Goodbye Thailand...HELLO MYANMAR!!

So I’ve made it to Myanmar, and boy was it an adventure!!

Thursday night I headed to the train station for my overnight to the city. As Julie and I had dinner beside the station, I headed to 711 to make some change. As I was gone, Julie saw a train leave, but thought nothing of it. When I came out, we still had about 10 minutes to go before my train left…so we check bin cha’d and walked over to the station. MY TRAIN WAS GONE! We were there at 8:40pm, and the train wasn’t supposed to leave until 8:41pm. Yup, it left early – without me. WHAT IN THAILAND LEAVES ON TIME – LET ALONE EARLY?!??!! AHHHHH. So I tried to get on the next train, and all were booked. Then Julie took me to the bus station, with the same result – all full. We tried taxis, minivans, etc. to get me to Bangkok. No such luck. So we went to Francis’ house booked a flight for the morning. That means I was out of a train ticket, then paid a TON more for a flight, then had to pay a tuk tuk in the AM to take me to the airport, and then pay baggage fees. That equals not only a lot of baht, but a lot of USD as well!!! Anyways. After all that – I MADE IT TO BANGKOK! Then in BKK on my wait to get on the Myanmar flight, I ran into Brian who taught at my school (he was leaving to go home to the states) and we hung out during our “layovers”. I also headed to the bank to withdraw some baht to transfer, and he was nice enough to watch my bags. Once back – it was time to check in and head to my plane. On the way, I ran into Ashlee (from my TESOL course) who was heading back to New Zealand.  Once we got through customs, she came to my gate and we said our goodbyes (for now).

Last photo with my Kiwi!!

I boarded the plane – and about an hour later, I landed in a new land….MYANMAR (Burma)!!! The school met us at the airport, and we all loaded into the vans and headed to our first stop – DINNER! We ate at an amazing restaurant called Phai Lin – and it was a fancy Thai restaurant. Of course, us from Thailand were happy, but we had wanted to try some Burmese food before we were let out on our own! 

After dinner and conversation with everyone (I met an ADPi) we headed to our accomodations.  I was to stay in female house on campus with 5 other women. There is also a men’s house on campus, and then the rest would be staying in a hotel closer to their campus.

First view of my new land!!

Whelp…first night, and I made it safely!!

Minglabar!

Apes :)