Messages from (the) Seoul: Hsipaw and onwards

From Inle Lake I caught an overnight bus to Hsipaw. It was around 15 hours, the bus ended up going through Mandalay, quite a roundabout route but maybe the better roads make for a quicker journey. As with all the other buses I've taken the aircon is on full blast so its icy cold and there's cheesy karaoke videos on the go the whole time. I didn't get any sleep and we arrived in Hsipaw at some horrible hour in the middle of the night. We walked down one of the streets that looked like it had some activity,. looked like a bakery preparing their morning cakes and breads. Further down the street we found a guest house. I'm sure it was called Yee Shin,. but I haven't found any references on the internet since. It was a bit comical sorting out rooms, the poor guy was so tired. First we asked if he had any spare rooms,. he had,.. then we asked if we could see one,. we could,. we ended up getting a tour of the guesthouse and he opened all of the 10 rooms - including a new part of the hostel where the roof hadn't been built yet,. the cheap rooms with a view of the stars. There was no one staying here! The whole place was empty. This ended up being my favourite guest house I stayed at,.The hostel was less than a month old when I stayed there and the owner's were really friendly. We were talking about collecting different currencies from different countries as souvenirs, and the following day they went to the bank and got some rare 1 and 5 kyat notes for us.

Hsipaw was cool, and I enjoyed my time here,. it was more about the people I was with than the sites though. I travelled with the Catalonian couple who I met on the trek,. and an Aussie couple. We visited the local hot springs and wandered around town. In the afternoon we went to the bakery we had walked past from the bus but they were just closing. We were told you could get tea and cakes there and we were really up for that for some reason. We found another place that sold cakes but it didn't have any tea or anywhere to sit. We chatted and joked with the owner's for a bit about how we really wanted to sit down and have tea and cakes,. and the guy next door brought out a wee table and some chairs for us to sit on. They made us some tea and we ordered loads of cakes. Sounds really lame but it was so much fun!! We brought a lot of customers to the shop cos we looked so strange - so everyone won in the end.

The next morning we took the train to Pyin Oo Lwim. The aussie chap was sick for most of the journey and by this point everyone in the group had now had the same bug that I'd had. It was a running joke that we kept passing it to each other, so I was due for another bout soon. We loaded up on snacks for the train journey, which wasn't very far but it was sooo long,. the train moved at a snail's pace and it was incredibly bumpy, you felt it might come off the rails at any moment. The highlight of the trip was going over the Gokteik viaduct, which is the tallest bridge in Burma,. built in 1901 by the British it was the world's tallest railway trestle at the time. It's pretty scary going over it,. I was right by the door hanging out with my camera round my neck and holding tightly onto a handrail.