Taungoo to Mandalay Road Trip across Myanmar

Mother's Day May 11 was spent on an 8 hour ride from Taungoo, North of Yangoon to Mandalay. With our stalwart driver Aung Kyaw OO driving the 80's vintage Toyota van and his wife and 2 year old son, we covered every terrain imaginable in the middle of Myanmar. From rice fields prepared but unplanted outside Bago, followed by the dust and heat sweltering fields and countryside, to tree lined highway shading passersby as the only respite from the heat, to irrigated spring green flooded rice paddies. As the irrigation appeared it washed the fields bright green with new growth. Rice was high in the field, a prodigious crop in Myanmar that lends its bounty 3 times a year. This country seems to work so hard for its food.

We passed sugar cane fields and stopped to have a drink of freshly pressed sugar cane juice. All the collection of the cane is done by hand and the pressing is done by feeding the cane into an ancient hand cranked machine that presses out the juice. The 1pm sun made the sugar cane stop most welcome but ice is a phantom hope. There was one small chunk of ice floating in the murky water of the cooler that was supposedly cooling drinks. The woman at the stand took the piece of ice out put it in a small piece of tarp and beat it to a pulp then distributed it into 3 glasses and filled those with sugar cane juice. One by necessity ignores what might be the infectious nature of the ice and water used and drinks hoping for the best. It tastes a lot like the cane sugar that is used in most carbonated drinks in the US, although without the carbonation. As we drank the Dad who clearly had been drinking the more fermented sugar cane brew danced his 6 month old across the table and smiled broadly with his betel encrusted red stained teeth. Mom sported a Giorgio Armani knock off branded T- shirt that was far from what Giorgio had in mind for his roadside branding. This was one of many stops our driver made along the way to show us the local color. We initially stopped we thought to meet his wife and child in Yangoon before leaving but when we got there they were packed up with a small bag and jumped in the 7 person van to join us to the trip to Mandalay. They proved to be quite pleasant and absolutely no problem just something we were not counting on but in this country you count on what unfolds. He turned out to be a terrific guid and driver , very kind and competent, friendly and with a facility for enough English to get us where we wanted to go and then some for $50/ day inclusive of van and petro, guiding and interpretation. We shared company for 10 days.


Manual labor is the rule of thumb everywhere in Myanmar and most daily efforts are not mechanized. Things that we take for granted are all done manually: sewing seed, threshing, material production, hand carvings, handiwork for every manner of housing and furniture construction, carvings, pottery etc. Housing materials outside the city are predominantly woven bamboo, reed, cane, palm leaves for roofing and an abundance of tin roofs which has blessedly kept the rain off of most shelters that are then covered in palm leaves to keep the heat down.

After rice and sugar cane we saw the driest of deserts that looked like the Navajo reservation miles going by with no shade and spindly sparse dessicated trees. Then before another hour had passed we were i mango territory and the season was in full fruit. There were fresh mangoes pyramid piled mountains of them everywhere on the roadside. We of course stopped and had multiple mangos and picked up some to go. 6 mangos and all we could eat at the roadside stand were about $1 US. Tarpulains of the blue and orange kind come in handy everywhere sprouted for shade and respite from the rain and sun. No matter the condition of the tarp they never seem to go out of use, string being a useful and common necessity to elongate their usefulness.

Our final stop before getting to Mandalay was the Snake Pagoda. It seems that 3 phython snakes showed up together at this pagoda so the monks allowed them to live cooled in the shady coolness of the marble based Bhudda ensconced there. The snakes attendant accepted donations for prayers and for the upkeep of the monastery. I had the indiscretion to pet the pyhython against the scaley grain and it did not appear to appreciate it but I guess was used to the constant attention from humans. The snake pagoda lived up to its name and there were cobras statues all along the walls of the pagoda.

Finally Mandalay. After going to 3 hotels, one was full (unlikely but not sure what was going on there) one was closed because " no electricity," and the third was a concrete 6 story box called the Nylon Hotel with piles of rocks blocking the street in front of it as the street was under roadwork construction and that along with the heat did not lend itself to a sense of comfort. We ended up at a small guesthouse...the Royal Guesthouse not far from the palace moat and walls. A bare bones room with 2 fans was $10 US, $20 for 2 rooms, but the drains work and the generator which makes up for the lack of Mandalay electricity hums along load enough to keep the fans running overnite. Either way you sweat in this heat and are laying in sheets that are tissue paper thin, knowing your compatriots that preceeded you also left their fair amount of sweat behind. Thus far though no bed bugs. We are so exhausted from the long day of driving and touring Myanmar's heart of the country that we collapse on the bed in front of the fans and remember the kaleidoscope that crossed our travels today in this most diverse country.