The Gokteik Viaduct and Pyin Oo Lwin
The train ride from Hsipaw to Mandalay is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the world. The main highlight of it is the Gokteik Bridge. This bridge was built in 1901 and is an absolute masterpiece of engineering. It is 97 meters high and goes 690 meters across.
However, taking the train comes at a price. While the bus journey to Mandalay takes 5 hours, the train takes 15 hours. So many people stop at Pyin Oo Lwin (7 hours) and continue from there by bus. In my case, I wasn’t lucky and the train to Pyin Oo Lwin alone took 10 hours, but it was worth the experience… The tracks have barely gotten any renovation since the first half of the 1900s, so the train is basically a museum, a piece of history. Riding it felt more like riding a horse than sitting in a vehicle. I didn’t realize trains could bounce and shake this much. Walking in the train without smashing into a seat or wall was literally impossible. It was almost humorous… The bridge itself was incredible. Thinking that they built it 100 years ago is very impressive. Overall, the train ride was a fun experience. It is certainly not for everyone and felt very much like being trapped in a tumbler, but I really appreciated seeing more of Myanmar’s landscape.
Because I arrived in Pyin Oo Lwin with many hours delay, I didn’t feel like making the trip to Mandalay on that same night. Pyin Oo Lwin is a tourist destination by itself. It is full of colonial buildings and famous for its botanical garden. It is also called “flower city”. I must say that Pyin Oo Lwin is the only city in Myanmar that I didn’t like. People in Pyin Oo Lwin are not ethnically Burmese. They are people who were brought to Burma by the British to build railways and colonial buildings. As a consequence these people are not as smiley and friendly as everywhere else in Myanmar. In fact, Pyin Oo Lwin is the only place where people told me I should not walk on side streets at night, because it is not safe. I was very shocked. It is unthinkable to me that Burmese would steal or harm tourists. Safety doesn’t seem like an issue at all in Burma, except for Pyin Oo Lwin. So the next morning, I did a quick tour of some of the colonial buildings and then left. But overall, I would not necessarily recommend Pyin Oo Lwin. It wasn’t as pretty as people claimed it would be, there are only few original colonial buildings left, and overall the whole place just didn’t seem safe.
