The reason we had come to Kalaw in the first place was that I was quite keen to do some trekking, and apparently Kalaw was the place to be for non-challenging, non-dangerous treks that never require you to leave your comfort zone. Perfection.

My ideal trek was a three day schlep from Kalaw to Inle lake, our next destination. However, my sister was adamant that she wouldn’t do it, as she was unsure of the state of the toilets on the way. Bearing in mind that at one point on our trek, our shoes were covered in leeches, she is obviously made of wiser stuff than me.

Our guide for the trek was a local man named Ted. Ted wore a bamboo pith helmet and had an infectious smile, a maniacal laugh and a propensity to tell enormous lies at every available opportunity.

Of course, we had sensibly decided to visit Myanmar in the middle of the rainy season. For a while we thought we had lucked out, as the day was clear and the temperature was comfortable. Unfortunately, we then left the graded roads of Kalaw and it all went pear shaped.

One of the dangers of hiking in the hills in the wet season, is that a nice sunny day doesn’t necessarily mean a nice easy trek. Soon after we set off we were to discover that one sunny day can’t repair the damage caused by three weeks of solid rain.

To say the terrain was muddy would be an understatement. I’m pretty sure there are little earthworm houses, whose owners would ask a Kalaw trekker to wipe their feet before entering. By the time we had walked approximately 100 metres, we were carrying roughly a third of Myanmar on each boot (maths was never my strong point).

Even a minor incline became a treacherous slip and slide. This was made all the more frustrating by the apparent ease with which Ted traversed the terrain. He seemed to be suspended by helium, as he lightly danced down slopes which for us had about the same amount of grip as Action Man after a delicate hand operation. In contrast, the soles of our shoes seemed as smooth as liberally greased baby’s bottom (I really hope I don’t get any search engine hits for that phrase).

Not that mud was the major obstacle. The villagers rode into town on oxen carts, and where there’s oxen, there’s…

The trek took in a couple of hill tribe villages, which are always nice to see and photograph. And, as Myanmar is not quite as widely visited as Thailand or Vietnam, they thankfully still had a lot to learn about selling useless handicrafts to stupid tourists.

The trek also took in an observation point, which we arrived at just in time for the clouds to roll over. Still, we got some nice views on the way up. One of the most charming things about Myanmar though, is that as you are walking around, small children come up to you and give you flowers for no particular reason. It is difficult to maintain your cynicism in the face of these displays, so I tried to ignore them as much as possible. My sister, however, soon turned into a walking bouquet.

The next day, we caught the bus to Inle lake, which, true to Myanmar protocol, left at an obscenely early time, had small, uncomfortable seats and was filled with 70 more passengers than it was designed to hold. However, in a radical break from tradition, it was actually 15 minutes early. Presumably the driver was hauled away somewhere to explain his actions.

The guesthouse at Inle was lovely teakwood home, with an unscrupulously mercenary owner who talked at a million miles an hour so you couldn’t understand a word she was charging. Before we knew it, she had us booked on a boat a massage and a plane ride back to Yangon, all within the space of a single breath.

The boatride on Inle lake was quite disappointing though, consisting of various factory tours and numerous opportunities to lighten your luggage by relinquishing some kyat. “Highlights” included a Paluang longneck tribe, who sang a short song remeniscent of the sound my car makes when its fan belt becomes too wet, and a cigar factory where 10 year old girls rolled cheroots for 15 hours a day.

There was also a jumping cat monastery, however by the time we arrived the cats were drinking Gatorade and doing their warm down stretches after a hard day of leaping for tourist.

Inle did however have the best Pizza place we encountered in the whole of Myanmar, with a charming owner and décor from the post concrete minimalist school.

The gastronomic delights of pizza aside, it was time to go back to Yangon.

Bagan is Myanmar’s version of Ankor Wat; not quite as grand, not quite as famous, and not quite as popular. It’s kind of the travel equivalent of Christina Aguleira.

The boat to Bagan however, was probably the most civilized transportation we took on our entire journey through Myanmar, which is frustrating as the damn government owns the thing.

The first thing you notice about Bagan is the heat. Despite the fact that it was the rainy season, Bagan was 40 degrees and dry when we arrived. The second thing you notice is that there are tourists there. After five days in the rest of Myanmar, we had seen a sum total of around ten tourists but on our boat there were 40 or 50 all in one hit. It kind of bursts your little bubble of exclusivity. The next thing you notice is the enormous crowd of hawkers on the docks, mostly children, drawn to the tourists like polar bears to a penguin party. The next thing you’ll notice is that the bloody government charges you 10 dollars to get off the boat.

