While the heat in Mandalay was stifling, here in Pyin Oo Lwin it's quite bearable, at about 1000 metres elevation. I accepted Adam's offer to accompany him and his friends, and on Friday morning, after I climbed the Mandalay hill and visited some of the caves at its foot, we were off to drive the two hours into the Shan hills. The car ride was exhausting, so when we finally arrived, I blew off my initial plans to go to walk the botanical garden (which Adam calls the most beautiful in the world) and instead stayed in started to read my new book, "From the land of green ghosts" by Pascal Khoo Thwe, a Burmese fugitive's memoirs about his travels from this most remarkable country to Cambridge, where he went to university. We went to eat Chinese that evening and I tried to chat up some locals afterwards, but without much success, so after everything had closed at around 9:30, I headed back to the hotel. The lodge is a beautiful British colonial house with great teak-floor rooms and most helpful staff, set in a very nice setting overlooking the lake up here. At $30 per night, it's actually above my budget, but given that so far I didn't pay anything for transport or food -- Adam and his friends have taken me around -- I am still within the bounds of the expected. And for sure, those $30 are worth it, I slept great, but woke for an hour to witness a giant storm followed by a downpour of really cold rain. Saturday morning, we visited the local market and I made a reservation for my return flight from Yangon to Bangkok on 4 May. Then, following a recommendation by Adam's friend Eddy, I took a motorbike taxi to a nearby Bhuddist cave and some waterfalls. The cave was great and very unlike the ones we had seen in Laos. It extends several hundreds of metres into the mountain with a river running through it, but stairs and planks have been built everywhere, and there was plenty of light from bulbs hanging everywhere to illuminate the Bhudda statues. Actually, being very close to the Shan state, which hosts the only people with a catholic religion, I was able to witness some statues of Jesus, and also some icons of Bhuddist images with clearly Christian tendencies, such as the halo, giving it all a very weird touch, or at least I cannot place it yet. I returned for a longer chat with Adam and then set off to meet James, a former employee of the British government, who runs a computer school and was able to help me out with his satellite dish to at least allow me to send an email to a friend, who will hopefully publish my blog entries for me. Burma is really cut off, many websites are blocked, SSH seems impossible, as does HTTPS, so the sshd I had bound to port 443 is of no use to me. Also, my cellphone has no reception -- only local cellphones that cannot make international calls are allowed -- and telephone calls from the public booths are very unreliable (I tried a couple of times at least to reach my mother to say I am still alive), and a call to Germany comes in at $6 per minute and seldomly work. My time online is short as I don't want to be a burden to James, and I also want some of his time to talk about Linux and computers in Burma in general. I left eight Ubuntu CDs with him and hopefully he can put them to good use. He seemed interested at least. My further itinerary is beginning to solidify: I shall leave for Mandalay on Monday and head to Bagan on Tuesday, by boat, which a friend from college recommended to me when he read about my expedition. From there, I am considering to fly to Inle Lake and then take local transportation down to Yangon, where I want to spend four or five days. That's it for now, thanks for reading along. I will write more about my impressions of Burma when I have more time, at the latest when I get back home.

