an exchange office where I could get a better exchange rate than the government rate (more on this later). This exchange office was about 10 minutes’ walk away and was unfortunately not open when I got there. On the way back, a young gentleman approached me on the main street and offered me a very good exchange rate.
I usually avoid changing money on the street with a random person, but I thought I’d take a look. I noticed that the young gentleman was with two other young men and somehow I quickly realized that there was something fishy going on. The three gentlemen first handed me a bundle of money. I suspected it was counterfeit money and addressed this directly. However, the young man then assured me that I could make sure the money was genuine in the store next door.
The scam was a different one. I counted the money first and the amount was correct. So I gave him the 100 USD, but the guy said that there was something wrong with the dollar bill and that I should give him another one. This was a distraction, because when I held the bundle of kyats, the local currency, in my hand again, I realized that it was definitely less money as when I counted it before. I counted again and half of the money was gone. Luckily I still had the 100 USD in my hand and left with that.
Moral of the story? If it feels like something is fishy, it usually is. Scams are common in Myanmar, by the way, so it pays to be careful. By the way, the guy was stupid enough to continue the scam after I told him that I had taken a photo of him.
I booked a guide for my second day in Yangon. Myanmar is a country that you can visit without a guide, even in the current crisis. However, I somehow didn’t feel like having to make my way through Yangon on my own. So I asked for a guide at the hotel and they arranged Toe, a 50-year-old gentleman, for me.
Over the next nine hours, Toe showed me the sights of Yangon. These included the city’s colonial buildings (Yangon has the most colonial buildings in Southeast Asia), the rural and poorer district of Dala, which you have to reach by ferry, the Karaweik Palace, the train station, where we took the train for a few stops, as well as the Bitahtaung Pagoda.
I also found the architecture of Yangon interesting. In addition to the colonial buildings, Yangon has a lot of houses that resemble the old architecture of Hong Kong (Kowloon) or Singapore. These houses contain a huge number of apartments, and it looked like a lot of people were living in a small space, which created a dystopian image.
Our last stop was Yangon’s most famous landmark, the Shwedagon Pagoda. It is worth visiting the Shwedagon Pagoda about an hour before sunset so that you can see it both in daylight and when it is illuminated in the dark. This pagoda is certainly the highlight of Yangon. Toe said that a few years ago there were hundreds of tourists here every evening. I counted about five that day.
Toe also took me to a restaurant, whose name I forgot, where you can get authentic Burmese food. As is usual in the region, Myanmar cuisine consists mainly of rice and noodles, with lots of curries (most of them with fish, chicken or mutton), plus the odd soup, about which there is an unpleasant anecdote later on…
One restaurant that you should not miss in Yangon is the Rangoon Tea House. This restaurant does not offer authentic local food but rather Asian fusion cuisine. But wow, the food was so good that I came here two nights in a row. Getting around is easy and cheap with the Grab app, the Uber version of Southeast Asia. The cabs usually arrived within 3-4 minutes and I rarely paid more than 5,000 kyat ($1.25) per ride in Yangon and Mandalay.
If you want a nice and knowledgeable guide in Yangon, I can recommend Toe (Whatsapp: +95943130644). He charges 55 USD for a full day tour. Transportation was not included, I paid for it directly (cabs, bus, ferry and train). You can probably find a guide for less as Myanmar is dirt cheap. However, tourism is at rock bottom and those who still make their living from tourists are happy about every dollar. That’s why I advise you to leave the backpacker mentality at home and accept the prices without haggling.
The last day in Yangon was quite uneventful. I slept until 9 am, had breakfast at the Pan Pacific, spent some time in the mall next to the hotel and then had to leave for Bagan at 4 am. The Pan Pacific concierge helped me book a night bus ticket online the day before. JJ Express is probably the most popular company among travelers. Since there were no seats available anymore, I went with Mandalar Minn, which was also very good.
Important note: The Yangon bus station is not in the city, but about an hour north of the center. The taxi ride can take up to two hours at rush hour, so you should leave at least two and a half hours before the bus.
