KL to Mandalay
10 October, Tune Hotel, KLIA 2 Airport
We often miss the mundane in our blogs and regret years later that we didn't record some of the everyday aspects of our trips. Our stays in the Tune Hotel in Kuala Lumpur and our now regular flights from Coolangatta to KL definitelyBy fall into this category.
Kuala Lumpur has become a real travel hub for us over the past few years. Of late, our modus operandi has been - see cheap flight to KL, book it, then decide where to go from there. This trip and our previous one to Southern China happened this way. Coolangatta is not the flashest of Australia's International Airports, but it is serviced by an increasing number of budget airlines like AirAsia and Jetstar. We even noticed a Hong Kong Airlines plane on the tarmac this morning.
AirAsia's specials to KL range from AUD99 to AUD199. Their on-flights to other Asian cities are in the same range, although we once got a flight from KL to Ho Chi Minh for $27! We usually pay for extra legroom seats, or use a site called OptionTown, which charges around $8 for a chance to grab a spare seat in a three seat row. If you miss out, you get a refund. We have never missed!
With time not an issue for us retirees, we choose to stopover in KL before our next leg. We use two options here. Increasingly, our favourite is the Tune Hotel at KLIA 2. The Tune is within easy walking distance from the terminal and reasonably priced. It is clean, the staff are pleasant and the rooms are a good 3 🌟 standard. We also use the Sentral Hotel, directly over the road from the Sentral Station in KL. There is a bus from the Airport to Sentral Station for around $4 for the hour-long journey; for a faster trip, there is the KLIA Express train for about $14. On our latest visit to the Sentral, we were thrilled to see that a Domino's Pizza had opened across the road. We aren't big consumers of pizza, but after a month of eating out in Asian restaurants, it is just too tempting.
The Tune now has a bar and cafe, as opposed to the 7 Eleven where we used to buy our beer. It is reasonably priced as well and there is a good selection of snack/cafe foods on the menu. We are about to head off there for dinner. We have an outrageously early flight to Mandalay via Bangkok tomorrow. 6:40am! Lucky we are just across the road!
11 October, Yadanarbon Hotel, Mandalay
Our day started at 3:30 am! We had gone to bed early to prepare ourselves for the early start, but we both woke early and decided to head over to the airport early. We weren't the only ones! The terminal was quite busy. All was fine on our first leg, the plane was on time and, reassuringly, the captain was Australian. We even hit the Don Mueang airport in Bangkok early. Don Mueang is a low cost terminal like KLIA 2. It was very busy and, to make matters worse, our plane to Mandalay was delayed almost an hour, stretching our stopover to close to four hours. These delays are not as common on AirAsia as people might have you believe. Around 80% to 90% of our flights have been on time over our years of flying with them.
Mandalay has a nice new small terminal and we were through Immigration in a few minutes. Australians need visas for Myanmar, but we had done an eVisa online and it was an easy process, even if it was a little pricey at US$50. Next job was changing our specially selected, pristine US$s to Kyats. We had been down this road before and so were well-prepared for the surgical examination of our notes. A girl at the counter beside us was not so lucky with most of her rather large stash of dollars failing to meet the rigid standards of the Myanmar Banking system.
Mandalay airport is about 25kms out of the city and there is no bus service. The taxi price is regulated. 4000 kyat per person in a share taxi and 15000 for a three person private taxi. We selected the private option, but we picked up a stray Irishman on the way to the taxi park and had a bit of a hassle with the driver over his joining us. As is the Asian way, everybody within hearing wanted to offer advice and join in the debate. All to no avail. We stood our ground and good sense prevailed.
We stayed in the Yadanarbon hotel on our last trip. It is comfortable and at around $66 including breakfast, it is in the mid range for hotels in Myanmar, which are often significantly more expensive than in other South-East Asian countries. It is in a dusty old back street which has a real “old Asia” feel to it.
Our only task for the afternoon was to find the train station to buy the tickets for our next leg, to the small village of Thazi. Easily done as it turned out. Well, finding the station was easy enough, but purchasing the tickets presented us with a couple of simple challenges. All signage was in Burmese script, which looks a little like Thai that has been through the spin cycle of a high speed washing machine. Seems there are special windows for specific trains and we weren't too sure, but there may even be special windows for booking specific days. All was fairly easily resolved as everybody in sight leapt to our assistance and directed us to the correct window where an extremely helpful man hand-wrote our tickets as he lavished praise on Australia because he had seen something on TV about it. Or that is what we made of his comments. Price for the two hour trip on the special Express Train, in “Upper Class” seats - AUD2 each.
Mandalay still has some of its “rawness”. The back streets are still dusty and the stray dogs still lounge under the trees that struggle through the bitumen, where there is some. Almost everybody still wears traditional dress, the women still paint their faces with Thanakha and the men still chew betel nut and spit the residue on the street, but there is now at least one set of traffic lights and cars and motorbikes actually stop at them!
