After a few days on Yangon, we discovered that continuing to binge on the spectacular street food would permanently damage our waistlines, so we decided to head north. Initially, our plan had been to travel north to Mandalay, and then continue east to the Tachilek border crossing, where we wanted to enter Thailand. Sealed off for decades, this border crossing has just become possibly for tourists recently, and it seemed to fit our travel plans. After talking to the Myanmar Tourist and Travel center, short MTT, which is run by the government and is the only reliable source to tell you where you can and cannot go as a tourist, we discovered a slight inconvenience in our plan: While it was indeed possible to cross into Thailand at that point, getting to that crossing by land was not. Apparently, some part of the stretch between Mandalay and Tachilek was normally off-limits to tourists, and a special permit was needed. The cost for this permit was to be USD 50 per person, and included a waiting period of “approximately 10 days”, after which it would – or would not – be granted. We decided against that, and also scratched the only remaining option, which was to take a domestic flight from Mandalay to Tachilek, and then cross there: We could literally just fly into Thailand for a lot less, so that would have been kind of pointless.

So there we were, a bit reluctant to do what apparently all tourists to: Take a bus to Mandalay, look around, take a bus to Bagan, look around, and take a bus back to Yangon. But what to do, if there is not really much information to be found on other places to visit up north? Luckily for us, we met Jonathan, as already written in our post on Yangon. Jonathan helped out in an orphanage in a somewhat smaller town 65km north east of Mandalay, and was head over heels in love with that place. He practically forced us to go there, which we gladly did.

Welcome to Pyin Oo Lwin. Situated elevated at 1100 meters above sea level, this little paradise presents a quite different picture than downtown Yangon. For starters, it’s one of the most appealing climates we’ve found so far on our trip, even though it caught us off guard: Upon arriving in an (very comfortable and clean) overnight bus from Yangon at (you guessed it) 5 AM, we shortly felt like back in Switzerland for a second. It was somewhere in between 10 and 15 degrees, with all locals walking around in jackets and fur coats! We felt quite stiff after the 10 minute rickshaw ride to our hotel, and were happy to discover they let us check in 9 hours ahead of the regular time.

The first thing we realized was how enormous our room was. Myanmar is comparably expensive when it comes to accommodation, but this was the best invested USD 35 we’d had so far. Large rooms, 4-meter high ceilings, wood floor and even a chimney! We immediately loved the style, somewhere in between an old southern US mansion and a rustic mountain home. (As we discovered later on, the now-called Orchid Nan Myaing Hotel used to be the army hospital in the old days, which explained the lavish use of space and materials, given the fact that in Myanmar the army is powerful as it gets).

Yep, we’d take it.

When we woke up after another short nap, we set out to discover the place, which consists of a loose collection of large, white, mansion-style homes spread across a large patch of land, with neat little streets connecting them and iron gates sealing of the property on both ends. There is a lot of grass, tall trees and beautiful flowers all around, which seems to be constantly taking care of by a small army of gardeners. We really liked the place, and spent a considerable amount of time strolling around (blue skies and about 28 degrees every day) and spinning thoughts of how we’d redo and use the place for a vacation retreat for our friends and ourselves.

Not only did Jonathan point us to this little paradise, he also hooked us up with a very interesting young man by the name of Saigon. As it turned out, Saigon’s family owned a small chain of restaurants called “Woodland”, the main one of which just happened to be the top rated restaurant in town on TripAdvisor. The ratings proved true: We enjoyed some outstanding food and very good coffee and smoothies there, while having great talks with the young owner. Woodland became our second home base, from where Saigon went out of his way to show us the treasures of the place. He spent hours driving us around, pointing us in the right direction, and answering any questions we had about the town or even Myanmar in general. Not only was he a great conversation partner with an astonishing business-mindset for a man almost 10 years younger than myself, he’s also a very talented (and purely self-taught) photographer. Whether on a midnight trip to shoot star trails or an excursion to a picturesque waterfall: His eye and interest for nice pictures made sure we saw some of the nicest sceneries around.

The Botanic Gardens – what a place!

I think it’s safe to say that Pyin Oo Lwin made us a bit homesick – and that was probably the reason we loved it so much: Very comfortable climate, paired with year-round flower blossom, some of the friendliest people we’ve met anywhere, great food and the kind of small town feeling we both grew up in proved to be just the thing to make us feel right at home.