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A TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow of a travel blog to Yangon, Golden Rock and Inle, Burma, Myanmar by TravelPod blogger Grahamandrach titled “Burmese Days”. TravelPod is a company of TripAdvisor™. Grahamandrach’s travel blog entry: “Factoid of the day: The Shwedagon Pagoda is topped with 5448 diamonds and 2317 Rubies Abstract: Having finally got to Bangkok airport after two and a half hours on the bus, we flew into Yangon (Rangoon) and shared a taxi into the city with a Spanish couple, after trailing round five or six hotels only to find them full we settled on a place next to Sule Pagoda. After a day or two wandering around the city and the studendous Shwedagon pagoda and enjoying Indian Thalis and biriyanis we settled on a driver and car for our trip round the country. Headed off to golden rock via a war cemetary, and climbed up the holy mountain to watch sunset, climbed down in the dark. Spent two nights in Taungoo, an old colonial town then moved on to Kalaw for some walking in the hills. Next we visited Inle Lake (home of leg rowers). Nitty Gritty: From the moment we set foot in Myanmar it was like stepping into a time warp. Even the capital has few cars and no motorbikes, lots of cyclists, but not the vast numbers of China. The 1950′s buses left by the British still predominate in the city, and although they are just as cramped as those in Laos, if not worse, once you get the hang of the curious rounded script alphabet (well numbers at least) they are a very cheap …
A TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow of a travel blog to Cesis, Latvia by TravelPod blogger Lyndshane titled “Uh, we’re not in Kansas anymore”. TravelPod is a company of TripAdvisor™. Lyndshane’s travel blog entry: “On the advice of a native Latvian we met in Istanbul, and backed by our trusty Lonely Planet, we headed for Cesis, Latvia from Riga. Situated in the country’s north-eastern Gauja National Park, Cesis is dubbed the ‘most Latvian of Latvian towns’, largely evading Russification and preserving its old world charm. Our walk from the train station through town en route to our hotel proved the description was no lie as we found ourselves surrounded by aged wooden buildings and medieval stoned streets. Sounds similar to what we’ve seen so far, we know… but trust us, Cesis was very different. No town can truly be appreciated or examined with a couple of 15kg+ bags on one’s back so our first task, as per usual, was to find our accommodation. On the map, our stop wasn’t far from the train station, perhaps only about a kilometre or two. Once we were out of the main town centre however, things were looking less ‘usual’. First, we encountered EU dollars hard at work in the form of major road construction and we soon found ourselves hiking over dirt mounds and dodging backhoes. Once out of the construction zone it appeared we were also exiting another zone — the town. Seems our hotel was actually in the country. After an incredibly long (really only because of the packs) and …