Day 4-5: Bagan
The nearly twelve hour bus ride to Bagan flew by as I slept at least seven hours. The buses are quite comfortable, with seats that recline so you can almost lie down, and are of a similar standard to those in South America (e.g. Peru or Bolivia). The bus left at 6:30 pm, and after about three hours there was a 30-minute dinner break. The bus ride was also very cheap. I paid about 11 USD for the twelve hour ride.
In Myanmar, by the way, there is a curfew at night. A few months ago it was between 1-4 am, but in December 24 it was between 1-3 am. Apparently, until recently, buses had to stop during this time and wait until the end of the curfew before they continued. This was no longer the case when I took the bus ride (or I completely slept through the stop).
Despite the seven hours of sleep, I felt pretty exhausted when I arrived at my hotel, the A Little Bit of Bagan, at 6am. Since my room wasn’t ready yet and I did not want to wait until 1pm to check in, I booked another four-bed room for an extra 25 USD. I just had to lie down and sleep another 2-3 hours.
Bagan is without a doubt the highlight of Myanmar for many travelers. This ancient city is home to thousands of temples and pagodas, all relatively close together. The difference to Angkor Wat, for example, is that Bagan is not a closed temple complex, but the temples are spread all over the city. This means that you can also find houses, streets, hotels, etc. between the ancient buildings.
I had two full days to visit the temples in Bagan. However, as I had to lie down again after my arrival, the first half day was already over. Nevertheless, I found the rest of the time to be completely sufficient to see the attractions here.
I hired a tuktuk in the afternoon to take me from temple to temple. An alternative would have been to rent an e-bike or a scooter, but that is not much cheaper than hiring someone to drive you. So I decided to take the tuktuk. I don’t want to write about every temple I visited, as I must have seen more than a dozen on my first day. Some were absolutely spectacular, some were not much different from each other. There are so many temples in Bagan that some even do not have a name.
There are also a few places to watch the sunset, like the Bagan Nan Myint Tower or a man-made hill, which, unlike the tower, I found not very interesting. If you really want to do something cool, the sunrise has something for you.
I’m talking about a hot air balloon ride over Bagan, of course. When Myanmar tourism was at its peak, dozens of balloons would fly over the temples every morning. Today, the last remaining operator is Balloons over Bagan and charges $180 per passenger.
The tour operator picked me up from my hotel at 5:30 am. After a short safety briefing, a maximum of 16 people can board the balloon. In our case, there were three balloons that took off that morning. The balloon ride lasts about an hour and is of course absolutely fantastic. The landscape with all the temples and pagodas looks even more impressive from above than from the ground. For me it was definitely one of the highlights of my trip to Myanmar.
After a short siesta at noon, I went back to the temples in the afternoon. Just to fill my time with some kind of activity. Otherwise, I was already feeling pretty tired from temples.
The question of how much time you should spend in Bagan probably depends on how long you can get excited about the temples. For me it would have been enough to continue my trip after the hot air balloon ride. But I didn’t consider two full days to be a complete waste of time, so everything was okay.
I saw some tourists, but not very many. Unbelievable considering this is one of the best temple sites in the world. However, this also meant that I found Bagan – except for the temple hopping – a bit boring. It’s not like in Siem Reap where you have a pub street full of busy bars and restaurants. In Bagan there is nothing going on after 9 pm.
An unappetizing anecdote from that afternoon: I bought a coconut from a temple and drank the juice. When I went to eat the flesh, the vendor cut the coconut in half and put a spoon into the open coconut right out of her mouth. The vendor did not understand why I did not want to eat the coconut anymore. She just wanted to give me a new spoon.
Another anecdote, or rather a tip: solo travelers know how frustrating it can sometimes be to have good photos of yourself from your trips. In some temples in Bagan, there are a few kids waiting to take photos of you and want a tip of around 1,000 kyat (=$0.25) in return. A good thing in my opinion. No begging, because there’s enough of that in Myanmar, but doing a mini-job for a little pocket money. And solo travelers benefit from this as well.
