Friday 25 September - Hong Kong - Bangkok - Yangon
We had arranged for Mr Kwok to pick us up at 0530 - but we left late due to the needs of one of our parties tilted needs. Mr Kwok put his foot down and we arrived at Terminal 2 with time to spare planning for a coffee but how wrong we were !
As we checked in at the Thai Airways desk the seemed to be a problem over Joy’s paperwork - the eagle eyed Check in assistant has spotted and error in the Myanmar visa form with a day’s difference in the expiry date of her passport. Aftre consulting his supervisor and signing away any liability on the part of the airline to get her home after deportation we managed to get a boarding pass.
Next stop security - here Joy’s voluminous handbag was a problem. After 3 passes through the x ray machine they turfed the contents into a pile and identified a pile of house keys and car keys !! You might ask why these keys needed to build their own air miles account - but only Joy can answer that.
With the smell of coffee in the air the next stop was Immigration, only to find that she had let the departure card in the flat. So back to the desk and filling out a new form.
Fortunately by this time boarding was about to commence not before Stuart had to go for another wee wee - we leftt him with his own boarding card.
The flight itself was simple and our couple of hours in Bangkok passed without incident.
On arrival in Yangon the Immigration Office barely looked at the form and Joy sailed on through to be met by Pete and his 9 seater minibus to take us to the Shangri-La in Yangon.
After a quick fresh up we headed on quick tour of Yangon. Our first stop was the XXX pagoda and the 6 hairs of Bhudda. The interesting thing was that we could go inside the pagoda. Interestingly there are 8 corners each representing the days of the Myanmar week - Wednesday has a morning and afternoon. It seems that Myanmar names do not use family names but the day on which you were born gives a letter and then chose a name beginning with that. SpPete was born on a Thursday as are all other Petula, Patricks and the Phillips !!
From there we took a foot tour of old Yangon starting with The Strand - the Strand hotel, the British Embassy and the Customs House. From there we headed to Little India and Chinatown with street stalls and little restaurants along the very wide road.
Back to the hotel a quick visit to the bar and cocktails.
Stuart searched the internet and there we found the Monsoon Restaurant - which we thought we had eaten at 5 or so years ago - and it was. The only hassle was the taxi driver who leaned 4000 Kyats for a 1 km drive. But we got our revenge by only 2500 on the way back
We had arranged for Mr Kwok to pick us up at 0530 - but we left late due to the needs of one of our parties tilted needs. Mr Kwok put his foot down and we arrived at Terminal 2 with time to spare planning for a coffee but how wrong we were !
As we checked in at the Thai Airways desk the seemed to be a problem over Joy’s paperwork - the eagle eyed Check in assistant has spotted and error in the Myanmar visa form with a day’s difference in the expiry date of her passport. Aftre consulting his supervisor and signing away any liability on the part of the airline to get her home after deportation we managed to get a boarding pass.
Next stop security - here Joy’s voluminous handbag was a problem. After 3 passes through the x ray machine they turfed the contents into a pile and identified a pile of house keys and car keys !! You might ask why these keys needed to build their own air miles account - but only Joy can answer that.
With the smell of coffee in the air the next stop was Immigration, only to find that she had let the departure card in the flat. So back to the desk and filling out a new form.
Fortunately by this time boarding was about to commence not before Stuart had to go for another wee wee - we leftt him with his own boarding card.
The flight itself was simple and our couple of hours in Bangkok passed without incident.
On arrival in Yangon the Immigration Office barely looked at the form and Joy sailed on through to be met by Pete and his 9 seater minibus to take us to the Shangri-La in Yangon.
After a quick fresh up we headed on quick tour of Yangon. Our first stop was the XXX pagoda and the 6 hairs of Bhudda. The interesting thing was that we could go inside the pagoda. Interestingly there are 8 corners each representing the days of the Myanmar week - Wednesday has a morning and afternoon. It seems that Myanmar names do not use family names but the day on which you were born gives a letter and then chose a name beginning with that. SpPete was born on a Thursday as are all other Petula, Patricks and the Phillips !!
From there we took a foot tour of old Yangon starting with The Strand - the Strand hotel, the British Embassy and the Customs House. From there we headed to Little India and Chinatown with street stalls and little restaurants along the very wide road.
Back to the hotel a quick visit to the bar and cocktails.
Stuart searched the internet and there we found the Monsoon Restaurant - which we thought we had eaten at 5 or so years ago - and it was. The only hassle was the taxi driver who leaned 4000 Kyats for a 1 km drive. But we got our revenge by only 2500 on the way back