Travel diary 1.1

I reached ard 11.00 am to Yangon. My Dad, my brother,  his wife and my above-one-year-old neice came to get me at the airport. I had lunch at my house and I called my poly friends to confirm time and place to meet up for my Hpa Ann trip. After that I went out to visit one of my childhood friends' house. We went out again from his house to drink beer. I was feeling unsatisfied to see him doing anything for living. Last time he worked as a waiter in Malaysia. After came back from Malaysia, he does not have any full time job. His life is kind of suck too so I do not want to put a blame on him apart from feeling not very satisfied. His dad was an alcoholic and passed away for like 5 years ago. He got 2 big brothers and one of them also passed away because of alcohol. He got 2 younger brothers also and one of them is quite good in academic and now attending at a local university and the other is doing nothing like him I guess. While we were drinking beer, we talked about doing a small business like opening a tea shop or internet cafe in our district. Actually I am quite interested to open a shop for my brother but he is not really into it. My friend was talking about how he can find people to hire and a place to rent for the shop. He is seemed quite eager but there are lots to think about before I cab finally decide to do it or not. So I just keep it quiet and ask him not to do anything concerned with it and we see how after I come back from London. I reached ard 6.30 pm at the highway bus station and collected the bus tickets to Hpa Ann and one of my friends reached there soon afterwards. We went to nearby Indian Bariyani shop and I ordered Bariyani and he had yogurt. Mine was not tasty and I could eat finished half portion only. I asked about what he has been doing in Myanmar. Last time he studied in poly and worked in Singapore and stayed in my house. It has been about two years that he left Singapore to work in Myanmar. I have learned that he quitted his last job which was at one of the famous banks in Myanmar after he suspected that his supervisor was involving in a big fraud. He was there for only six months. That fraud was emerged as a very high profile case and almost all media in Myanmar highlighted about its news. Luckily he was not involved. But he is seemed to be quite happy with his current NGO. They are selling some agricultural equipments to farmers and giving advices and doing micro finance. The famous bank that he worked at also got micro finance division and it got backed by foreign aid funds to promote and enhance the agricultural industry in Myanmar. But I felt like they are not doing their purpose and instead they got teamed up with local rich people and playing the price of rice to gain more profits or more advantage over farmers. It is just my feeling and I do not know exactly about the nature of their job. But I can see that farmers lives are definitely not improved much compared to the last decade. The other poly friend arrived after we ate and our bus left ard 8.45pm. It stopped at Kyite Hto town which is the capital town of Mon state ard 1 am. I ate some Myanmar glass noodle chicken soup and it was not good either. One of my friends suggested beer and we ordered two bottles and shared. The beer taste was awful and kind of sour. But that was okay. We all drunk finished and I noticed that only few people were drinking beer at this hour. When I got back on the bus, I started the conversation with a girl who sat next to me. It turned out that she was born in Hpa Ann and she stay all her life in Hpa Ann. She said we will be reaching ard 3.30am and our hotel is on the outskirts of the town and we need to alight before the bus goes into town. I asked about climbing Mount Zwe-Ka-Pin and she took about three hours to reach at the peak. Actually I like to start climbing ard 4am and try to catch the sunrise.  I talked about it and she said people normally start 7.00am. Some more I realised that my friends were working just before starting the trip and we all did not have enough sleep. So we decided to sleep for a few hours.  We did reached our hotel ard 3.30am. Unluckily it was booked only for 2nd & 3rd March and check in time is 12 noon. We talked through the boy at the reception and did early check in by paying extra money which is half of one night charge. We slept for about two hours, took shower and had breakfast at the hotel. We left the hotel to start climbing ard 8.15am. We do not know where its base and asked one of the waiters and he said it is only 30 minutes walk from the hotel. We walked about 15 minutes and asked one of the local women found on the road for direction and she said it was still far away. We decided to take a bike taxi to the base. Me and one friend took one bike and the other took another. It was a bit uncomfortable to ride a bike with three people including the driver. I do not mind though. We still have to ride bikes for about another 15 minutes to reach at the base. We talked about caves that we like to visit after hiking and arranged the two bike drivers to come back and pick us up at the base. One of them gave his no to call after we have reached back to the base and ready to head out to caves. We started hiking right after. We talked along the way and paused for many short breaks. Around 12.30 we reached at the top. It was amazing at the top. The name of the mount got Zwe which means effort to accomplish something in Myanmar. People said some sayings like, if you do have Zwe, there is nothing that you cannot accomplish in this world. We all felt awesome and hungry. There is a golden pagoda, two or three buildings and a small vegetarian restaurant inside one of the buildings. We had our lunch there and it was a good lunch. If we bring sleeping bags, we can sleep at night after enjoy sunset and wake up to catch the sunrise in the next day morning also. I bet it would be awesome. But we did not have much time and there is so much to see in Hpa Ann. But I remind myself always to enjoy at one place instead of having been to all places by the rush. The idea was all agreed by three of us. We take our time and enjoy going as many as we can during our stay here. We started downhills ard 1.45pm. It was pretty hot. One of my friends' slippers got the strap loosened when we were almost reaching at the base. Luckily we can buy new slippers at one of the shops at the base. I called the driver to come and pick us up. We drunk sugarcane juice and cooled down the heat while waiting for the bikes. We had to wait about 30 minutes. There are five famous limestone caves in the area and Saddan cave is the most popular one and we decided to go to that one first. It takes about 45 minutes and by the time we reached there was around 4.30pm already. It is quite a big cave and we walked until the other end where there is another opening and connected with small lakes which were formed by farmers using dam water for irrigation of paddy fields. There are many small mountains and lakes and paddy fields in the surroundings. We took a small rowing boat to reach back to the entrance, crossing through green and golden paddy fields in a very small and narrow irrigation canal. We did not have time for visiting one more cave so we decided to go to one of the good restaurants in town. They were quite hungry and advised us to take vegetarian dinner at Kyaut Ka Lat Pagoda which is a pagoda founded on a very small and low rock mountain which in turn located facing the mount Zwe-Ka-Pin. We decided to see and shop a little around there while they are having dinner. We liked to eat some meat with beer and we were not that hungry yet. That was okay for us. There was not much to see but the view of mount Zwe-Ka-Pin made us all realised and amazed by how much we have climbed in the morning. The sun was soon to be setting while we were riding back into town. But i do not see any good viewpoint since small mountains are blocking here and there. I bet if we see at the top of mount Zwe-Ka-Pin, we will have a clear viewing of the sunset. They dropped us at one of the TripAdvisor famous Chinese restaurants. It was very delicious and beer was also good. After dinner, We bought return bus tickets to Yangon nearby the clock tower which is almost at the centre of the town. We took a motor tricycles back to hotel and the driver showed us the general hospital and the playground along the way by taking city main roads.