In which Roz and Layla finish our Burma holiday in Philadelphia

By Roz

We once famously did a holiday (from London) that involved going to Georgia, Ukraine and Lisbon (diverting from an excess of rain in the initial country, whose main charms were outdoors). This has prompted me to think a little more outside the box when it comes to holiday planning/alterations and so it was that it made total sense to suggest to Layla as we cycled through the hills of Burma that we leave Burma a couple of days early and head from there to Philadelphia for the last leg of our holiday. It felt a little less logical when we checked in to our hotel in Philly and they asked us whether we'd had a good journey and we had to admit we had travelled for 36 hours to get there...but we did get our room upgraded to one overlooking the Liberty Bell as a result, so all's well that ends well...

Having dumped our stuff in our hotel room, we popped downstairs out of the hotel and walked just a few minutes along the road to Amada, a lovely Spanish wine bar / restaurant, which had been recommended by our friend and is one of the top restaurants in Philly. We had a delicious meal, very much enjoying the change from rice and vegetables to Spanish tortilla, a delicious salad, a beautifully cooked artichoke thing and a little wine. We lingered over our meal, having absolutely no urge to go further afield in our exploring (but also not wanting to go to bed too early) and wished this lovely place was in DC. 

We slept quite well, reveling in the crisp sheets that had been so lacking for most of our Burma holiday, though I woke up too early (5am) and only managed to hold off till 5.50 before waking Layla. This meant we were out of our hotel a little early and found ourselves arriving - throughout the day - at every venue just as it was opening. Our first stop was breakfast in the museum area at a lovely cool place called Sabrina's. Despite the early hour, it was almost half full 5 minutes after opening (and when we left there was quite a line for seats). We both had a "barking chihuahua" - a breakfast burrito which was huge and delicious - before contemplating our next step. We flirted with going to the Franklin Institute before we remembered that science museums are usually full of children, and so headed to Philadelphia's Museum of Art. We felt somewhat doubtful doing so - everyone has told us that the other art museum, the Barnes Foundation, is much better. But you need to book tickets for there well in advance and my planning enthusiasm from Burma hadn't extended quite that far. But we were quite wrong to have low expectations of the museum - it turned out to be both excellent and blissfully peaceful. We saw Van Gogh's sunflowers, lots of Miro (including a favourite of mine of a dog barking at the moon which I always wish we owned), plus some Picassos, many Monets and Manets together with some good modern art. We interrupted our visit for a sit down in the nice cafe and then struggled to stand up again... We had to admit at the end of our visit that we definitely felt knackered and my plan of walking us back into the downtown area for a little book shop browsing had been optimistic. Instead, we hailed a cab and headed back to the hotel for a glorious lunchtime nap instead of lunch (we were still full from our breakfast). A little nap turned into 2 and a quarter hours and so it was the early afternoon when we forced ourselves awake (the time difference is 12 hours!) and headed out for a coffee in a cute nearby cafe, Old Town Coffee. 

After coffee, feeling mainly revived, we walked round the corner to the cinema to see a new film called Yossi. This turned out to be an inspired choice: funny, sweet and engaging. We came out of it feeling very cheerful and then hopped on a bus into the centre of town to go to Fox Books before dinner. Clutching our literary purchases in a pleased fashion, we walked a few blocks to get to our dining destination: Sbraga. The chef is apparently famous (from TV) and the restaurant was full throughout the evening. We had four delicious courses (a really excellent salad, then an Asian eggplant dish for me and gnocchi for Layla, then a polenta dish and finally a sort of lemon meringue tart for me and rice pudding for Layla). At the end of our meal we got chatting to our neighbours, who were a very nice older couple, and we swopped restaurant recommendations for DC and Philly in an enjoyable fashion. We then walked round the corner to Franklin Mortgage and Investment Company, which is a nice unmarked speakeasy bar where we spent the rest of the evening drinking gin. A very satisfactory day. 

