We truly had less than a day in Yangon. The only thing we really wanted to see was the Schwedegon Pagoda – pronounced Sweaty Gong Pagoda (more or less). After we stashed our luggage at the bus company for our next overnight bus, we went straight to the pagoda. It was amazing! It was by far the biggest and most ornate pagoda of any that we had seen yet. Again we had to remove our shoes before heading in AND Brandon had to buy a longyi because his shorts were not appropriate (even though Devon’s leggings were no problem).

This Pagoda has literally tons of gold, diamonds, and rare gemstones built into it. Every ruler since the 1400’s had to add on and out ornate his predecessor. There was so much gold, that with the sun out, I’m pretty sure my eyes got sun burnt from staring at the Pagoda. Back to the Longyi, luckily we already learned to how to tie them and Brandon looked pretty fine in a skirt.While we were there, a monk approached us to ask or tell us something. We could never figure it out. In the end he pointed at us, laughed, and walked away. We are still confused about that one.

After touring around for a bit, we freshened up a bit and started walking the city. We read that there was a single synagogue in the city so that’s where we went. After a long and sweaty walk across town, we get there to find out that it was the one day a week they were closed. We would have loved to see it, especially since Hanukkah started the night before. (We didn’t have any candles to light, but we video chatted with Devon’s family just in time to join their candle lighting!)

There wasn’t much more on our list to do for Yangon, so we wandered around the area, did some shopping and found some food. At this point, we were hot, sweaty and tired. When we were at the bus station earlier, we were told there might be a 6PM bus (instead of our 8PM) so we decided to try to go switch to that bus. Of course, we somehow misunderstood and there was no 6PM bus. We had 3 hours to wait and were antsy so we tried to see if any other busses left for Hpa-An at 6PM. Everyone directed us back to the bus we were already booked on. We were about to give up when someone directed us to a bus that left at 6:30PM! We were thrilled. Our original bus was supposed to arrive around 1AM and we were thrilled to add even an hour of sleep to our night. We had to eat the cost of our original tickets, but it was only a few dollars and worth the extra bit of sleep to us.

We should have taken our 8PM bus. Our wonderful, sleep-saving 6:30 PM bus was more of a local bus than a tourist bus. It stopped every half hour or so as people and stuff got on an off the bus. I think people were sitting on stools in the aisle at one point. We still didn’t arrive until around 12:30 AM, PLUS the guy in front of Brandon leaned his chair ALL the way back and was basically sleeping in Brandon’s lap. Awesome.

When we finally arrived, laughing at our own failure to game the system, we needed a ride to our hotel. We agreed on a fare with a taxi driver only to find out that he drove a scooter – not a cab. But through some creativity he got him, Devon, Brandon and ALL our stuff (including some school supplies we were still carrying around and some art we’d bought) on to the scooter. It was a very tight fit. With all of our weight, the bike was bottoming out for the entire drive, short as it was. Every bump that we hit, Brandon thought he was going to go flying or lose a toe. Luckily we made it through with all limbs intact.