Day 6-7: Mandalay
My sixth day was a travel day from Bagan to Mandalay, this time actually with JJ Express and I can confirm that it is also a good bus company. The journey took five hours, with an unnecessary half-hour meal break (at 10am).
I arrived in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city, shortly after noon. Mandalay looks quite different from Yangon, less modern, but with crazier traffic. Unlike Yangon, you will find a lot of tuk-tuks and motorcycles here. Want to know the reason why motorcycles are banned in Yangon? Apparently, a motorcycle once hit a general of the military junta in Yangon. The general then decided in his rage that motorcycles would no longer be allowed on the streets…
The main sights in Mandalay are also pagodas and temples. But I definitely wasn’t in the mood for that anymore. At least not the ones in the city itself. But there was one more sight that had nothing to do with religion and Buddhism, and I wanted to see it.
I am talking about the U-Bein Bridge, which is one of the most famous photo subjects in Myanmar. With a length of 1.2km, it is the longest teakwood bridge in the world and travelers come here especially at sunrise or sunset to take photos.
The bridge is about a 30-minute drive from the center of Mandalay. I hired a tuktuk to take me there and back and paid 35,000 kyat ($9) for the ride including waiting time.
By the way, the bridge and everything around it resembles a disgusting garbage dump. While the sunset is really beautiful at this place and you can take cool photos, you shouldn’t set your expectations too high.
On my last day in Myanmar, another adventure awaited. Although I had already seen enough pagodas, I wanted to see one more: the Hsinbyume Pagoda in Mingun (also known as Min Kun). I’ve seen this all-white pagoda a few times online. It looked fascinating and I wanted to see it in real.
The Hsinbyume Pagoda is about an hour’s drive from Mandalay. However, the manager of my hotel told me that the road was not safe. In the worst-case scenario, you could get caught in a crossfire between the military and rebels. She also said that no cab would take me there, as there are many military checkpoints and the driver could get into trouble because of me.
But there was a second option, because you can also go to Mingun by boat, up the Irrawaddy River and then back down again. There used to be two tourist ferries a day that would take you there for less than 5 USD. Obviously there is no such thing anymore at the moment.
I had already been to the ferry terminal (called Mingun jetty) the day before and made a deal with a boat owner that he would take me there for 200,000 kyat. According to the exchange rate that my hotel gave me, this 2 x 1-hour trip was exactly 50 USD.
Funnily enough, the boat was huge and could have transported at least 100 people. If not even more. How this trip was profitable for the captain is a mystery to me, but as I really wanted to go there, I didn’t question it too much.
And so I sailed upstream on this huge boat alone with two crew members until I had to switch to a smaller boat at some point. Sometimes the water was so low that the boat had to be pushed rather than driven. As I still had to get to the airport that afternoon, I was under a bit of time pressure. The delayed arrival made me nervous.
When I arrived, a motorcycle was already waiting for me to take me to Hsinbyume Pagoda. To my astonishment, however, he didn’t drive me there, but to some stone temple. I intervened and said that I wanted to go to the pagoda. Two young ladies, who were also on a motorcycle with us and wanted to sell me some tourist souvenirs, said that the pagoda was closed due to the military.
However, I insisted that my driver take me there anyway, which he did. When I arrived at the pagoda, I was told that I could only look at it from the outside as the military was stationed inside.
“Take me to the military and I’ll ask if I can go in and take a few photos,” I told the two ladies. That wouldn’t be possible because the soldiers were asleep, said one of them, as if I were an idiot. “Then I can go in and nobody will notice that I was inside,” I replied.
I then actually saw a person walking around in the pagoda. I pointed at him and told the locals to take me to him. “No, very dangerous” was their reply. As I realized that they were uncomfortable with the whole thing, I didn’t push them any further.
It was a shame that I couldn’t see the inside of the pagoda. After all, that was the only reason I had come. The people also showed me the Mingun Bell and this stone temple, which they had already taken me to at the beginning. However, I wasn’t particularly interested in these places, so I drove back to Mandalay relatively quickly and flew back to Bangkok a little later.