We slept well though again woke early. We walked through the gay village to a different Sabrina's (having agreed  some justification - which I have now forgotten - as to why we weren't being lame in going to eat from the same menu two days in a row) where we had pancakes and omelette. Both delicious. Half way through the meal, though, I started to feel a bit green. Alas this is something that often happens to me when I travel too much and so we agreed to postpone our plan for the morning and retreat to a lovely nearby cafe (called Charterhouse Square) where I sat quietly hoping the feeling would pass. It more or less did after a while, and in the interim we both had a jolly time reading (in my case contemplating the madness of the Chris Huhne / Vicky Pryce saga) and wishing there were more nice cafes in DC. From there we headed to Philadelphia's magic garden. This turned out to be a mad place with art done with mosaics, mirrors, bits of bikes, and beer bottles. We had a jolly time there, though studiously avoided engaging with the artist, who was kicking around, for fear of saying the wrong thing ("nice art, but it's a shame that so many bicycles had to lose their wheels for it" being one example...). We then headed through town to see Rittenshaw Square, which was jolly, and then slowly headed back to our hotel, contemplating whether we could manage lunch (we couldn't) and occasionally speaking with horror of returning to work. 

We picked up our bag from the hotel, and headed to the station for an early afternoon train back to DC. On the escalator down to the platform, I found myself nearly knocked off my feet and down the escalator by a flying bag (belonging to a lady further up the escalator than us). Rattled, I told her that she shouldn't travel with a bag if she couldn't control it. Standing on the platform afterwards, Layla and I contemplated that we really shouldn't be brusque with strangers en route to DC - it's the kind of place where these things come back to bite one. And that kind of thinking, I fear, shows that we really nearly are back to real life. Ah well, it's only 11 weeks till our next trip. And Philly was fantastic. 

In which Layla and Roz see their last temples, eat a lot of ice cream, and fly back to DC early

By Layla

With the taste of that glorious cashew nut vanilla ice cream still in my mouth, Roz and I persuaded each other that we should definitely return to Black Bamboo for dinner. And so we did. I proved a poor dinner companion, as I was immersed in a book, but pre-prandial G&Ts and tzaziki enabled me to polish most of it off and pay attention over our tasty tomato tofu curry in the pretty garden restaurant. 

As ever, it was an early bed and an alarm of 5:45am as we hauled ourselves sleepily out of bed, via the omelette maker, to the van, and as the sun rose over the temples, we speeded up by van to Mount Popo, one of the holiest sites in Burma, though it seems this particular brand of holiness was not Buddhism but Nat. I think they said there are 37 different Nat (people turned into spirits/ogres) and one worships them along different themes depending on what you need. So for instance there was an education Nat to worship before a big exam... There was a gambling Nat to worship if you're off for a spot of Las Vegas action, etc. The mountain itself was quite scruffy and jumping with ratty-looking monkeys. Fun to see a gold temple perched on the very tip of the mountain, like a fairy tale. But frankly I was distracted by the imminent long cycle home. Sure enough, before long we were zooming down the hill by bike (though there was a surprising amount of uphill involved too, much to my sorrow). The roadside children shouting "Mingalaba!" here were less impressed with us and more tourist-savvy, with their additional calls of "Money money money!" And attempts to knock us off our bikes. Someone did actually fall off their bike, but due to not noticing a speed bump rather than the local children's antics, and had to be conveyed to hospital - luckily nothing worse than a black eye, some scrapes, and a chipped tooth, but a bit scary, especially when I (who I admit had taken to the van halfway down due to my own injuries playing up)heard someone was badly hurt and didn't know who it was. Meanwhile, the object of my concern, my dear wife, had taken advantage of my absence to cease pottering slowly along the road to keep me company, and was now zooming right up at the front with the very fastest riders. Apparently going at 26kph steadily all the way home, she beat me in my van by some way! Her smugness was vast.

