Yangon at a standstill

As we drove into Yangon, I suddenly saw why the government might have wanted to move to a new city. The traffic here is truly terrible. There is nothing wrong with the roads themselves, they are in pretty good shape, but the volume of cars means that nothing goes anywhere. And this isn't due to an accident or any ad hoc problem, it is just the norm.

One thing that we quickly noticed was the lack of any two wheeled modes of transport. Unlike everywhere else, where mopeds and small motorbikes are the norm, with a good number of regular bikes still thrown in, none of those are to be found here. We did see the occasional bicycle sneak around, but that was it. Apparently, a government official had his car hit by a bike of some form, so promptly banned all two wheel vehicles. I can't vouch for the truth of that, but that is the story.

But there is no shortage of cars and they all seem to be in front of you and going the same way! It took us forever to get around the city, which made the further afield sites a little frustrating to get to.

Anyway, we did finally reach our hotel, and had a bit of time to relax before a few of us headed out to see if we could pick up a bit of street food. We would have been fine if we wanted just anything, but we had agreed to go for some dhosa that had been spotted earlierin the day, so the search was on for them.

Unfortunately, all the dhosa vendors seemed to have packed up early for the night. On the brink of disappointment, someone directed us towards a little restaurant, and sure enough, there were dhosa there. It was my first taste of them, and I was a bit dubious as spicy floors and I don't mix well, but as they are basically a pancake with stuff to dip them in, I just stuck to the one dip I liked and all was fine.

Yangon is noticeably different from the rest of Myanmar, not only because of the traffic. Whereas Mandalay and some other big towns do have some big 'western style' buildings, much of it is still very low level and in parts quite ramshackle. Yangon has a much higher proportion of taller and larger buildings, albeit that many are now quite old and a bit run down.

Also the people dress differently. In most of Myanmar, the majority of women and many men still wear the traditional longhi. Here, some still do, but the majority are in western style clothing. Quite a lot of the women are still using the thanaka though.

Thanakha and jaggery en route to Kalaw

From the moment we crossed the border into Myanmar, we noticed that many of the women had painted circles or stripes of what looked like clay onto their cheeks - or sometimes even a more elaborate leaf pattern. We asked Myo about this and he explained that it is a form of sun block that women use and also put on their children.

It is called thanakha. You buy a small log of wood from the thanakha tree and grind it on a stone slab called a kyauk pyin, with a tiny bit of water, to make a thin paste that you apply to your skin. It is a very old tradition, and it supposed to be excellent as both moisturiser and sunscreen. Women are considered more beautiful for wearing it - indeed Myo is certainly that any future bride of his would wear the thanakha.

Well on our drive from Bagan to Kalaw, we stopped off at a roadside place where we got to try this for ourselves, and soon all of the women in the group had thanakha leaves painted on our cheeks.

That wasn't the only thing we could try here either. They were also tapping the palm trees for their sap, which they do by climbing up the tree, making a small cut and leaving a pot tied under it to collect the sap that drips out. From that sap, they make drinks and sweets.

The sweet is called jaggery, and is very rich tasting and crumbly, and popular across Myanmar with adults, children and we tourists too. It is made by simply boiling the sap. Here, they were making it plain, or mixed with either shredded coconut or jujube date paste.

And then there are the drinks. The first is palm wine, or toddy, which is made by fermenting the sap. It is quite low in alcohol, so when they want something stronger, they can distill the toddy.

The other drink we tried was a mix of jaggery, water and sticky rice, which is fermented for four days - they had a pot bubbling away while we were there and the smell was fairly pungent. They all tasted OK, but I won't be rushing to get any.

They were very hospitable at this stop, as we were all offered tea and green tea leaf salad too.

And we got to feed the ox that was pulling the grinding stone to extract the peanut oil from the peanuts. The ox gets the leftover dried out peanut, which it seems to rather like, so it's a win win situation.

After that it was back on the road to Kalaw, with a quick stop for lunch. As we reached our destination, which is another of these British hill stations, we were stopped by the tourist police, and we all had to get off again to have another group photo taken.

Then it was on to the Thein Taung Paya monastery where we were doing our last night of camping. There was a great view of Kalaw from the monastery, so every so often other visitors would appear and be quite surprised to find us camping there.

One particular pair of male Chinese tourists were especially fascinated by our dinner preparations, and seemed to think it perfectly acceptable to shove their huge cameras right in the faces of Nic and the others in the cook group, without even saying hello. It made me glad that I am more considerate of people when taking my own photos, even if it means I can't always get the picture that I'd like