Southeast Asia Travel News

Had this recipe for Burmese Chicken Curry for over 20 years (it was originally given to me as a Thai Chicken Curry recipe – but I knew it wasn’t that and until Wipaporn Ord visited England last week, I wasn’t really sure it was Burmese). Its easy, cheap and tasty. (Lesley Schofield) Ingredients 8 Chicken Quarters or 16 chicken thighs…

A selection of Wi’s Burma photographs taken on her smartphone shows you don’t need a great camera to take great pix – just a good eye and the right place at the right time we guess. There are some awesome Burma photos here but the post is a bit of an excuse really to let everyone know that you can…

Portraits of Burma is a short selection of photographs by Wi, taken on her recent Discover Burma tour, “…quite unlike any land you know about”. (A quote from Kipling of course!) So, in no particular order and without further ado… The ubiquitous pink-clad Buddhist nuns are a sight that you won’t see elsewhere in Southeast Asia despite Burma sharing its…

A selection of Peter’s Burma photographs. Many thanks to Peter for allowing us to share a selection of his superb Burma photographs taken on a 2012 Burma tour. In no particular order then with all photos taken by Peter Tilsley and additional comments from All Points East………… First up an atmospheric dusk shot of the highly picturesque and photogenic U…

After exploring Bagan and its amazing temples we headed east across the central Burmese plain for the distant Shan Plateau and the small market town of Kalaw. A spectacular visit en-route – an hour’s drive from Bagan – is the dramatic and sacred Mount Popa. Actually a dormant volcano some 1,500 meters high, (c. 4,500 ft), Mt Popa itself is…

Great set of photographs taken on Wi’s recent Burma tour; Discover Burma (Myanmar). The ancient sites at Mingun aren’t usually on the itinerary but since the boat company had seen fit to cancel the Mandalay to Bagan service, siting low numbers during low season, Wi organized an alternative boat trip up the Irrawaddy to visit the riverside site of Mingun…

For a relatively small ethnic group, the Padaung certainly have plenty of names. Padaung is apparently the Shan term for the Kayah Lahwi– a subgroup of the Kayah ethnic family who are in turn a subgroup of the Karenni or Red Karen who are themselves a part of the wider Karen family. Vulgar terms for them are ‘Long Necks’, ‘Long…

Burma’s picturesque Inle Lake has numerous fascinating sites on offer to visitors: the lakeside markets and stilt villages, ethnic minorities, temples, myriad handicraft and traditional ‘cottage industries’ to check out and the amazing ruins of the old Shan city at In Dein but it’s two most famous sites are probably the floating gardens plus the unusual fishermen who row with…

If these fantastic stagecoaches were to be found in any other country apart from Burma then we reckon they’d certainly be housed in museums. Now contrary to what you may imagine they are not used to give tourists rides but are a genuine form of local transport in the former old, (and near unpronounceable),  British hill-station of Pyin U Lwin….

Hiking in the Shan Hills; a few photos and brief description. Firstly many thanks to our awesome local guide Moe Zaw for designing and testing what proved to be an excellent hiking trail close to the small town of Kalaw on the Shan Plateau. Despite terrain seen below, (i.e. picturesque but hilly!), he managed to find us a predominantly flat…

Great boat trip down this picturesque and as yet unspoilt river, (the Burmese president having recently suspended the controversial Myitsone Dam project), and well worth the early start for the superb dawn views as we headed down the Irrawaddy from Mandalay. According to the Burmese powers that be Aerawaddy is a closer transliteration to the Burmese, (or Myanmar), pronunciation so…

A selection of Wi’s Golden Triangle photographs from her recent tour – the first part of our Northern Laos and the Golden Triangle tour from Chiang Mai to Vientiane via the UNESCO sites of Luang Prabang and the Plain of Jars. On departing from Chiang Mai and heading north, the group’s first stop was the local hill-tribe market near Mae…

A selection of photos and description of a Rangoon train ride. The Yangon, (Rangoon), circular – (that’s a local railway line, not a 6 lane ring-road or an underground line) – does a loop from the city’s main station through the inner city, suburbs and outlying villages, before returning to the station some 3 hours later. It’s a local train…

Caves are what the small Burmese, Shan Plateau town of Pindaya is famous for! So, we had intended to write about the famous and spectacular cave temples but seem to have filled most of the post up with cabbage photos so – we’ll call this one ‘the road to Pindaya’ and post a separate temple piece afterwards. The 1-hour drive…

As with, for example, Malaysia the wide ethnic mix of Burma (Myanmar) leads to a wide range of Burmese food. Along with regional ethnic groups such as Karen, Shan, Kachin, Thai, Mon etc that contribute towards the indigenous mix, there were, during the British period, large numbers of Nepalese, Indian ((Bengali and Tamil for instance) – and in more recent…

“A golden mystery upheaved itself on the horizon – a beautiful winking wonder that blazed in the sun…”. So described Rudyard Kipling on first setting eyes upon the truly awe-inspiring sight that is Yangon’s, or in his day Rangoon’s, famous Shwedagon Pagoda. The gold leaf-covered central stupa of Shwedagon Paya towers some 100 metres into the Yangon skyline – topped…

Some portraits of Myanmar, taken on our recent, 2-week recce trip to Burma (Myanmar). Internet access is, to say the least, limited and since we’ve been a bit rushed off our feet since our return to the Chiang Mai office so we’ll just stick up a few Burma photos for today and ‘normal’ service will be resumed asap! Actually took…