Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
on tap and a handwritten English menu, featuring the hopefully mistranslated “Bird's Rump
(Human Nose)”.
Daily 7am-10pm.
White
Bogyoke St;
map
.
This scruffy-but-charming teahouse serves up great sugar parathas
and crispy naan bread all day long. They also do a wonderful samosa
thouq
, but you'll need
to get here early to sample it before they run out of samosas.
Daily 6am-10pm.
DIRECTORY
Banks
Both CB Bank on Thitsa Rd and KBZ on Zay Tan St offer currency exchange, but
neither has an ATM yet. If you need kyat outside of banking hours, it's possible to change
US dollars at the dentist's office on the south side of Zay Tan St.
Internet
While wi-fi is widely available in Hpa-An's hotels and guesthouses, it's often ter-
ribly slow. The most central internet café is Pitarbeergy (daily 8am-9pm; K500/hr), just
south of Shwe Htone Maung on School Rd.
Post office
Hpa-An's post office is on Padomar Rd, about 400m south of the roundabout.
There's no English sign - look for the Myanmar flag outside.
Myawaddy
One of the more convenient checkpoints on the Thai-Myanmar border, the border crossing
between
MYAWADDY
and Mae Sot in Thailand is relatively accessible from major cities
on either side. However, despite the volume of traffic, the narrow road from Myawaddy to
Kawkareik snakes over the Dawna Mountains in a single lane, and traffic is strictly one-way
-westbound oneday,eastbound the next. You'll need tocheck inadvance inwhich direction
traffic is flowing unless you plan to spend the day watching the frenetic border-town activity
in Myawaddy.
Migyaung Gon Pagoda
Just off Nat Shin Naung St, 400m south of the main road • Daily 5am-10pm • Free
Just 1km southwest of the border, the central shrine at
Migyaung Gon Pagoda
rests on the
back of a vast concrete crocodile, making it one of the more bizarre photo opportunities in
Myawaddy, and the only one worth searching out if you're stranded here for a day. Women
aren't allowed on the crocodile itself, where the chapels hold a collection of Burmese- and
Thai-style Buddhas, and murals relating the story of the pagoda's construction - a princess
hid her jewels in a crocodile's nest for safekeeping, apparently, later donating the jewels to
the monastery - line the walls.
