A Burmese Adventure: Mount Popa & The Final Sunset

For our final full day in Myanmar we continued our theme of waking early, and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast before our driver arrived to pick us up from the hotel. We were off to Mount Popa, a volcano located 1518 metres above sea level, with numerous Nat temples and relics perched on top. The “Nats” are spirits that are worshiped in Myanmar in conjunction with Buddhism, and there are 37 “Great Nats”, most of which were supposedly human beings who met violent deaths.

The journey from Bagan to Mount Popa takes around an hour, although our driver added in a couple of stops along the way.

The first stop was to a small reservoir, where we stayed for a few minutes and saw the locals collecting water.

To be honest the water seemed very dirty, and I wouldn’t like to drink from it, but he did say they run it through a filtration system a few times before using it. Still, I would recommend using caution if drinking the tap water, as with most countries in Asia!

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A Burmese Adventure – Yangon, Myanmar

I found myself with 5 days off in a row after my trip to Houston, and with a bit of planning decided to head to Myanmar. Emirates started flying to Yangon (and the flight then continues on to Hanoi) a few months ago, so it was an easy decision, and at under 5 hours quick to get to from Dubai.

My friend Kirsty arrived a few hours before me from Hong Kong, and was waiting at the airport as I arrived. I managed to get a few hours sleep on the flight, so after a quick stop at our hotel to drop off our bags and freshen up, we made our way out to the city.

Yangon, also know as Rangoon, the former capital of Myanmar, is the country’s largest city with a population of over 7 million, and also has the highest number of colonial buildings in the region.

Most of the colonial buildings are located in downtown Yangon, and we strolled through the streets admiring the mix of old and new, as well as some of the typical Burmese streets.

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