Desstinations, Travel Agent, Guides, etc
Destinations The top two destinations in Myanmar are Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon and Bagan up the Irrawaddy River. I highly recommend seeing Myanmar by Viking River Cruises Orient Pandaw. The infrastructure in the country is backward and we appreciated having western style accommodations, kitchens, bathrooms, and safety.
Viking River Cruises A real progressive company adding ten new boats each year for river cruises and now building ocean liners. We consider our trips with Viking River Cruises to be first class adventures in all aspects.
Hotels We were pleasantly surprised by the Sule Shangra-La in Yangon but it still shows how isolated and backward this country has been for so long. Traveling with Viking River Cruises allows you to live in Western style comfort and accommodations and eat safe food. It also goes along way to insuring your safety.
Transportation Trains, planes, automobiles, tuk tuks, boats, and rickshaws will be used on your trips. We didn't use buses as there was a strike so I can't comment on them. I feel comfortable to say that even as experienced travelers as we are it would be impossible for us to have driven without running over literally dozens of tuk tuks, rickshaws, & pedestrians.
Visas Get your visa through Washington Passport and Visa Services, wpvs.com. They have come through for us many times over the years. Be sure you have your visa in hand a good month before you go.
Passports Our US passports were required at all hotel checkins. We only usually carry a quality photocopy with us on our persons like we do in most countries. Please note, in many countries now our driver's licenses are checked when we use our credit cards like they are in the United States.
Travel Insurance What we want most is the actual help given by the Insurance issuer for a medical or emergency evacuation. We don't insure our trips for cancellation any more. I think frequent travelers should be members of Divers Alert Network at a level that covers evacuation, not just the cost but the arrangements.
Travel Agents Our travel agent Dianne Blackburn at Gateway Travel in Spartanburg, SC is one of the most important people in our lives. She always gets us the best deals and finds us the best trips. She has helped us when stranded outside of the US and has changed arrangements on the fly multiple times. She knows when we check in to our airlines and hotels and often has called ahead and changed arrangements while we are traveling and unable to make connections etc. The cruise lines we travel work with her. She is a widely-travelled person and we have learned much of our travel knowledge from her.
Alcohol Local spirits and beer are available gratis on the sun deck of the boat and local wines are also available in the dining room. Name brand liquors and any wine cost extra from the bars.
Wildlife Not a highlight of this trip. No crocodiles. The famous pink river dolphins are north of Mandalay so we didn't see them. We didn't see crocodiles.
Language We were constantly with our guides so we missed nothing not being able to speak Burmese. Most signs were not in English as tourism is new to this long-isolated country.
People We thought people in Tahiti, Goa, and Thailand were the most pleasant in the world but the Brumese were probably even better. We had concerns about feeling out of place in a nation 95% Buddhist. Tourists are VERY rare and my white hair really set me apart from the norm and we had welcoming new crowds of friends at every turn. I am convinced that no other society can as amicably negotiate the traffic mess both on the streets and sidewalks without animosity or injury. I felt safe but realize that we always were in the presence of a very street savy guide and often our driver as well.
Food Most of our meals were provided as a group on ship or in the hotel and included western and local dishes.
Don't Forget To Take...
Take a small flashlight or head light for emergencies and for looking under the bed. I take at least a dozen plastic clothes pins and a good string for a clothes line (you usually have a clothes line in the shower already). The thin white coat hangers are useful for drying clothes also. Take good sun screen and insect repellant and pack them in plastic boxes or Nalgene bottles. Take extra glasses and sun glasses. A copy of your vision prescription has been a Godsend to travelers on several of our trips and could come in handy in some ports such as Hong Kong where glasses are inexpensive. There is a large lending library of books and DVD's on all cruise ships we use. I like to have my insulated travel mug. I rip a lot of videos to my computer with Handbrake to view on my iPad. You move videos on & off of your iPad through iTunes. In much of the developing world you bring your own toilet paper with you to public toilets so we carry a lot of small packs of tissues. Susan carries her own dual voltage curling iron. You might swap photos with other travelers by using an SD card or usb stick so carry a few cheap ones. One of the most important thing not to forget is to take some photo copies of your passport picture page. Because you use the photocopy of your passport rather than the actual passport (which the ship holds for you) you may still need your driver's license or other government issued ID at some money exchanges etc or if you have marked your credit cards CID.
