Bago & arriving in Kinpun

What a long day! I am definitely not made to travel by car! Anyway it was fun :) The plane from Heho to Yangon was perfect :) Yangon seems like a big city (only saw the highway though). It is full of cars to contrast all the other places that were full of motorbikes. If I understood right, motorbikes are not allowed in Yangon or something of the sort.

On the way to Kinpun I decided to pass by Bago which used to be an important capital in the past and hence full of temples, pagodas and a palace.. wooow! Ok, Bago is ugly, like really ugly but it is very interesting to see how important each of the sites are for the local people. I was the only foreigner there, maybe because it was already quite late in the day, but I love that!

It was also nice to see the former king palace. Its a nice place but not as flashy and over the top as other places I have seen before.

The trip got fun when we stopped to pick up two teachers and gave them a ride to a junction. It seems that government teachers have a tough job, they get a very bad pay and live very far away from home so if they are not lucky to get someone to drive them it can take more than 2 hours to reach their families. The taxi driver's wife is a teacher and that's why he always stops and helps them :) sweet! The two ladies were super nice, they spoke no English and were really shocked to see me travelling alone as this is not normal in Myanmar culture. One of them has never seen a foreigner, so she couldn't stop staring at me :) 

And finally we made it to Kinput and its crazy!!! :) Typical religious base-camp village full of locals and shops everywhere. They offer you food, shower, sleep, anything you need is available! It's noisy and busy and really nice to see the strong energy the people have. Every burmanese person dreams to come to the Golden Rock at least once in their life time.

Now I see that there are a few more tourists around me... jajajja And I'm really hungry so I'm now getting another plate of veggies to make me happier! love it! Mmmm it looks like here the idea is to come to a restaurant and sit randomly in a table with locals, I will try this tomorrow :)

I went for a walk around the shops to find that they sell all types of nuts and sweets you can imagine. I was very curious about some white sweets that looked like coconut and I decided to buy just one pieces... as they only sell big quantities, the girl at the shop just gave it a a present, how nice!!! and it was delicious! :) I love coconut!!!

I'm eating my veggies and will sleep early. Tomorrow 5:30 AM breakfast and then the hike will start :)