{"id":481,"date":"2015-06-13T23:40:41","date_gmt":"2015-06-13T14:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/?p=481"},"modified":"2016-01-24T16:12:17","modified_gmt":"2016-01-24T07:12:17","slug":"welcome-to-myanmar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/en-US\/traveling\/asia\/myanmar\/welcome-to-myanmar\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Myanmar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The last dinner in Mint House was Thaisuki.<br \/>\nIt was very tasty. Byebye, Thailand.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I stayed one night in the border city with Myanmar, MetSort?????. And I went to the border with a shared taxi, then we went across the border by walk.<br \/>\nThe border in Myanmar, Myawadi??? .<br \/>\nMy first suprise was how many black people they were. Maybe they were immigrants from India. The second one was chewing cigarettes. I think it wasalso from India. It was difficult to stand it personally. (smell and looking when people spit out it)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I was looking for the bus station which had the bus to Yangon and I got culture shock.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But I couldn&#8217;t find the station easily.Then old guys I didn&#8217;t know told me &#8220;Here is the bus station.&#8221;. It looked just a shopfront clearly. I asked him where the bigger bus station was. But They couldn&#8217;t understand my English. They told me the price was 15,000 MMK (Around 1,500 JPY).<br \/>\nI didn&#8217;t know the standard price and I thought the bus picked me up there. So I was waiting for the bus there. A few minutes later, the big bus written &#8220;Yangon&#8221; passed there without picking up me.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When I saw that, peoplewere laughing a little. Then the minivan came here. Is this the one!!?<br \/>\nI asked the neighbors about the big bus secretly. It seemed to be 10,000 MMK and no more bus for Yangon today. Moreover the bus for Yangon leaves once every 2 days.<br \/>\nI have to take the minivan. And the driver of the minivan made me wait while gathering for more passengers and loaded for one hour.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The estimated time of arrival was 9-10pm If I could get the bus, it would be faster&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I got anxiety as the time went by. I always checked my current location, so I wondered if we could reach Yangon at least over 11pm.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Other passangers had gotten off the minivan one by one, finally the only passenger was me. And our minivan arrived in a house. This house seemed to be the driver&#8217;s home, and he returned home, then a woman became my driver. She drove for a while and dropped me off in a place with a big road.<\/p>\n<p>Not yet! We have a little more distance to get to Yangon!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The female driver told me that I had to catch a highway bus to get to Yangon.<br \/>\nShe looked like she wanted to go back home.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Eh?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I tried to stay calm and tell her my opinion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You broke your promise, so take me to Yangon or pay a difference from here to Yangon for me.&#8221;<br \/>\nBut she couldn&#8217;t understand English well.<br \/>\nShe looked to want to go back home as ever.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I was thinking what should I do, then the taxi driver who was near us translated her speaking. Because he could speak English.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Here is also Yangon. You can go to the downtown by catching a highway bus.&#8221;<br \/>\nAnd he told me his opinion&#8230;<br \/>\n&#8220;Here is the border with another city, and it is dangerous to stay here for foreigners during the night. So he recmended me to g to the downtown of Yangon by taxi.&#8221;<br \/>\nI couldn&#8217;t catch a highway bus because there was just a shoulder of a road and the buses were running so fast.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I noticed in that moment.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>On the way, I told the last driver that I wanted to go to Chaitiyo???? while we were talking. Then he told me that Chaitiyo was easier to access from the place near his house than the downtown of Yangon.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>His extra kindness mad this whole situation. but I didn&#8217;t need all of this kindness.\u00a0Moreover he had gone back home! And it has already a new day.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The fare seemed to be around 15,000 MMK. It was the same price as the one from Myawadi to here. I was thinking that no one could help me because now itwas midnight and the only passenger was me.<\/p>\n<p>But&#8230; but I couldn&#8217;t calm down.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t have any more ideas, so I took a taxi.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>After that, I reached the downtown. But they had only hotels. No guesthouses or hostels. The minimum price to stay was at least 35 USD.<br \/>\nCrazy. It was supposed to be the downtown, wasn&#8217;t it? They should have some guesthouses? But there weren&#8217;t any.<br \/>\nFinally I checked in a hotel but I had to make the reception staff wake up. I felt so sorry.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>My first night in Myanmar passed like that. (By the time I had checked in it was already over 2am)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The last dinner in Mint House was Thaisuki. It was very tasty. Byebye, Thailand. &nbsp; I stayed one night in  [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":340,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_locale":"en_US","_original_post":"339","footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[66,68],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-myanmar","tag-immigration","tag-welcome","en-US"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":482,"href":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u26884.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}