travel diary — day 315

In travel on 3 February 2010 tagged air india, book, burma, chess, coffee, craig, cycle rickshaw, email, hammock, hotel, indian embassy, kolkata, lonely planet, mandalay, markets, moustache brothers, myanmar, passport, tattoo, tourist, train ticket, travel, visa, yangon, yangon united fc with no comments

day 311 — today was a fairly easy day. i had break­fast and drank a cof­fee at an out­door café. i checked email and walked around town. i spent a few hours online in the after­noon, had din­ner and slept.

day 312 — my morn­ing routine had settled into break­fast and cof­fee. the small café had a few seats in the sun and the owner had star­ted see­ing me reg­u­larly, but today would be the last day. after break­fast i bought my train ticket back to yangon.

the day before i’d spoken to a cycle rick­shaw driver about where i could get another tat­too. so today he took me to a small place hid­den in a back alley. the guy was a decent tat­too­ist, so after a long con­ver­sa­tion we decided on a design. two hours (and $15) later i had my tat­too. i returned to the hotel for a rest.

i had a really good ham­burger and beer for din­ner, then went to see ‘the mous­tache broth­ers’ show again. it was my second time to see them per­form, and i was dis­ap­poin­ted that i couldn’t organ­ise a video cam­era to record the whole performance.

day 313 — i woke up early, had a quick shower and got the train to yan­gon. it was a long, bor­ing day on the train with noth­ing much to see.

we arrived in yan­gon on time, which was nice, and i walked across town to my hotel. actu­ally, my arse was sore from the wooden seats on the train, and i was quite tired. i grabbed a quick din­ner and went to sleep.

day 314 — i returned to the indian embassy first thing the next morn­ing. i paid for the visa, which i was able to pick up in the after­noon. i returned to the hotel and changed rooms, tak­ing a room with a much nicer view. i read my book on the bal­cony for a while and then went for a walk around town. i stopped by the air india office and bought my ticket to kolkata

i hadn’t felt like tak­ing pho­tos, so i just wandered through the mar­kets and streets. i had lunch and walked past a yan­gon united fc store which was just open­ing up. i bought some souven­irs to send back to craig and headed back towards the embassy. i col­lec­ted my pass­port and visa, enjoyed another sugar cane drink from the local street vendors and went back to the hotel. i read my book and slept.

day 315 — after break­fast i decided to relax in the rooftop ham­mocks and read my book. i got talk­ing to an amer­ican tour­ist, also called dave, who shared with me a prize col­lec­tion of lonely planet pdf files. sweet!! i wandered into town, checked email and stumbled across a small group of loc­als play­ing chess. i stopped to watch and ended up play­ing three games. i got thrashed each game by a guy who clearly spends a lot of time play­ing chess!

i had din­ner and returned to the hotel. in the even­ing i fin­ished ‘the book thief’, messed around with some mp3s and went to bed.

No Comments Yet