Bagan's Historical Sites.
Schwezigon Pagoda
Gubyaukgyi Temple from a distance.
Sunrise.
And the famous balloons that will show up with sunrise (though they appear late)
And do not forget the stunning sunset Bagan would give you.
1 reviews
Journey December '18 & January '19
While I just returned from Thailand in October '18, it was now time for me to head back to Thailand once again to start one of my bigger journeys of 2018 (a period of four weeks originally, but decided to add another week to it and travel to Singapore). I decided to book plenty of flights to different cities to explore in both Thailand and Myanmar together with my girlfriend.
A small tip regarding to airlines in Myanmar for domestic flights. In case you want to book a flight with them long in advance, expect your itinerary to be changed from what you originally booked it for. Two or three weeks in advance is sufficient as prices will be the exact same as you would have paid for like six months ago and be sure to verify your flight on their site 24 hours for any change.
So the routing below will give you an idea what my upcoming reports are going to be. Enjoy your read!
The start of Y5 201's journey
While I finished my first domestic flight in Myanmar ever with Myanmar National, it was now up for Golden Myanmar Airlines for the second domestic flight with an ATR 72-600, which is the most common aircraft in Myanmar for domestic flights as the majority of airlines are using them.
As Heho's airport is only accessible by car, we were yet doomed again to grab a cowboy ride to the airport.
The ride itself brings you through a mountainous road that is partly under construction and takes about 45 minutes. This sign indicates that the airport height is approximately 3858 ft above sea level, but it meant too that we survived our ride for 15.000 MMK, which was about 10.000 MMK cheaper than to go to my hotel from Heho Airport.
The friendly cowboy dropped us off in front of the terminal gates and you are required to have a short walk towards the terminal.
Upon entering the terminal, it felt more like a common Southeast Asian bus station rather than an airport. Note that there are still some check in desks left of defunct airlines like Air Mandalay & FMI Air.
Our check-in desk for today was directly to our right and did not have many passengers waiting, so check in was rather quick and you are given a boarding card without any name or seat no.
Please note once again that those yellow tags on one of your boarding cards will be collected at your arrival airport once you have collected your luggage.
With at least more than a hour left, we positioned ourself to one of the seats and bought some water (You could still take liquids with you through security)
I noticed that we were required to receive a stamp by customs again before we would head to our departure area.
About ten minutes later, we decided to receive our stamp from customs and proceeded to our gate.
Once again like in Yangon, you were not required to empty your pockets and could leave all your stuff including electronic devices in your bag. Obviously the scanner went off with almost every person passing through it and so we were required to stand down for a body search, which was very basic. Security was however cleared within 1-2 minutes and left us in our departure hall where you could find three shops. Two coffee shops and a single souvenir shop. I grabbed a coffee with Café Terminal and was very kindly greeted by the two workers. (I was surprised by them being so patient with a customer ahead of me as the passenger did not speak any language but Spanish, even though she took at least 15 minutes of their time and I was hungry for my coffee!)
Another amazing fact with Heho Airport was that you could walk to the apron without anyone stopping you, so in case of shooting some photos behind some dirty glass, I actually could walk towards any plane to capture some photographs.
A Myanmar National Airlines ATR 72-600 bound for Yangon
Another ATR 72-600 from Air KBZ that arrived from Lashio and was heading towards Yangon too.
With little to no action for a while, I did return inside. About ten minutes later, A Yangon Airways ATR 72-212A arrived and would depart fifteen minutes later.
It was now about 17:00 and yet no sighting of our aircraft yet. Five minutes later, it touched down and engines were shut like a minute later.
Barely five minutes after shut down, boarding was called. No announcements are given here, but only a wooden sign is shown to the public.
And here is our ride. XY-AJM, a 4.7 year old ATR 72-600 who has only flown for Golden Myanmar Airlines.
As no seat is assigned to you, you can sit wherever you want.
Upon entering the stairs, we were kindly greeted by the flight attendant who handed us a refreshing towel. I, then decided to move forward to find an empty seat and decided to sit down at seat 9D & F with my Girlfriend in a 2-2 config. Legroom was decent.
