Burma by Bicycle

How does one take decent group selfies on a Go Pro while biking?

December 25, 2014 - January 12, 2015. Pen, Levi, LA and I traveled to Myanmar on our bikes and completed a 17-day bike tour around the country. This trip takes place in two phases. Phase One of the trip started from Yangon then made our way to Bagan. Phase Two was more spontaneous, where we took the bus from Bagan to Kalaw, and rode our bikes from there to Inle Lake/Nyaung Shwe town.

Let’s get a few things out of the way. 

Why Myanmar?

Why not? It seemed like the most obvious destination after we did our Vietnam-Cambodia-Thailand bike ride last year. Cebu Pacific and Air Asia had cheap flights to Yangon from Manila. Also Myanmar recently started opening itself to tourists. And we could not get enough of temples, it seems.

And Bagan. 

How many days did we stay?

We stayed for a total of 17 days. Note for Southeast Asian travelers: no visa is required to travel Myanmar (thank you Myanmar for finally being part of the ASEAN!), but apparently there’s a two week period of travel within the country. For every day that you extend, you need to pay 3USD. The 3USD is worth it as two weeks is never enough to visit an entire country!

Another tip: you pay your extension fee at the immigration office at Yangon International Airport. Show up early. Apparently, a lot of foreigners overextend their stay and the line can get quite long, as there are some forms to be filled up. 

What was our daily mileage?

Except for the first and third day of riding, where we did just a little over a hundred kilometers, we were averaging 50-80 kilometers a day. We rode a total of 9 riding days, covering about 713 kilometers. 

Day 0: Yangon

Day 1: Yangon to Okekan: 107 kilometers

Day 2: Okekan to Gyobingauk 90kms

Day 3: Gyobingauk to Pyay 90 kms

Pyay (3 days rest)

Day 4: Pyay to Aunglan: 70kms. GTK Hotel

Day 5: Aunglan to Koebin: 50kms

Day 6: Kobin to Magway: 80kms

Day 7: Magway to Salin: 76kms

Day 8: Salin to Bagan:  90 kms

Bagan (3 days rest)

Bagan - Kalaw (bus)

Day 9: Kalaw to Inle Lake (Nyaung Shwe town) 60kms

Inle Lake to Yangon (bus)

Where did we sleep?

Guesthouses. Foreigner-accredited ones. Small towns en route to bigger/touristy towns have limited options for foreigners. Magway, a relatively large town for instance, only had one foreigner-accredited guest house, which charged 15USD/person. For 5USD more, you can check in at a pretty decent hotel. Bigger towns and touristy areas (such as Yangon, Bagan and Inle Lake) offer a wide variety of accommodations for all sorts of travelers. 

Highlights of our accommodations included a 3USD room in Salin, which had cubicle partitions for walls. There literally was only room for a single bed, a wall fan and a tiny desk for your bags. 

If you're paying 3USD for a room, you kind of get what you pay for.

In the tiny town of Koebin, we pondered our options during out post-meal ride at the town's main restaurant, coincidentally the largest and only major establishment in town. As we ate, we thought we could either convince the restaurant owner to let us stay the night or find a monastery instead. We went to the police to help us with our predicament (another interesting story, but for another time), and eventually ended up sleeping on the kitchen floor! The night was smoky from the wood fire stoves and we slept beside sacks of rice, onions, cabbage and other produce. It was freezing, there was always constant restaurant noise and there were rats scurrying around, but I suppose the novelty of it all rewarded me with my best night of sleep.

What bikes did we bring? How did we carry them?

We had a Surly Ogre, a Surly Troll, an old GTS mountain bike and an On One hardtail mountain bike. Except for the Levi’s built Ogre, the other bikes were a mishmash of parts and upgrades that we’ve done to our bikes. Pen’s was the lightest bike at 12kgs. LA and I had the privilege of using Selle Anatomica saddles, which were blessings for our butts. No saddle sores anywhere! Levi was the only one who used the panniers while Pen, LA and I all used Larga handlebar and saddle packs.

Surly Troll: stronger than the rider.

Levi on panniers was a godsend. There was always space on his rack for fresh fruits!

We refused to place our bikes in bags or boxes last year and relied on unclear Cebu Pacific policies to let us roll in our bikes. We were mostly successful, but it was too much of a hassle. This year, Levi gave us these bike bags, which were essentially stuff sacks for bikes and did the job well of transporting our bikes through Bangkok’s, Yangon’s and Manila’s airports. The outer is made of a thin but tough outer nylon layer and can be prone to ripping. So make sure you’ve wrapped all the sharp/delicate items on your bike!

You could never tell we had bikes inside our Christmas-themed bags

How many sets of clothes did we bring?

Our rule is usually to bring 3 sets of riding clothes, one set of sleepwear, one set of cold and rain weather gear, and one set walking-around-town gear. For some reason, doing laundry turned into a daily priority and we never had to use the third set of riding clothes. 

What was our budget?

1,000 kyat = approximately 1USD. Because of the foreigner accreditation needed for the guesthouses, rooms here were more expensive than guesthouses in Cambodia or Vietnam. Expect each night to set you back 10-15USD.

Meals are relatively cheap on roadside eateries were about 1300-1500 kyats. We did end up spending 5,000-6,000 kyats per meal once we got to Bagan. It was necessary to reward ourselves with good food, so we ate in fairly decent restaurants.

A can of Myanmar beer costs 1000 kyat, while the dark, stout ABC beer (my personal preference) is about 1500kyats.

I love Southeast Asia and the nationalistic beer!

Burmese staples: rice/noodles, fresh vegetables and your meat drenched in CHILI.

A note about bringing USD: make sure your bills are crisp and are unmarked. Several banks and guesthouses rejected our dollars because of tiny folds or pen marks.

What are the roads like?

The first few days on the highway were a sort of acclimatization period for us. Buses on the highway travel extremely extremely fast and have no regard for anything else that is slower than them. Vehicles honk incessantly, whether to inform you of their presence or to warn you to get out of the way, I’m not too sure. Highways are 1.5 big trucks wide, so overtaking happens quite regularly and we would slide over to the shoulder to avoid being swiped by vehicles. The farther we moved from Yangon, however, the calmer the roads became because of less people and less vehicles on the road.

No vehicular traffic meant goat traffic instead.

There were only a few unpaved sections, never more than a hundred meters long, while the rest of the highway was paved. 

Would we do this again?

The more we rode, the more of Myanmar there is to see. Apparently being on the road for two weeks will never be enough to see the entire country.