Pyinmana and Toungoo, again
$70 lighter
My wish had been to zip south of Mandalay itself, instead of cycling, as I suspected the road going away from the big city would be drab and straight, and likely busy.
The only option is a bus, which leaves at dawn, so a taxi takes me and my bike out to the station on the edge of town very early and I have breakfast while waiting 40 minutes for the one heading south to Pyinmana, a place about 320 km (200 miles) north of Yangon.
The bus journey goes OK and I arrive in the afternoon, but soon get disorientated, so give a boy on a bike some cash to lead me to a guesthouse. None will accept a foreigner. This place seems to be off-limits and we ride and ride until it's dark, and I eventually decide to head out to the bus station to get further south.
The problem is there are no buses now. It's too late in the day, so I pedal back into the center, choking on exhuast fumes, where a police officer informs me that this town is actually off limits to tourists and tells me there's a government hotel not far away - I guess in the bizarre new Burmese capital of Nay Pyi Taw.
I don't want to patronize the place and start negotiations with a local wide boy about getting a lift in a car about 100 km down to Taungoo, finally agreeing on US$70. That's spending. It's almost midnight when I arrive, pulling into the hotel where I stayed a couple of weeks before, on my way north.
After the epic day on the road getting from Mandalay to Toungoo, I opt to spend two nights here, simply chilling out. This gives me a bit of time to explore the one-street town, once also basically off-limits to foreigners.
During my ride-about I venture over the river's steel bridge, past check points and some armed military, heading east, aiming to take some photos of the expanse of water and whatever else there is.
A plain-clothes security guy soon chases me down on a motorbike, chastizing me for venturing down this riverside lane and instructing me in no uncertain terms to return to my hotel, and to stay there.
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