We jumped in the pool for a quick swim (me swimming with one arm above my head to protect my healing arm wound), and then headed off for lunch to the delightful Black Bamboo for sandwiches and lassis and book reading. Before succumbing to the heat (and the intermittent nature of the electricity powering the fans) and taxi-ing back to the hotel. We had another dip in the pool, then, realising it was our last night in Burma, headed out for a romantic sunset ride to the temples of Bagan in a horse and carriage. This would have been quite nice, had we not feared for our lives as the precarious contraption negotiated its way around giant lorries and buses, and then across sand, to deliver us to the first temple we visited yesterday. We climbed up just in time for sunset, and watched the thousand of temples forming numerous tiny peaks along the 360 degrees horizon turn pink as the sun dropped down.

We returned to the hotel in time for the farewell meeting (the tour doesn't officially end till Saturday, but our bike guide left us in the questionable hands of an outsourced Yangon agent for the last bit), so there were lots of thanks, after which Roz and I, upon hearing plans for a group meal, fled to Black Bamboo (there are only 2 great restaurants in Bagan, I think, so their choice of Aroma 2 made ours for us). Embarrassingly, one of the tour helpers spotted our abdication, thought we'd done it in error, and raced after us to bring us back to the fold. The shame! We made our excuses and had a lovely meal together, musing that we are probably not cut out for tour groups...

The next day was a glorious lie-in: we didn't have to set off til 8am! We reveled in the luxury, had our breakfast outside in a pretty poolside garden (instead of a rushed early affair in the miserable dining room as usual), and soon were off on a rather nice 10km round-trip cycle to a couple of obscure temples. If only every day had been 10-20km, and started at 8am, rather than 6:30am and up to 70km... We were back by 9:30 and found a poorly planned day by our tour, where we had to check out of the hotel and return bikes by 12, then leave for the airport by 4.15... Cue most of our group sitting in reception all afternoon. We used the bikes for a final Black Bamboo lassi, tzaziki and sandwich, then returned, had a swim (arm in the air again), and read our books in the shade til the bus drew up and our 30-hour homewards journey commenced.

When we touched down in Rangoon and everyone else boarded the tour bus back to the original hotel, Roz and I took a taxi to the Green Elephant restaurant. This turned out to be a stressful drama when the taxi driver didn't know where it was, then got caught in horrible traffic, but it did mean we had a lovely last Burma meal in a romantic, twinkling light setting, and of course a final glass of Aythaya wine. Well, not quite final. We eventually got back to the airport in time to check in for our flight. Then we went through customs, with two passport officials examining our passports, side by side, when the airport tannoy started playing a Burmese song. Without any self consciousness or even seeming to notice, the two men started singing along, swaying cheerily in time, as they stamped our passports. Roz and I studiously kept our faces straight, then grinned as we were waved though and gazed back at them, still swaying away. Very jolly indeed. We bought our absolutely final Aythaya wine at the rather nice airport bar, and mused that it had been a rather jolly place to be, even if it wasn't as interesting as we'd hoped, was a lot more touristy than we'd hoped, the biking wasn't quite as enjoyable as we'd hoped, and being in a tour group had made us feel less connected to the country, and less prone to adventure than usual. We were unanimously glad to have chopped two nights off the end of our holiday - and I can't remember ever feeling like that before! But we haven't really chopped it off; merely relocated. After this interminable, Groundhog Day-ish journey ("What time is it? 8:30pm on Thursday. But I distinctly remember it being 8:30pm on Thursday when we had dinner at the Green Elephant, long ago?" We will be zooming home, changing our packing clothes from scorching to freezing, and boarding the train to Philadelphia for the culmination of our holiday - and of course the final blog. Stay tuned!

In which Roz and Layla cycle, eat ice cream, and see lots of temples

By Roz

Up again for another early morning (alas) our day started with a bolted breakfast (disappointing) and then an hour long drive (which would also have been depressing, were I not listening to an audio version of The Colour by Rose Tremain which is excellent, albeit this makes me an unsociable companion).  We were then off for another long cycle, through villages and towns. It is striking that the enthusiasm of the Burmese for us remains high - no-one doesn't want to say hello. I'm ashamed to say that after the first hour or so of cycling my responses become less enthusiastic and a little more grunt-like. Fortunately our fellow tour group companions are nicer people (and probably better cyclists) and fly the flag for British cheerfulness for me after I flag. Flatter than usual, it was lovely to have Layla back cycling alongside me as we whizzed (wheezed) along. Our favourite moment from the cycle was at the moment we got lost. Uncertain whether to turn left or right at a junction, a fellow-cyclist whipped out a compass, stated firmly that we should be heading west and thus that we should turn left. We followed him and were delighted he turned out to be right (especially as others got lost). Layla in particular delighted in this scientific approach to decision making ...

