A first-person travel vlog by Kara and Nate Buchanan documenting the start of their Irrawaddy River cruise in Myanmar. The episode covers their six-hour overland transfer from Yangon to Prome, boarding a largely-empty cruise vessel (a nine-day cruise upstream to Mandalay), a boat tour (cabins, sun deck, dining, gym), and initial excursions including a museum visit, interactions with young monks, and local food/tea experiences. The hosts mix practical itinerary details, cultural observations (betel nut chewing, umbrellas, ethnic diversity), and on-board logistics (free minibar, cocktail hour).
Questions this video answers
Six hours.
Nine days.
1977.
Three.
Over 135.
Chapters
It is our third day in Myanmar. We are up bright and early. But we're leaving Yangon today.
We are about to get picked up to drive six hours north to the town of PR where we are about to begin our river cruise up the Irrawadi. I could not be more excited.
Six hours later, we have made it to the Irrawaddy.
We're here. Our boat looks awesome.
I just learned how to say hello. It's Mingalaba. I'm gonna practice on all these.
This is amazing.
Feel like I'm in a hotel. This thing is massive. Can I get one of these?
Yeah, sure.
Yes. Thank you. Thank you.
Wow.
Wow, wow, wow. This is so pretty. I think it goes without saying this room is amazing. And the craziest thing is there is only one other couple on this massive boat with us. I feel like Myanmar is so undiscovered and untouched by tourists. I can't believe nobody else is doing this cruise with us for the next nine days. And our entire six hour trip here, we never went through a big city. It was all just local villages, people working outside in the rice field. There are these beautiful pagodas everywhere. I'm just falling more and more in love with this country every second. And lunch is ready, so we have to go. So lunch has been fantastic so far. There's a appetizers bar with like salad, fresh salad, which I haven't had in weeks. Then we got some soup and now we're having the main course which is eggplant curry and fried sweet potatoes. If this is any indication of what we're going to be eating.
Yum. Thank you. This is gonna be great.
We're already going on our first excursion. The train station was built in 1977, which was.
2 miles.
So the town of Prom, where our river cruise is starting, is actually known as one of the most ancient civilizations in all of Myanmar. And they have three world Heritage sites here. We've just come to a museum to learn a little bit more about it.
And we also got some umbrellas because that's what all the Burmese people do here because it's so hot. Even like on the back of a motorbike, they have umbrellas. Like this actually really helps.
So there's a lot of like old cool stuff in the museum. But definitely the highlight was getting to interact with the young monks that were in there. They were all running around taking p with their cell phone, which is just like not at all at a picture when I think of monks. But it was funny because when we finally asked if we could take a picture of them, they wanted pictures of us just as bad. So like that interaction was just so fun. And I feel like only something you can get in like a small town.
Like this and then this is part of the city.
That is so cool. So this is our guide, Z. You'll probably see a lot of him this week cuz he's taking us on all of our excursions.
Not every day you get to walk on top of World Heritage Site. Z told me I could. I wasn't breaking the rules. Back to the boat.
We just set sail and it feels amazing. And we found this map of Myanmar. So I thought I would show you a little bit of our itinerary this week. So we started here in Yengar. We took the van to Prome. This is where we got on boat. Now tonight we are sailing upstream to Menleja. We'll have an excursion there tomorrow and then eventually we'll go all the way up and end in Mandalay. So if you've been paying attention to the global media lately, you might know that Myanmar has gotten a lot of bad press lately. But we just talked to the boat manager and he gave me a little history lesson that kind of makes it make a little more sense. So apparently after World War II, the British came and pretty much took a pencil and drew what Myanmar is today. Which means that over one hundred and thirty five different ethnic groups live in this country. Which means that there's a lot of civil wars that have been happening for a really long time. A lot of those have gotten into the news in the US especially. And I think it's kind of discouraged people from coming here, which is really sad because where we are there none of that is happening. And it would be like not going to New York because something happened in California that was bad. And it's just so sad because this place is so awesome. I really can't wait to see more of this country.
We have figured it out. We know one of the biggest reasons why we like to cruise so much. This morning we woke up in a new place and we didn't even have to repack our bags. We travel full time, so we're constantly packing, repacking, unpacking and cruising is so great because every day you wake up in a new place and all your stuff gets to stay in the same place. I love it. We're not getting to today's stop for a few more hours, so I thought this was a great time to show you our boat. Starting with our room. We have this Big, beautiful white bed, super big, nice bathroom with all the amenities that you would expect in a nice hotel room. Freezing cold AC, which is really important because it's going to be 101 degrees today. One little detail that just makes the biggest difference is when the minibar is free. Technically, we can get free drinks anywhere on the boat at any time of the day, but whenever it's free in your room, it just makes you so happy. But our favorite part of the boat.
Is behind the camera, the balcony, especially this one with the incredible moving view. This morning we've just been sitting here watching the world and Myanmar go by with Internet. For us, it's important that we can stay connected because, like, that's part of our job. So this morning has been the perfect work life. Balance doesn't get any better than this. Now let's head upstairs for the rest of the tour.
Welcome to the sun deck. There are tons of seats here in the shade and there's also seats out in the sunshine if you want to get a tan. Details everywhere there's little sunscreens and bug sprays and towels. So nice. Also on the third floor is the rider's lounge. This is just an AC room with lots of comfy seats and a bar where there's free drinks all day. Every night at six, there's a cocktail hour and we have a briefing for what we're doing the next day. Then we go to dinner.
Which leads us to the first floor, the dining room. This is where we have our breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I've been eating way too much delicious food. But there is a solution for that. Up on the third floor, you can work off all the food that you eat. In the gym, there's an elliptical, a treadmill, some weights, a jump rope, and I think that about wraps up the tour. It is three o'.
Clock.
We just got to our stop for the day. We're about to go explore.
This is a traditional wave system.
So one of the things that we've noticed since we've been in Myanmar is that a lot of people have like really red teeth and then they're spitting red stuff out. And we've learned that that is betel nut that they're chewing. This is actually the leaf of the beetle nut. This isn't the part that turns your teeth red, but it's like what they wrap up all the stuff that they're chewing in. There's nuts right behind me that have like a brownish tint to them. This is actually what turns your teeth red. But apparently they like mix it up into a paste and put it on the leaf before you, before you chew it. Loves the eye. Hungry.
Does anybody?
Oh, he's gonna be here.
This is the beginner version of gonia.
It all came apart in my mouth very quickly.
It tastes a little bit like chewing soap. Uh huh. About five minutes into this, I'm losing a bit of feeling on this side of my mouth. So I think I'm gonna call it quits before I get like dizzy and fall down. Now we're heading to a local tea shop to wash it down.
Vegetables. Apparently it's traditional to fill up your tea cup if it's overflowing. And if it's not overflowing, then it's like they're gypping you. Which is why there was tea on all of our places. One cup of tea is about 20 cents. This big fried thing was about 10 cents. These were 4 cents each. It's just insane how cheap things are when you get out here in these tiny vill.
Savage.
I have about an hour until dinner, so we're gonna go squeeze in a quick workout so we can eat more and we'll be in a new place tomorrow.
It is day three in Myanmar. I don't know why I said that was an accident.