There are more than 100 temples in Bagan; a similar number to Ankor Wat, but they are far more spaced out. A bit like some of the travellers there really. We decided to see them by bicycle rather than the favoured method of horse and cart, and after about three temples I realized we had made the right decision. The heat and tired legs were a small price to pay to avoid the mobs of hawkers that appeared from nowhere whenever you heard the sound of a cart approaching.

For some reason, my sister had firmly decided that, after a week of noodles, the one food she really craved was pasta or pizza. The Lonely Planet guide to Bagan states that “There are two types of food in Nyuang U: Pizza and non-pizza”. While we found the latter in ample supply, the former was strangely lacking. Indeed, we visited two separate restaurants with large signs out front saying “Italian Food”, only to find that they didn’t have any when we entered. Finally, in desperation, we chose a quite swish looking place closer to old Bagan in the hopes of a tourist menu. Unfortunately, the restaurant appeared strangely deserted and 5 minutes later, the owner approached us to tell us that their chef had gone off to help in the village, which has apparently caught fire. So, noodles it was.

The next day, we took on a three hour taxi ride with some Germans to a temple called the Popa Pagoda. After paying a substantial amount for the taxi, and riding with Germans, the payoff was sadly a little pathetic. Pictures of the pagoda make it look like a majestic castle perched on top a ragged crag. The reality is that it’s not much more than a few run down buildings, a bunch of monkeys, shops selling tourist junk and magic cure-all stones and a bunch of fat sweaty Europeans from a coach tour.

I was so disappointed that I composed a little song, to be sung to the tune of Copacobana:

At the Popa
Popa pagoda
There’s nothing to see, just a load a
Disappointments
Magic ointments
Monkeys and hawkers
And fat Spanish gawkers
At the Popaaaaaaa

The bus for Kalaw left at 3.30 the next morning. There’s not much to say about the trip. It was ten hours long, but apparently only 180km. My seat had no padding, the seat in front of me was too close to fit my legs behind and the aisles were filled with plastic seats. The road itself was slightly less smooth than the face of a 14 year old chocoholic.

Arriving in Kalaw, we were greeted by a rather insane Australian man (apologies for the tautology) who rushed up to the bus as it stopped for fuel, 500 metres from its final destination. His name was Percy and he appeared to be his mid to late 70s. He had come to Myanmar on the advice of a Burmese friend he worked with and ended up marrying his sister (that is, the Burmese man’s sister, not his own sister [although I wouldn’t have put it past him]) and staying for 20 years in Kalaw. Starved of opportunities to speak to Westerners, Percy charged at the bus every day and accosted every tourist, hoping for conversation. He was delighted when it turned out that we were from Australia as well, and he invited us to his home for dinner.

We decided, with some trepidation, to take Percy up on his offer. We arrived at his $2500 house in time to see the start of an Australian football final. Fortunately, the weird sensation of watching an Australian sport in the middle of Myanmar wasn’t to last long, as ten minutes in, the power went out in the whole of Kalaw.

Dinner at Percy’s was a rather informal affair; at least judging from Percy’s attire anyway. In the style of over 70s everywhere, Percy had decided to dress in a pair of sky blue shorts that had been pulled up to somewhere just below his nipples. He was charmingly misogynistic, relying on his wife to do pretty much everything, from cooking and waiting, right through to changing the TV stations for him. He referred to her as “Luv” or “Darl”, using the kinds of expressions that haven’t been heard outside of the soap opera, Neighbours, for 45 years. Despite this, he was an interesting person to talk to and surprisingly knowledgeable about the workings of Myanmar society.

Percy was particularly keen for us to take a look through his photo albums, but once we discovered a photo of him and his wife in lingerie on their honeymoon, the rest of the photos were skipped through at great speed.

That night, we opted for a massage to knead away the stresses of the bus ride. Kalaw had one massage practitioner and his apprentice. He was around 70 years old and referred to himself in the third person as “Massage Master”.

He also told us about his rather turbulent life. Apparently he grew up on the border with Thailand, a particularly troublesome spot in Myanmar. He recounted a story of when soldiers came to his village. They had set fire to a large portion of the village and he was particularly worried about his sister and her son. Eventually someone found her son and rescued him from a building, but they were still unable to locate his sister. Days later they found her. She had been raped by a group of soldiers and had taken her own life.