We've been busy travelling, never spending more than a night in the same place. Leaving Bangkok on the "3rd class" train for Ayuthaya was an experience of its own kind. The platform was full with people waiting for the train to arrive, and when it did, we witnessed something totally unexpected for the Thai: they almost quarelled to get into the train first to catch a seat. Fortunately we got lucky in the otherwise crowded wagons. We stopped frequenly, and a glance out of the window would give you a peek into the lowest end of Thai civilisation: barracks built along the tracks with large numbers of people vegetating along. Inside the train it was hot and sticky, and we were surely happy to disembark in Ayuthaya about an hour later than planned. Ayuthaya was the Siamese royal capital between the 14th and the 18th century (the name derives from Sanskrit and means "undefeatable") and a bunch of temples and ruins, most with strong Khmer influence, survived the various Burmese attacks until today, making the city a nice attraction for those who like "stone piles" (as I've heard them described). We had made arrangements from Bangkok with the Baan Lotus Guesthouse, run by a lovely lady who spoke good English. Apart from the broken light in our room, the setting, the friendliness of our host, and the cleanliness of the rooms were definitely worth the price. After visiting Wat Phra Mahathat, the temple home to a Bhudda's head embedded in twisted roots, we had a guide escort us to a remote Elephant camp to witness the preparations for the upcoming New Year celebration (Songkran) in a week from now -- we are definitely looking forward to that. Later that night, we met some locals at a bar for chatting and went to bed late, thanks to our host handing over the keys and making an exception to the 11pm curfew. We got up to meet the guide from the night before, who took us around three temples before dropping us off at the boat stop for a short cruise around the island (Ayuthaya is encircled by a river). Our train to Khorat (Nakhon Ratchasima) was scheduled for 12:23, and so we had to forgo most of the temples due to time constraints; Ayuthaya is close enough to Bangkok to come back here again during a future trip. Reaching the station with ample time, we found the (express) train to be full, but did not feel like waiting for the slower train an hour later, so we talked the station ward into getting us on anyway. Interestingly, I think he would have tried his best even if I had not slipped him 100 Baht (2 EUR) under the table. We got on, and even had two seats in an air-conditioned wagon, so the trip was quite relaxing -- to the point that we almost missed our stop. Shortly before reaching Khorat, we rode through a thunderstorm, and there was a light drizzle as we stepped out of the station. The distance from Bangkok showed, the Tuk Tuk drivers (Tuk Tuks are the infamous three-wheeled taxis you find all over Southeast Asia) didn't hassle us, it was in fact not at all easy to find one, and when we did, he did not know where the Tokyo Hotel, our chosen home for the night, was located. With a map in hand, we thus simply started walking, but had to run for shelter at an ice factory when the rain picked up and sent cats and dogs onto the streets that really aren't made to take that much liquid. Eventually, a Tuk Tuk picked us up and got us to the hotel safely, and an hour later, the rain stopped. We did not miss a beat to get outside and ended up at "The Mall", a magnificent American-style "shopping paradise" (as Aline would call it) which clearly showed that shopping is one of the top passtimes for Thais. We ended the evening at Khorat Texas, a very nice bar in the centre of the town, with decent food and live music. As I was rolling a cigarette, a local from the next table curiously came over, and shortly thereafter, the two of us joined the three of them at their table for some cultural exchange in broken English. We picked up quite a few handy Thai expressions but also came to the conclusion that the Thai don't really know how to say things themselves and would often disagree with each other over the endings of words. But as the beer kept flowing, we seemingly got better at Thai intonation, although the language is definitely very hard for Europeans. I could not help but notice though that it seems to be better suited for cell phone conversations in noisy places while one of the three men we met kept chatting away to his wife for an hour while the band was playing in the background. This morning, we weren't motivated to get up before 11, checked out, made travel arrangements for our next destination -- Phimai -- dropped off some laundry, and then headed for the national museum, which we only found through the technique of circling and spiralling inwards. Not much to see otherwise here. The Lonely Planet guide says this city is unexciting, but it grows on you if you spend longer periods of time. Sure, like most cities, I say. As it stands, we have reason enough to abandon the place and spend tonight in Phimai, close to the famous and beautifully restored Khmer temples of the area, so that we can hopefully spend as much time as possible in the temple area before the heat gets unbearable. Nevertheless, speaking of heat, yesterday's rain shower cooled the air by 5 or 10 degrees, and it's very bearable right now. I have to point this out because in general, the month of April is not a month during which to travel Northern Thailand due to the temperatures approaching 40 degrees during the day. I know for sure that next time, I will be looking into clothing made out of fabric better suited to handle large amounts of sweat than cotton. We hope to leave Phimai on a bus to Udon Thani. I expect that shall be the next time I get to write. Thanks for reading along.