Pyin Oo Lwin

Pyin Oo Lwin is a small town in the Shan Highlands, a few hours from Mandalay. During colonial rule, the British made the town their summer capital, where (at 1000m above sea level) they would escape the sweltering heat of Rangoon. They set up several large military academies and bought in soldiers from the British Indian Army. There remains a large Indian population here to this day, which made for a great chance to enjoy good Indian food.

The military junta continued using Pyin Oo Lwin as a military training centre, and the country’s largest and most prestigious military academy is based here. For the first time in Myanmar we were seeing soldiers and officers of the Tatmadaw (Burmese military) everywhere. It was a strange feeling – almost all of the Karen students we taught had stories of the Tatmadaw burning down their villages and causing them to flee.

One quintessentially British legacy in the town is its botanic gardens. We really enjoyed a walk through the peaceful gardens (the perfect antidote to dusty roads full of traffic). There’s also a nice waterfall just out of town that we went to see.

Like a lot of the towns we’ve seen in Myanmar, Pyin Oo Lwin was nice enough but it did not wow us. Actually, it’s fair to say that our whole visit to Myanmar hasn’t been quite what we expected. There is a lot of hype around visiting Myanmar at the moment. Because of this, we had very high expectations of our visit. It is true that the country is relatively “untouched” by tourism and that the people here are really friendly. Whenever we needed help, people would do everything to try and help us. Kids and adults alike call out greetings to you in the street, and once a man even carried a chair over to us when we standing waiting for a bus. It also felt great to be able to trust people, without the same risk of being scammed as in some countries.

On the other hand, we sometimes wished there were a few more things to see and do. A lot of the country, including many of the beautiful mountain regions, are still off-limits to tourists because of conflicts with ethnic groups. While a lack of tourism is nice, it also makes for limited attractions and activities. We have been on the road for a while now, so we don’t always feel content just people-watching and wandering the streets. At the moment it’s also relatively expensive to travel in Myanmar - we often paid around US$20-30 for fairly dismal rooms!

In Bagan we got a free upgrade to the “premium room” (US$45/night)

We got on the road to Mandalay, headed for our last stop in Myanmar. Tune in next post for deep fried sparrow and a discussion on “fake monks”.

Our luggage didn’t fit, so we took the bus.

Written by Craig Drayton and Sally Robertson