In our experience, Myanmar is one of the few South-East Asian countries where enough original culture and tradition has been preserved for travellers to gain some understanding of a world that is rapidly disappearing. We are looking forward to our train trip through rural Myanmar in a couple of days' time when we hope to get a little closer to the real character of Myanmar.
We often miss the mundane in our blogs and regret years later that we didn't record some of the everyday aspects of our trips. Our stays in the Tune Hotel in Kuala Lumpur and our now regular flights from Coolangatta to KL definitelyBy fall into this category.
Kuala Lumpur has become a real travel hub for us over the past few years. Of late, our modus operandi has been - see cheap flight to KL, book it, then decide where to go from there. This trip and our previous one to Southern China happened this way. Coolangatta is not the flashest of Australia's International Airports, but it is serviced by an increasing number of budget airlines like AirAsia and Jetstar. We even noticed a Hong Kong Airlines plane on the tarmac this morning.
AirAsia's specials to KL range from AUD99 to AUD199. Their on-flights to other Asian cities are in the same range, although we once got a flight from KL to Ho Chi Minh for $27! We usually pay for extra legroom seats, or use a site called OptionTown, which charges around $8 for a chance to grab a spare seat in a three seat row. If you miss out, you get a refund. We have never missed!
With time not an issue for us retirees, we choose to stopover in KL before our next leg. We use two options here. Increasingly, our favourite is the Tune Hotel at KLIA 2. The Tune is within easy walking distance from the terminal and reasonably priced. It is clean, the staff are pleasant and the rooms are a good 3 🌟 standard. We also use the Sentral Hotel, directly over the road from the Sentral Station in KL. There is a bus from the Airport to Sentral Station for around $4 for the hour-long journey; for a faster trip, there is the KLIA Express train for about $14. On our latest visit to the Sentral, we were thrilled to see that a Domino's Pizza had opened across the road. We aren't big consumers of pizza, but after a month of eating out in Asian restaurants, it is just too tempting.
The Tune now has a bar and cafe, as opposed to the 7 Eleven where we used to buy our beer. It is reasonably priced as well and there is a good selection of snack/cafe foods on the menu. We are about to head off there for dinner. We have an outrageously early flight to Mandalay via Bangkok tomorrow. 6:40am! Lucky we are just across the road!
11 October, Yadanarbon Hotel, Mandalay
Our day started at 3:30 am! We had gone to bed early to prepare ourselves for the early start, but we both woke early and decided to head over to the airport early. We weren't the only ones! The terminal was quite busy. All was fine on our first leg, the plane was on time and, reassuringly, the captain was Australian. We even hit the Don Mueang airport in Bangkok early. Don Mueang is a low cost terminal like KLIA 2. It was very busy and, to make matters worse, our plane to Mandalay was delayed almost an hour, stretching our stopover to close to four hours. These delays are not as common on AirAsia as people might have you believe. Around 80% to 90% of our flights have been on time over our years of flying with them.
Mandalay has a nice new small terminal and we were through Immigration in a few minutes. Australians need visas for Myanmar, but we had done an eVisa online and it was an easy process, even if it was a little pricey at US$50. Next job was changing our specially selected, pristine US$s to Kyats. We had been down this road before and so were well-prepared for the surgical examination of our notes. A girl at the counter beside us was not so lucky with most of her rather large stash of dollars failing to meet the rigid standards of the Myanmar Banking system.
Mandalay airport is about 25kms out of the city and there is no bus service. The taxi price is regulated. 4000 kyat per person in a share taxi and 15000 for a three person private taxi. We selected the private option, but we picked up a stray Irishman on the way to the taxi park and had a bit of a hassle with the driver over his joining us. As is the Asian way, everybody within hearing wanted to offer advice and join in the debate. All to no avail. We stood our ground and good sense prevailed.
We stayed in the Yadanarbon hotel on our last trip. It is comfortable and at around $66 including breakfast, it is in the mid range for hotels in Myanmar, which are often significantly more expensive than in other South-East Asian countries. It is in a dusty old back street which has a real “old Asia” feel to it.
Our only task for the afternoon was to find the train station to buy the tickets for our next leg, to the small village of Thazi. Easily done as it turned out. Well, finding the station was easy enough, but purchasing the tickets presented us with a couple of simple challenges. All signage was in Burmese script, which looks a little like Thai that has been through the spin cycle of a high speed washing machine. Seems there are special windows for specific trains and we weren't too sure, but there may even be special windows for booking specific days. All was fairly easily resolved as everybody in sight leapt to our assistance and directed us to the correct window where an extremely helpful man hand-wrote our tickets as he lavished praise on Australia because he had seen something on TV about it. Or that is what we made of his comments. Price for the two hour trip on the special Express Train, in “Upper Class” seats - AUD2 each.
In our experience, Myanmar is one of the few South-East Asian countries where enough original culture and tradition has been preserved for travellers to gain some understanding of a world that is rapidly disappearing. We are looking forward to our train trip through rural Myanmar in a couple of days' time when we hope to get a little closer to the real character of Myanmar.
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