A [tried and tested] Myanmar Itinerary and Budget

The Shwedagon Pagoda (Photo courtesy of Anamarie Umaña)

This blog’s worst nightmare (so far) has materialized.  I now have more than a year’s backlog of entries that need to be posted.  I have, like, 5 pending drafts that are in varying stages of completeness – or the lack of it – and I desperately hope it doesn’t take another year to finish them.

Anyway, I recently just came back from a truly great adventure in the golden land of Myanmar and I have been asked by various people for my itinerary.  I had a working itinerary and budget estimate prior to the trip that was the product of months of research.  I hesitated to just pass that on to others because, in hindsight, a lot of details have to be updated.  (In some instances, we even took entirely unexpected detours.)

The Thatbinnyu Paya

Now back from the trip, I spent these past days making corrections to the itinerary and budget to reflect what actually transpired and how much we really spent for the entire 9 days that we were gone.  You can click the link below to view the PDF file.

Myanmar-KL Itinerary and Expenses  (final update: 10/30/13))

It’s pretty comprehensive and very detailed.  I apologize if you might find it confusing.  It’s meant to be elaborated upon by succeeding blogs – which only God knows when I will be able to finish.  You can certainly ask me some questions in the comments section if you want clarification on some points.

[If you want to compare it side-by-side with the itinerary and budget we started with, click the link below:

Myanmar-KL Working Itinerary and Budget ]

Basically, we ended up spending a lot less than our initial estimate mainly because of 2 factors: (1) we traveled as a group (there were 7 of us) which cut transport costs a lot; and (2) we arrived at a time when the exchange rate between the Myanmar kyat and the US dollar was very favorable to us.  We prepared for an MMK 887 per USD1 conversion, and were pleased to be given a whopping MMK 970 per USD 1 at the airport upon arrival.

Images in the U Min Thonze Cave

In closing, I’d just like to say that preparing for this trip was not easy, and even stressful in some aspects (more on that in later blogs), but the beauty of Myanmar more than made up for whatever inconvenience we experienced on the way there.  The country is undergoing a lot of changes now as a consequence to its opening up to the world in recent years.  It might be a very different country than what you’d expect to see 2 or 3 years from now.  I’d encourage you to travel there the soonest.

(Phot courtesy of Anamarie Umaña)