Some might say 11am was a little early for lunch, but that didn't stop the plates of food from arriving in the rooftop restaurant in which our group was ensconced - or Layla and me from scoffing as much of our two favourite dishes as we could (one sort of sweet corn, and one green bean - both with something lovely done to them). After lunch, we cycled down to the river (passing pigs, somewhat to our surprise) and then hopped on boats for a 1 and a half hour cruise along the Irawaddy River to Bagan, where we were to be spending the next three nights. Unsurprisingly it turned out to be very lovely to be sat on a comfy boat, being transported along by someone else with beautiful scenery and books to read. The end of the boat ride turned out to be particularly picturesque, as we passed by some of the 2000 temples (many from the 12th century) in the area. We looked at each other and wondered if things were about to look up...

Arriving at our hotel, we found ourselves greeted with bowls of strawberry ice cream and then found we were to be staying in a large room (with a double bed - my insistence a few nights ago brought dividends for the rest of the holiday!) in a lodge / cabin next to the hotel's enticing pool. We felt very cheerful indeed and lost no time in heading to the pool for a swim. After a long time spent bobbing around, just as our skin was starting to get wrinkly, we headed back to our rooms to shower. Having collected our books, we headed to the hotel's bakery (not quite as charming as it sounds, but still nice) to eat more strawberry ice cream. I took the opportunity of wifi to start booking the next leg of our holiday (Philadelphia - recommendations welcome!) whilst Layla phoned her parents (and asked them to phone my mum - since I couldn't get through to her and there is no 3G for texting here) and read her book. It was then time for an early dinner and so we fled the group and pottered down to "restaurant row" and had a delightful evening drinking our favourite wine, eating paneer and chappatis in a very cheery outdoor Indian restaurant (delightfully sans fellow tour group members, and indeed, unusually for this country, without any tour groups at all!). We headed back early, though, not least because of the prospect of yet another early morning. I'm not ruling out rebellion before we leave...

But this morning it was really worth getting up early. Not just to avoid the heat and sun, but also because we were heading through the sand on our bikes to visit some of the Bagan temples. Bagan is likened to Ankor Watt or Machu Picchu in its enormity and importance. It was just fantastic to be there, with the place to ourselves (bar the rest of the group) for the first hour or so. The temples were spectacular: of varying sizes and ages, they were all unique (albeit variations on a theme! And there were many, many Buddhas within, of course.) and it was brilliant to clamber over and up them, and to gaze at the landscape - temples everywhere you looked - from the top. Better than Ankor Watt in many ways, we were so cheery to be there. 

After clambering through and over 6 or 7 temples, our guide suggested we head back and have lunch en route. We all expressed horror at the idea of lunch at 11.30 again, but agreed to a drink at a roadside cafe. After gulping down my lime soda, I became bored of waiting for the others (for which read: hungry and wanting to read my book) and so persuaded Layla to head off back with me on a self-guided mission home. Somewhat doubtful, but always a trooper, she agreed. I then had a genius idea - a diversion to lunch on restaurant row (which we would be passing). And so we found ourselves settling down in a delightful garden, with a really delicious lunch, accompanied by a honeydew lassi for Layla and a beer for me. We stayed there a long while, not least to have a second helping of the delicious home made vanilla ice cream and cashew nuts (this holiday has really been lacking ice cream till now!), but also reading. I was delighted to find that my book (The Piano Tuner) has the protagonist passing through the town we are currently in. Fun. After a couple of hours we headed back to the hotel for a swim, and we are now sitting on our cabin porch, and Layla is writing postcards. I don't regret for a moment that we have decided to cut out the last two days of our Burma trip which would have had us return to Yangon...but I am delighted at the lovely turn the holiday has taken. 

