Day 154: Travelling to Myanmar

Time for a new country, the last one in South East Asia! Thankfully a good sleep in this morning as our flight wasn't until the evening, so we spent a couple of hours relaxing in the hotel room after our typical Malaysian roti breakfast.

Our flight was scheduled for 5:20pm, but the internet at our hotel wasn't working that well so we decided to head for the airport early - very early. For a change of pace we got a coach from the city centre out to the airport, which took about the same time as a taxi but cost about 1/3 the price which was nice.

Straight through check-in and emigration, the airport was unusually empty and we both noticed. Normally KLIA2 is heaving with passengers but it felt super quiet today. We'd read that AirAsia have a new premium lounge in the corner of the airport which costs about $25 AUD per head, but you get unlimited food and non-alcoholic drinks, power, wifi and showers, so we decided to give it a try.

The food was decent enough though not much variety (it was just a buffet with rice, butter chicken and stir fried cabbage), but the fridge full of soft drink and proper espresso machine were definitely welcome! Since we'd arrived around 1pm, we settled in for a few hours and got our money's worth of food and drink. I also utilised the very fast wifi to finish backing up about 50GB worth of GoPro footage that I hadn't managed to get online.

By 5pm it was time to head for our flight, which promptly showed up on the board as being delayed until 6pm. We headed to the gate around 5:30pm, but the aircraft itself didn't even appear until around 6:15pm. But AirAsia turn these things around pretty quickly, and we were on our way soon enough.

Got completely confused on the flight when a hostess handed me a meal - I'd completely forgotten that we'd ordered food for this flight! Also seemed to be a lot of very inexperienced flyers on board - the guy next to me watched the safety demonstration very closely and then practiced putting his belt on a couple of times, then a bit later a guy stood up and started walking to the bathroom as we were idling on the runway, seconds from takeoff. The stewards yelled at him and he sat down just as the engines spooled up to full power - a couple of seconds later and he would've tumbled down the aisle.

Arrival into Yangon was very unusual, as it's a big city of 5 million people but very few lights on. You knew there was a city there, you just couldn't see it! No tall buildings either. Airport terminal very new and shiny which was a pleasant surprise! Sorted ourselves out with SIM cards ($7 AUD for 1 month/2GB = bargain!), then got a taxi from the airport to our hotel downtown.

Surprised to find that drivers sit on the right hand side of the car, and also drive on the right-hand side of the road. I don't know why since they're between India, Bangladesh and Thailand which all drive on the left, and it would make way more sense, but oh well. Still couldn't see much of the city during the drive as it was very dark and there just aren't many streetlights around. Quite a few people around though.

Hotel is nice; fairly modern though again not quite as modern as it looked in the photos. Definitely better than the crumbling concrete edifices nearby though! Basically straight to bed for us as it'd been another very long day of travel for us, and I have a feeling we'll be doing a lot of walking for the next few days.Читать далее