My son has recently been interested in traveling abroad to experience the world a bit before he starts his working life after college.  My wife and I agreed that for his 19th birthday, we’d give him the gift of this experience.  Having travelled extensively for work, I wanted to choose a destination that that I have never visited so we could discover together.  For several years, I’ve been interested in Myanmar as it was so mysterious and closed off from the world.  I also had followed the story of Aung San Suu Kyi’s struggle with the government and her house arrest for almost 15 years.  So my son agreed that this would be a very adventurous choice.

We had about a week and a half to fit this trip in considering my work schedule, patient wife and daughter and my son’s impending return to his college campus after Winter break.  As soon as we decided to take this trip,  I immediately booked the round trip tickets to Yangon for January 8th through 17th and spent the months between the August and January planning the details.  While I’ve experienced planning the logistics of travel in many parts of the world including Asia, the process for Myanmar was a bit more challenging.  Since they are so recently opened to the world, reliable information is very sparse on the Internet.  Once I did have the information in hand for hotels and internal flights, confirming was difficult as very few companies accept credit card transactions.  I was up to the challenge and certainly was satisfied as we boarded the plane that the planning was as good as it could get.  In an effort to provide current information for others that may be searching, I’ll include as many details as I can remember to make the next visitors’ task easier.