In which Layla and Roz follow Nellie the Elephant's road to Mandalay, and Layla falls off her bike

By Layla

After the fun of 8800 Buddhas came a pleasant enough 18 person dinner overlooking the lake and another early night - because we were to be standing to attention at 6am the following morning. A strange sort of holiday... But, having gulped down some speedy breakfast, we were duly on the bus and zooming towards the junction that marked the start of our cycle. This was another day euphemistically described as 'undulating'. Indeed, accurately - the entire thing involved going up a steep hill then down a steep hill, repeated interminably as we zoomed past pretty hilly scenery, little villages with waving children lining the road, local workers building the road (as we were forced repeatedly into the red dust at the side of the road I mused that this had lost its charm for me...) and always with a blazing hot sun. Not dissimilar to the day before.

Drama awaited as I took advantage of a precious downhill slope, zooming at an unfortunate angle over a pile of rocks that made up that part of the road - and skidded. As I crashed down onto the road, bicycle akimbo. I noted my good fortune that it didn't happen in front of one of the several local schools where the entire population of students watched us pass. Nevertheless, nearby cyclists and a few random locals crowded around me. Fortunately I hadn't done anything too drastic, though from everyone's expressions I can surmise that my elbow wound looked worse than (hopefully) it was. We pooled medical kits and soon I was on my way again, with multiple types of antiseptic dripping through my bandage. 

When we got to the next rest stop and everyone crowded round to see if I was okay, I decided to use the wounds as a front for my laziness (to be fair the jolting didn't make them happy). I climbed into the bus and soon found myself reading my book on a shady deck chair at the lunch destination, awaiting the cyclists. The fast ones appeared before long. Then the second bus appeared and deposited its load of everyone else, clearly those who had been scooped up in various stages of heat exhaustion along the way, except... Where was Roz?! Just as I began to feel really quite anxious, I saw something in the distance. Sure enough it was Roz, speeding up the hill towards us, complaining accurately that the 10k stage we'd been promised was actually 14k with no water stops in the blazing heat. I was impressed/scared as she dismounted and strolled to greet me!

After lunch the bus trundled us along a very winding path down the mountain for multiple hours and eventually into Mandalay. The guidebook says Mandalay's an anticlimax and this turned out to be true. There's a big fort in the middle but otherwise it's concrete and charmless modernity. Our hotel was a couple of kilometers from the centre, so after a side trip to a pharmacy to get me some bandages, we took a taxi to a vegetarian restaurant... And then, finding it to have no alcohol, crossed the street to the other family restaurant, the excellent Rainforest Cafe. We had tasty curry and some more Ayathaya wine in a lovely place, and were well pleased with our nice evening in Mandalay.

The next day we'd debated about whether to abscond from the tour and spend the day seeing Mandalay/at a swimming pool. But Mandalay didn't seem too tempting and the swimming pool looked potentially depressing so we ended up cycling as usual. We went along busy roads lining a smoggy Irawaddy River, waving to scruffy children, to a famous wooden bridge spanning the river. We climbed up and strolled along it. Very scenic and charming other than all the tourists. Afterwards some other cyclists declared rebellion and headed back into Mandalay in a taxi. We swithered several times, then eventually decided against joining them.

We spent the rest of the afternoon somewhat regretting our decision. Lots of the cycling was along busy roads, and when it got onto the country roads along the river, it was again, ahem, undulating. I got a puncture. The heat was immense. We got to our destination, site of the world's largest working bell, exhausted, and Roz and I naughtily skipped viewing the bell in favour of cold beers in a local cafe, before we all convened on deck chairs in a very pleasant boat and puttered comfortably back to Mandalay, where a tuk tuk awaited to convey us to our hotel.

