At 6 am in the morning, we were packed and ready to embark on our 7 hour busride to Yangon. As we were boarding, buddhist chants were blasting through the speakers while the tv was showing all different sorts of buddhist relics. I fell asleep rather quickly but was awakened by either the drips of water falling on my head from the airco, the vomiting monk behind us our the teenage girls giggling at the Burmese comedy show on tv. The entire bus thought it was pretty hilarious, but of course, we did not understand the humour. We arrived around 1 pm and took a taxi to Chyan Myaye Guesthouse in downtown Yangon. One thing we immediately noticed was that Yangon is huge, but despite the size of the city, traffic is always congested. Horns are constantly honking. Coming in from quiet and green Hpa An, it was a bit difficult to adjust back to the busy rithm of a big city.

We spent our entire afternoon at the Shwedagon Pagoda, the main attraction in Yangon and one of the most famous pagodas in the world. Referred to as the “crown of Burma’, it sits atop a hill and with its 99 meters, shines over the city. And it shines indeed! Its base is covered in gold plates and the top is tipped with over 5000 diamonds.  I highly recommend going there before sunset to walk around the incredibly huge complex and watch the reflections by day and night. At night, we went to Vista Bar. This place is really cool! It has good food and beer and you get to see Shwedagon Pagoda in all its glory.