Although I didn’t really see much on this half-day or rather three-hour trip to Mingun, the fact that I was on this huge boat made it an excursion that I will probably remember for a long time to come.
If you want to take such a trip, I recommend you check the current situation carefully. The situation may be different now than it was in December 2024. In any case, it’s worth dropping by the Mingun Jetty in Mandalay the day before and talking to the boat owners. They will know what is possible and what is not.
Is Myanmar worth a trip?
So, what’s the verdict on Myanmar?
For me, Myanmar was definitely different from other Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand, Laos or Cambodia. The Chinese and Indian influence was greater here than in the rest of Southeast Asia, which is not surprising given the geographical location.
Myanmar is for Southeast Asian standards certainly “off the beaten path”. While the country had a brief tourism peak a few years ago, tourist numbers are now back to where they were during the military dictatorship. This has the advantage that you have all the sights to yourself. However, traveling through Myanmar also felt a little lonely at times. Especially as a solo traveler, it would sometimes have been nice to talk to other travelers. This was rarely the case in Myanmar in 2024.
The people, on the other hand, are very friendly and happy to see the remaining tourists. I was approached several times by strangers and asked who I was and what I was doing. People usually used this opportunity to complain about the current situation and the military. In general, I found the mood in Myanmar to be a little depressive at times.
What about security? As a tourist, you don’t really notice the civil war at all. Mandalay is the closest place, as the fighting is not far from the city. Apart from my trip to Mingun, however, I never saw the military. Besides, the military is not a threat to travelers either, as the army is still interested in the tourist dollars.
Perhaps the moment will come when the rebels conquer the two big cities of Yangon and Mandalay and finally overthrow the military junta. Then you would definitely be affected as a tourist. But before that happens, I could also imagine the junta closing the borders. In any case, I have never felt unsafe in Myanmar.
Back to the question of whether Myanmar is worth a trip. When it comes to sightseeing, Myanmar is beyond amazing. The country offers so many beautiful places that you would have enough material to post on Instagram for a year. Sure, you’ve seen enpugh temples and pagodas at some point, but many of these places are simply wow.
I thought the food in Burma was okay. Not bad, but it can’t compete with the cuisine from Thailand or Vietnam. Finding good international food is also not as easy as you might think. Yangon still has the most choice. In Bagan, the options are quite limited.
An unpleasant surprise awaited me at the Mingalabar restaurant in Mandalay, which is known for its authentic Burmese cuisine. I was served a soup that tasted like a classic vegetable broth soup. It wasn’t until I had emptied half of it and poked around at the bottom of the cup that I pulled out a chicken foot. This is considered a delicacy in some parts of the world, but I found it disgusting.
Generally speaking, you won’t find international fast food chains such as Burger King or Starbucks in Myanmar, which is certainly a good thing. Other international food brands that can be found almost everywhere else, such as Haribo, are also not available in Myanmar. You can tell that in many respects Myanmar has not yet opened up to globalization like other countries in the region.
Nevertheless, the tourist infrastructure is relatively well developed, i.e. there are plenty of hotels, travel companies and transportation between the cities is also guaranteed for the few remaining tourists.
Myanmar is therefore definitely a country worth visiting. I had a good week there and felt that the length of my stay was just right. Would I go again? Probably not because of the sights, as I don’t feel like I missed anything. However, it may well be that the country will be different after the end of the civil war. In that case, it would certainly be interesting to see how the country has changed in 10-15 years.
Finally, some practical information for a trip to Myanmar:
- You need an e-visa for Myanmar. It costs 50 USD and will be sent to you within three days. There is no visa on arrival.
- The military dictatorship wants to censor the internet as much as possible and therefore blocks practically all social media and a large number of VPNs. None of the big VPNs work in Myanmar. I downloaded Jump Jump VPN and the app did its job (although the free version sucks).
- Most international credit cards do not work in Myanmar, which is why you should bring USD with you. In addition to the official government rate (1 USD = 3500 kyat), there is also a black market (1 USD = 4000-4500 kyat). I only found the black market in Yangon and Mandalay. In Bagan you can exchange for the official rate.
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