Myanmar is an amazing travel place, there is such an abundance of color, exotic places and interesting attractions. Few people know about Myanmar, some only know it as Burma, the old name, and most people have the same reaction when they hear something like this from northern Thailand’s neighbors: “Myanmar, is this even a country?”
It is also fascinating, impressive and strikes you as a very cold shower since you take the first step in the airport. Even though I seriously documented myself before heading out this spring, nothing prepared me for the reality that you will discover there. Whether you want to get there in the very near future, or want to enrich your general culture a little, you should know a few things about Myanmar.
Since 2005, the administrative center has been relocated from Yangon, which remains one of the largest and busiest cities, also having the main airport in the country, in Nypiydaw. Myanmar is a huge country, almost three times larger than Romania and the second largest country in Southeast Asia. As such, the distances between the most important sights are very large, so it’s great to use the plane or at least the local buses. Although we found the tourist areas very safe, with friendly people and very eager to receive strangers, there are still regions where tourist access is forbidden – an example would be the Kachin region, in the north of the country – and even hundreds of areas tribes live the way they did 200 years ago.
I said from the outset that Myanmar is an amazing country. Believe us, it is by far one of the most special destinations we have seen so far. After so many years of travel and meetings with so many people, the Burmese have given us “the world over our heads”. Most residents, men and women alike, keep alive the tradition of the popular port, with the so-called longyi, a kind of skirt that can be arranged differently depending on the occasion. And, if we think about it, it would not be out of the ordinary to see men dressed in skirts, we have also seen elsewhere, but nonetheless, a whole country dressed in this way is something special, especially that pants of any kind and even famous jeans are a rarity. Read more details at https://globalhawkmyanmar.com/.
The food: What is to be said in the food chapter should be considered as more than subjective. We know that many like it, but we don’t. Close to nothing. As I said before, we excluded the street food option from the beginning, because we found it unhealthy. Moreover, the preparations they serve in traditional restaurants did not give us back. Not even their famous noodles. The only preparation we really enjoyed and ordered several times was a green tea salad that turned out to be absolutely delicious. Otherwise, we thought that Burmese cuisine is an unfortunate combination of ingredients and tastes that do not fit well. We repeat, this is how we perceived things, because we met a lot of people who glorified the traditional restaurant preparations, and even the street food.
Almost everyone wears slippers, regardless of social status, clothing, time of day. Slips with shirt, slips at the market, slips at the hotel, slips at the restaurant, slips on the boat. In the end I bought myself a pair. The children are very curious and eager to interact with strangers. In the center of Mandalay there is a forbidden city, 8 square kilometers surrounded by huge walls, water and another fence, guarded by weapons, in which the army lives. Locals living outside the walls do not think much about it. Discover additional info on https://globalhawkmyanmar.com/en/tour-program/trekking-tour/.