Medical Considerations
Health Concerns We were traveling in a country with severe known health concerns such as air pollution, almost universally unsafe water supply, an influenza epidemic, and malaria. Hand sanitizer and bottled beverages are the most important things. Only bottled water with intact seals are good enough as water bottles are frequently refilled world wide. You will quickly see from the bathrooms that hand sanitizer is much better than trying to wash hands and dry them on dirty community towels. We love the local experience and hate that our world is being polluted by empty water bottles but we do get sick in out of the way places that we spent a lot of money to visit that we are very careful. That said, it is often good advice to get medical TESTING and ADVICE locally for infectious diseases as physicians in the US are not familiar with many exotic tropical diseases. WHAT TREATMENT TO TAKE may be a different story. As a retired physician I would rather take an antibiotic that I brought or bought myself from a local pharmacist after double checking the advice on the internet than delaying therapy till I got home. Surgical therapy would be much more scary in underprivileged parts of the world. I no longer keep my medical license so I have my Internist each year refill my cipro, doxycycline, metronidazole, eye drops, ear drops, Tamiflu, malaria prophylaxis medication, and one extra 90 day supply of my home meds (since I can't refill them when out of the country). We carry lots of pink bismuth (Peptobismal), immodium, Neosporin Ointment, cold meds, motrin, tylenol, nasal spray, and glycerine suppositories. For malaria prophylaxis on this trip we took our old standby weekly mefloquin but we added daily doxycycline starting two days before reaching Bagan as the CDC website listed Bagan as having mefloquin resistant malaria. We travel a lot and enjoy talking to people who have visited over 100 countries as we have but you would be surprise how many people have had malaria at some time or other. About 6 people out of 42 got sick on this trip including respiratory infections, diarrhea, and vomiting.
Hygiene Always carry toilet paper as this is not widely used outside of cities. Always carry and use hand sanitizer. Never drink anything that doesn't come from a sealed bottle. Use insect spray more than once a day and keep feet well sprayed. Don't swim in any water except at the beach. We carry small travel towels from REI and every trip or two these are indispensible. We had to walk barefooted in temples and Viking always provided wipes for us to use before putting on our shoes.
Bathrooms You will visit some third world bathrooms with sqat toilets. Carry tissues to use in the bathroom. Carry hand sanitizer.
Photography
This was definitely THE place to have a big digital SLR camera around your neck. EVERYONE posed automatically and WANTED their pictures taken. There was so much color and differences in dress and style. A different world!! People would come up to us and take us to something they thought we should photograph. Many people wanted a picture taken with us. We use Nikon cameras and I recently upgraded from a D90 to a D7100 and couldn't be happier as it focuses so much faster, works higher shutter speeds, autofocuses videos, and does High Dynamic Range photos. It is heavier than the D90 and Susan won't upgrade until something as good comes along that is lighter. I use a Sigma 18-250mm lens but if I bought now I would get their 18-300mm version. Susan uses a lighter weight Nikon 18-200mmVRII lens. I carry a Sigma 10-20mm lens for architectural shots and shots I just can't get back far enough. I prepare projects in Apple Aperture for each expected photo shoot before leaving on my trips and I just import my photos from SD cards into the preprepared Aperture project allowing Aperture to back up my Nikon RAW files to a USB drive as they are imported and erasing them from my camera SD card all at one time. I usually copy my Apple Aperture library during the trip to another SD card that I carry in my wallet in case I have computer failure. We each carry a small waterproof point and shoot camera to use for dusty or rainy or other occasions. Before we leave home I sync the time on all of my cameras and lock my iPhone's time to stay at my home time zone. That way, I just tell Aperture that the cameras will all be registering Eastern Time but to adjust it to local time at import. Having my cameras get out of sync with time has caused much trouble picking the best shots when multiple cameras are photographing the same subject at the same time. We carry plastic bags large enough for our SLRs to fit. These are helpful for rain but are most useful for sealing the cameras in the bag inside a cool hotel room and waiting till the cameras heat up outside before opening the bag. This has saved much moisture condensation inside our cameras and delays in the day's photo shoots.