A shot of the cabin, which was very very new and very clean.
My window view and another ATR 72-600 of MNA was boarding, while a Mann Yadanarpon ATR 72-600 was deboarding behind it.
Golden Myanmar Airlines did invest a bit more in their literature compared to MNA.
An advertisement of Myanmar beer, which was very tasteful and would definitely recommend any of you to drink it at least once.
The Safety card
And their magazine, which was a pleasant read with some upcoming destinations within Myanmar to visit.
Not entirely sure whether this was part of their literature or left by the previous passenger, but I didn't bother reading it.
Boarding was completed in a very fast pace and engines were firing up once again at around 17:20. The flight attendants rushed to their stands to perform the usual safety instructions, while we were backtracking the runway to depart as soon as possible.
Now you will have a confirmed look of that Mann Yadanarpon ATR 72-600.
Reaching the end of the runway, the aircraft turned around and directly spooled up their engines and we were rolling for take off. As the sun was setting, it gave us some magnificent views like the one below.
We did maintain a lower altitude for a while.
Once we reached a certain altitude, the flight attendants came out to serve us a complimentary snack and some drinking water.
Another surprise box with a tasty snack!
I was definitely impressed with the cleanness of the entire aircraft. It was already in use for over four years and it did show little to no sign of usage. It was definitely maintained to high standards.
A look at the destinations of Golden Myanmar which they maintain with two ATR 72-600s.
Another in-flight shot
Cabin crew came around to clean the cabin like ten minutes later when our aircraft was already descending towards Bagan (Nyaung U). Unfortunately this photograph was the last one I could take as the reading light of the passenger in front of me was reflecting in my photos.
We touched down around 25 minutes late with a very smooth landing in the almost dark Bagan. As the flight would continue yet to Mandalay, cabin crew informed passengers that were going to Mandalay to remain on board.
A pic of the seat I was using.
Deboarding was quick and efficient like it was with boarding and it gave me another chance to capture our aircraft that brought us here once again.
A short walk to the terminal to pick up our bags.
And like Heho, there was no belt available at this airport. Unlike Heho, the baggage dropping here did go in an orderly manner by staff pulling out bags to that specific person. One of the staff members took our luggage to our car that was waiting for us. I'm not entirely sure if he was expecting a tip for it or whether it was a normal procedure, but it was much appreciated.
Before leaving the terminal though, we did proceed to one of Bagan's Archaeological counters to pay our fare, which would be valid for at least five days. Every tourist is required to pay for this if he is going to visit any historical site.
See tourism bonus for a few shots of Bagan.
Golden Myanmar Airlines has definitely been the favourite airline of my journey in Myanmar as customer service was excellent in providing me as much info as requested and in a very polite manner. Despite the delay, I felt that the cabin crew did really enjoy their job and served us some complimentary snack on a very short route. Both airports are very domestic and could become very chaotic so now and then and often are not so clean.
2 Comments
Almost to the haflway point! Let’s do this!
I’m learning more about Myanmar than I knew before by orders of magnitude by reading your reports. And another new-to-me airline to boot. Thank you for contributing to my continuing education.
“You could still take liquids with you through security”
- How very civilized!
“Another amazing fact with Heho Airport was that you could walk to the apron without anyone stopping you”
- That’s very cool. If more than a bit concerning in terms of security ramifications.
I should very much like to fly on an ATR someday. Too bad they’re not exactly all over the place in this part of the world.
“As no seat is assigned to you, you can sit wherever you want.”
- Woohoo! Cattle call!
Always nice to get those in-flight shots with the turboprop nacelles in them.
Snacks on a 40-minute flight in economy. Delta can’t even manage to get a decent water service out in Y on a similarly-timed YYZ-DTW segment.
Lovely tourism bonus to end it — that pagoda is stunning!
Thanks for continuing to share this epic series. I look forward to Mandalay!
In case you ever rfly to here, I would definitely recommend you to try out one of them as the experience you get felt like travelling prior to all those restrictions.
Login to post a comment.