Christmas Express to Kalaw

The Christmas "express" to Kalaw

On the morning of Christmas Eve we took our first train in Myanmar to Kalaw, further up in the mountains. This train takes 3.45 hours for approximately 37km, so it's a very fast one (maybe to Indian standards). Foreigners can only buy "upper class" tickets so we showed up at the station 20 minutes before train departures (as we were told the train is often late) and bought our foreigners tickets and got our nice seats next to the window.

The train left perfectly on time and we were rather freezing with all the open windows and the low temperature in the early morning, lucky for us the train doesn't go any faster than 21km/h so wind was not an issue at all. The journey was quite pleasant with some lovely natural landscape and some sweet potato, Tharo potato chips and baozi(Myanmar version of Chinese baozi) that we bought on the way.

In Kalaw we were welcomed by a really cute city with a clock tower and a nice green park. We climbed up to our Villa and were very pleased with our choice of accommodation. The house/villa is built in colonial style and has a nice European roof and high ceiling. With a relaxing garden, a nice fireplace in each house and a huge room we were all set up for Christmas. In the evening we walked to the Royal heritage hotel which we later found was managed by the husband of the manager of our place; and had a Christmas dinner there. The highlight was definitely the mulled wine which was very loyal to the original German recipe, the rest was just...meh

The real big meal was breakfast the day after though, we were only allowed to order 3 dishes out of their choices but we somehow managed to order 4...and there they came with humongous portions of pancakes, scrambled eggs, yogurth bowls and home made bread!! We literally couldn't walk after breakfast; pretty much same feeling as when we have Christmas back home.

We also found a tiny hidden Italian place (new simple life) for our lunch. A lovely smiley lady offers a few different kinds of pasta pizza and salads with a very laid back cafè atmosphere.

Kalaw, and particularly where we stayed, has a nice mountainous vibe with the wood and fireplace and even the electricity cut off contributed to make the atmosphere even cosier with little candles everywhere. We really had a "nice little Christmas to ourselves".

Merry Christmas all!!!! And hugs from Giuliandy!

(click o enlarge)