Computer & Phone
Cell Service
Everywhere, even in Bagan. Probably better coverage than we have in rural US but the guides complained of slow data service. We have Verizon in the USA and we get our text messages through Wi-Fi. We leave our data turned off on our iPhones and our families communicate with us by text messaging which works well as we are 12.5 hrs different in time zones. We found in the past that in emergencies a phone is a great thing to have despite the high expense. The flashlight on the phone is invaluable. We check with Verizon to see how much phone calls are a minute in countries we visit but we really just don't do much (or any) voice calls on our long frequent travels.
Computers & Wi-Fi
We got cell phone hot spot type internet service at most but not all spots we tied up at night. This service was provided by Viking but only allowed 10 connections at a time. We usually didn't have service when underway. We have been on multiple tours where other people have ended up with multiple thousand dollar cellular bills later so do your homework. At some point we will probably stay in one country long enough to buy a SIM card locally for one of our unlocked iPhones. Susan carries her iPad and types her story using a Logitech keyboard. I take my older MacBook Air and constantly back it up to a 256gig SD card that I can keep separate from it. Connections are too slow to rely on cloud backup.
Electrical
220 volts. European and British plugs both are used. We carry only dual voltage appliances and chargers and appropriate adapters to American style cube splitters. There were good receptacles for charging and use on the boat.
Clothing
Clothes
You don't need fancy clothes here. We wore our synthetic quick dry travel shirts and zip off pants on dusty walks through villages. You will get dusty. We wash out clothes in sinks, wring them in towels and air dry them constantly. This allows us to pack lightly. We take almost nothing cotton if we don't need to dress up. We have continually tuned our travel wardrobes to be FEW, QUICK DRYING, WRINKLE RESISTANT, MIX AND MATCHABLE, and with ZIPPABLE POCKETS. We were surprised that we often wore our silkweight Capilene pants and long sleeve tops, & polar fleeces These store small and are light and having these along saved the day as it often does on trips. I always carry at least one pair of Magellan quick dry black socks. What I really appreciate are a couple pair of Smart Wool short socks and can get these to dry out quickly if I towel them well. A couple pair of ExOfficio underpants and a short sleeve silkwieght Capilene colored tee shirt or two always are in my travel bags. Most people did very little dressing for dinner, much less than we expected or they expected.
Weather
It is always colder or hotter in the countries than we expect when we research what to take before we leave the US. Also, most of the world has larger spreads between daily highs and lows than we do in the eastern United States. We anticipated hot weather and awoke to high 40's Fahrenheit ( 8 degrees Celsius) several mornings in a row!!
Packing
Luggage and Packing
We carry less and less the more we travel. We left our cold weather clothes thad we wore coming from the US and that we would need for our next leg of journey in Japan at the Shangri-La Hotel in Bangkok when we flew to Myanmar. We each had a very small roll aboard suitcase and a small backpack. We had one checked bag. I can't say enough good things about our International Traveller roll aboards.
Money
In Yangon, some places in Bagan, and a few places on Mandalay could you use United States dollars. You can only use very new bills, no old ones! We needed local currency for purchases only. Viking has a wonderful way of handling tips on shore excursions by collecting some money at the start of the trip ( in this case $50 per person) that kept you from needing any money except for purchases. ATM's are available in Yangon & Mandalay. Money changers at the airport will only exchange for new US dollars showing no signs of ware. We used our credit cards only in the Shangri-La Hotel, and the silk shop and maybe a couple tourist stops.
Transportation
We consider that river boats in this part of the world are not the same as river cruise boats in Europe. These can be taller hear and need not be so long. These are much smaller but lends themselves to smaller groups. No complaints here at all.