Burma (in English)

We arrived in Yangoon early in the morning and the city was already in its full blast.The first glimpse at the city made me realize how different it is from what I've imagined. I thought the capital will be busy, dirty, crowded yet magical- similar to Delhi or Bangkok. The city is clean with wide streets and side walks, very friendly people and not many tourists.

We decided to travel to Bagan throughout the night so we had few spare hours to explore Yangoon. Some locals told us where we could grab a breakfast. It was a nice little street cafe with big steel cattle on the fire, home-made sesame rolls and plastic chairs.

 There we met Patric- Burmese guy who owns travel company. We were actually quite surprised that he didn't want to sell us his tours, he just gave us some tips about travel, paid for his coffee and left. We went on to explore street markets. We wanted to try some traditional Burmese snacks so we had fried bananas, corn pancakes,prawn swirls, giant avocados and some pineapple. Pawel was enchanted by the sound of singing bowls and I was amazed looking at exotic faces of Burmese people. After a long walk we arrived at the temple with golden doom. We sat the the top of big stairs leading to the entrance and observed people. Looking at begging monks or monks smoking and playing on touch screen mobile phones was a great surprise to us.
At 4pm our train was leaving, we got in and looked around. We sat in the carriage with two other people; very nice Finish girl and weird guy who didn't say a word to us and didn't replay to our questions too. We took a sleeper upper class train and to be honest it looked better than I expected. Only toilet was quite stinky and ancient. The train started moving and then we realised why people on the forum were so reluctant to recommend it. It was bumpy, hectic, wobbly and what can I say TERRIFIC ride. Reminded me more of a roller coaster than train. I was glad we didn't eat much that day.

 I think everyone has to try Myanmar's train journey once in their lifetime. It's so much fun!The train didn't have glass windows, it created nice breeze and great opportunity to take photos. Observing local people living in the wilderness, houses made of palm trees, cooking on the open fire, rice fields was truly amazing:)
The lack of windows in the train made me feel close to those people. We saw some really rural villages and that made me realise where I was. Even thou the train passes that route every single day I don't think those people every spoke to a foreigner. I don't think tourists go there, they just see each other from the train windows.