There were tears in his eyes as he related this story and it was difficult to know how to respond. It was a poignant reminder that while we were enjoying the country, the hospitality and friendliness of the people there, it is impossible to know what they have suffered. I had never felt more like a tourist in my life.

After the stresses of Yangon and the 15 hour train trip, Mandalay seemed such a pleasant place to be. There’s not a lot to do there really, but at least you don’t kill yourself trying to do it.

Our leisurely itinerary of two days in Mandalay involved hiring a couple of rickshaw drivers to pedal us around on the first day. There’s certainly no shortage of these around, and we were able to hire a couple inside the palace compound to take us to a temple area on the local map for 1000 kyat each. Rather embarrassingly, it turned out that we slightly misunderstood the map scale and ended up paying them the equivalent of 80 cents to ride us about 10km.

Now, I’m not exactly svelt and the sight of some poor Burmese man struggling towards an acute coronary as he tried to pedal my ample frame up a hill, is literally the only thing guaranteed to guilt me into opening my legendarily tight purse strings. Therefore, when the guys offered to ride us around for the rest of the day, we readily agreed. We settled on a price of 5,000 kyat for 5 temples that were marked on our map.

One of the unwritten laws of haggling in Asia is if, when you name a price, the other person immediately says deal, you know you’ve made a mistake. If the say it with a slight smile, you’ve really made a big mistake. So, when our guys started to dance around and hug each other, letting off fireworks, my suspicions were slightly raised.

It turned out that all 5 temples were within about 30 metres of where they had just taken us and that we had effectively paid 5 times our original price for them to lounge around on their bikes. Still, you gotta give something back….

The temples were nice, without being anything too spectacular. Probably the highlight for me was two young girls who were incredibly keen to sell us some ink paintings (which we had seen at numerous other attractions). They followed us around the pagoda saying “You buy, we happy” with big, infectious grins and cheeky laughs. We decided that as we weren’t going to buy anything from them, we would give them a couple of crappy clip on Koalas that I had bought in Australia (admittedly for probably 5 times what the girls would have been willing to accept for their pictures). Then, as we were leaving, without a word of a lie, the cheeky little buggers tried to sell the koalas to us!

That night we went and watched a marionette show. The theatre was a charming little place, run by an old man who didn’t look strong enough to lift a puppet, let alone perform with one. In fact, if I’m being honest, the puppets actually looked stronger than he did. If he was working on Thunderbirds, the world would have been destroyed before the Traceys even made it out of the pool.

The next day, we had arranged with the driver of our torch lit bemo to take us to some of the sights outside of Mandalay (and preferably return before nightfall). The most impressive of these sights was a monastery where 300 monks line up simultaneously for lunch.

It was quite imposing and well worth seeing. Unfortunately, the whole mystic essence was ruined by a Spanish tourist who actually got in line with the monks and followed them with his video camera. And they say tourists don’t respect other cultures!

We also had lunch in a local, and I do mean local, restaurant. For approximately 6,000 kyat, we received approximately 80 dishes of approximately 7cm diametre, filled with, approximately, food.

The food was a heady mixture of the delicious and the suspicious. For every bowl of succulent chicken curry, there was another, containing beef lard soaked in toxic waste and baby vomit. Still, well worth the experience and the possible chronic bowel complaints later in life.

That night, we went for a swim in the hotel pool and got chatting to a couple of local fellows who invited us out for dinner. Our plan that night had been to go and see the moustache brothers, a political comedy troupe who are famous for standing up to the government (I have since heard that Par Par Lay has be arrested again). However, we agreed to have dinner with the family from the pool, thinking we could make it later. Halfway through our noodles, the boy casually announced that Than Shwe was his grandfather through marriage. This was basically akin to sitting down to dinner with a man who says, “Oh, and by the way, my uncle is Idi Amin”. After that gem, it seemed somewhat inadvisable to tell them we were off to an anti-government production. So, we succinctly bid them good evening and slipped out to try and find a taxi.

Unfortunately, due to the wonders of Myanmar technical expertise, Mandalay has no streetlights at night, and we were unable to find a taxi. So we missed the show, possibly the only thing my sister really wanted to do in Mandalay. We couldn’t stay though; we already had a boat booked for Bagan the next morning.

Next week – Bagan and Kalaw