With our afternoon free, Roz and I shunned the sights for an air conditioned drink in V Cafe/Skybar near the fort, and disclosed our anxieties that we don't love this trip: Burma isn't that exciting unless you really like repeatedly looking at millions of Buddha images. It's quite charmless having mass meals and sleeping in rubbish hotels. It's quite tiring/dull spending all day every day cycling. We missed our Layla and Roz adventures. We felt disinclined to spend ages pfaffing every time we went for a meal. It was annoying we couldn't stop at a nice cafe when we saw one. Perhaps tours weren't for us... And yet we still had almost a week to go! We drowned our sorrows with Myanmar beer and found a taxi driver who took us to A Taste of Mandalay (reasonably pleasant food) and JoJo Cafe for a sneaky ice cream, then to Mandalay's famous marionette theatre where Roz had to prod me awake multiple times though it was quite good, if reasonably incomprehensible... And we ended the evening in true Roz and Layla style at the local hospital, with our taxi driver leading the charge in search of a bandage for my arm - fun! Monks in the waiting room, medical notes written in school jotters, and an excellent bandage for me! Off home feeling cheery but musing on how to improve our holiday...

Of course we were up at the crack of dawn today, missing breakfast as the van awaited us at 6.30. And we were off again, this time bound for Monywa. Again, we drove for a couple of hours, then started cycling. After about 12k of the same sort of thing, in the sun with my injuries disliking being jolted, I was tempted on to the bus and sheepishly (but delightedly) watched as Roz and the others slogged along. I was proud/embarrassed/disconcerted to find that without me to keep pace with, Roz is a speed demon! Indeed, she was leading the entire group! I took a photo... And returned to my book. Our first stop was the world's tallest standing Buddha (and one of the world's tallest longest lying one - with a new, bigger one under construction!), set amid fields of identical smaller Buddha statues), and a temple with a little tower which we climbed. The site's called Bodhi Tataung. Next stop was Thamboddhaya Paya, a temple built by a monk who just didn't think there were enough Buddha statues around. He duly built one with about a million Buddhas in it, all over the walls and roof. A key feature of Burma: there can never be enough Buddhas (and nor can they ever be big enough). Motto: empty nook or cranny? Stick a Buddha in it!

After our temple fun, we cycled/drive to Hotel Monywa, our base for the evening. A quick lunch in the hotel restaurant, discussing how we didn't want to spend our last two days in the not-very-delightful Rangoon/Yangon, and then we sat down at the hotel computer. Rebellion was in the air as we typed a subversive e-mail to our friend. Perhaps the fact that the electricity went off three times while Roz was typing was an omen, but we chose to press on. The content of the email: "we want to go home 2 days early. We can't make phone calls. Please enact on our behalf." And thus our excellent friend did. 

After our emailing, we got in the bus (except for 4 deranged fellow cyclists who chose to cycle 2 and a half hours uphill in a million degrees of heat) and went off to visit the local attraction, ie Hpo Win Daung. There is a temple at the top of a hill, carved out of the hill, and quite cool (with many Buddhas within). And there is a huge complex of tiny 'caves' (really mostly indentations in the stone), all numbered, and each holding - you guessed it - at least one Buddha statue. Quite nice, if hot, climbing up the hill - scenic and pleasant, with lots of monkeys to entertain us, and we left just as the sun was setting over the hills.

Of course our tour guide again instructed us to eat in the hotel restaurant, and again we rebelled, hiring a tuk tuk to take us to the Tripadvisor-recommended Pleasant Garden restaurant. Which turned out to be quite pleasant. A crazy undulating bridge delivered us to a little island, upon which we were directed to our own little corner. The menu was fairly identical to every menu here, so Roz decided to branch out and go for ginseng and egg. I ordered vegetable vermicelli and braced myself for a sharing scenario... Sure enough, when what turned out to be a ginseng omelette appeared, Roz took a bite, declared it tasted of moisturiser (we subsequently decided perfume was more accurate), and duly fed some of it to an initially enthusiastic and thereafter reproachful skinny cat.

We came home, found our flights had been changed, and felt excited/scared/rebellious, and mostly impressed at our lovely friend's efficiency! So we leave on Thursday night instead of Saturday. And we will be extending our holiday US-style when we return. Stay tuned...