About to enter Myanmar via the Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge at Mae Sot (photo by Yun)
As Canadians entering Thailand via a land border we would only be granted a 14-day visa on arrival, definitely not enough time for us to cycle to Malaysia. We were trying to avoid having to apply for a new visa and it seemed like it was a pretty straightforward procedure for us to get a permit that would allow us to re-enter the country on our current 60-day visa. We showed up at the Thai Immigration at Mae Sot with our duly completed forms (downloaded from the Immigration Bureau of Thailand website).
It became clear pretty quickly that nobody knew what to do with our forms. Despite what we thought was a pretty obvious heading, written in both Thai and English, “Application permit for re-entry into the Kingdom”. After being shuffled from window to the next, someone grudgingly filled out forms for us (20 baht/each). They turned out to be vehicle permits, which we're pretty sure we didn't need. Our completely ignored re-entry application forms were shoved back through the window at us, along with the vehicle permits. The confused immigration officers responded to our enquiries by repeating that we would get 14-day visas upon returning to Thailand, so we didn't have to worry. So we exited Thailand without the re-entry permit that we needed and concluded that we'd have to make our way to the Thai consulate in Yangon and apply for a new visa.
Going to Yangon had not been part of our original plan, so we had to regroup and figure out what we would be doing in the country. By the time we actually entered the border town of Myawaddy it was late morning, quashing our half-hearted hopes of cycling over the mountains of Kayin State to it's capital Hpa-An 150km away. It was a two day ride that we had thought we might be able to manage in one day with an early enough start and an after-dark finish. We decided to take a bus, at least part of the way.
Loading our bicycles on to the bus at the Myawaddy bus terminal
By the time our bus cleared the mountains, there were about three hours of daylight left and over 100km to Hpa-an. The mountain road was a one-lane, pothole ridden disaster with switchbacks that often required our bus to make multiple three-point turns to clear. Kind of scary and definitely uncomfortable. There were several checkpoints where copies of our passport were handed out and we were even once photographed. The road has only recently been opened to foreign tourists, with the area under cease-fire after years of devastating civil war.
View from the bus of a traffic jam that took us almost an hour to clear, just outside Hpa-an
Smiles of Kayin State
We hadn't been told that our bus wasn't actually Hpa-an bound. We were dropped off at an intersection about 10km out of the city. It was nearing dark and as we disembarked we realised that the bus was probably headed to Yangon. Rather than attempting to load our bicycles onto a new bus the next day we decided to continue on. It would be another seven hours before we arrived in Yangon, at 1a.m., at the bus terminal 30km out of the city. We had called a few hotels from a pay phone at our dinner stop but hadn't found any with vacancies. We found a taxi driver willing to drive us around until we found a cheap hotel.
It was almost 3 a.m. by the time we found a room. It was a windowless mildew-box on the fifth floor of a downtown hotel, the last one in the entire place. The last one in Yangon as far as we could tell (although we did reject our taxi driver's first pick that appeared to have several prostitutes waiting in the lobby).
To add to the terribleness of the situation we had picked up a third-wheel at the Yangon bus station. A solo traveller who didn't have a damn clue what was going on. He was in the country attempting to get a long-term Thai visa so that he could continue to live there with his wife. It seemed highly suspicious to us that anyone would marry this guy. We had agreed to let him share our taxi, forcing us to share a single seat in the back, with our bikes and bags piled on top of us, while he sat in the front. And in a moment of even more perplexing sympathy we agreed to let him share our tiny double room. It was, after all, the middle of the night and we didn't have the heart to send him on the continued search for a room (we had tried four hotels before finding this one). We weren't able to get rid of him until three days later, when we basically got on our bikes and rode away. We did however, kick him out of our room after the first night (incredibly, he resisted).
View from the roof of our downtown Yangon hotel
Despite the oppressive humidity and our equally oppressive side-kick, we managed to get out and explore the fantastic bustle of downtown Yangon, get our Thai visas and squeeze in a visit to the Shwedagon Pagoda (the country's holiest Buddhist pilgrimage site). We were pretty mesmerized by Yangon. We stayed in an area with a large concentration of hotels but we found that everything, including the traffic, seemed to be indifferent to the presence of tourists. Although we did get a lot of huge beautiful smiles!
Afternoon commute, downtown Yangon
Evening at Shwedagon Pagoda
After two days in the city we secured onward bus tickets to Mandalay. It was a pain finding a company that would agree to transport our bicycles for a not outrageous fee. While the seat prices were all in the same standard range, there was some serious price-gouging on the excess baggage fees. We eventually had our hotel staff reserve tickets for us (at the price that we had balked at before trying to negotiate the fees ourselves). We cycled out to the bus station, even though we had read that bicycles and motorcycles were banned from Yangon streets. The downtown riding was perfectly fine, but as we exited the city it became an increasingly hair-raising ride. We ended up on a busy, undivided, highway jockeying for space on the narrow shoulder with hundreds of pedestrians, rickshaws and bicycles in complete darkness.
At the bus station, our "friend" was waiting for us. When we had told him that we were going to Mandalay, he announced that he would be coming with us. The three of us arrived in Mandalay before sunrise after an 8 hour, largely sleepless bus ride. We weren't exactly in cycling condition, but we had already resigned ourselves to the fact that the only way to free ourselves would be to start riding, which is what we did.
Partially sponsored by Mountain Equipment Coop Expedition Support
