3 Train Rides in Myanmar

By Sammie Ng

I love train rides! Compared to taking planes, you can feel yourself physically moving across space. I love them even better when they bring you back in time – i.e. slow ones – so I was really stoked to take them in Myanmar as most of the train infrastructure were built by the British in colonial time.

Having gone to Myanmar twice, I managed to take 3 rather popular train rides which are all wonderful in their own way! I enjoyed ALL of them.

I’ve listed the information on how to take the trains below if you start from Yangon, since it requires some effort to search around on the internet / some of them are not very updated).

Some overall notes/ tips when taking trains in Myanmar:

• Usually, you can only buy tickets 1-1.5 hour before the train leaves. Exceptions are for the Yangon to Mandalay train where you can buy it the day itself.

• You MUST have your passport with you when buying tickets. Burmese people don’t really queue, so you may have to try a bit harder when getting your tickets.

• Usually when you are a foreigner, the train conductor will be very nice to you, so don’t worry about not knowing when the train is leaving etc. (there aren’t signs/ official announcements). They even guided me to my seat haha, and kept a lookout for me so that I would not miss my stop.

• The conditions on the train are pretty good, but I am quite the backpacker soooooo. The upper class seats are big and comfy!

• Train Timings are usually not ultra accurate. Apparently they are already better than before, but definitely factor in delays.

• Some stations have plugs for you to charge your phones (Pyin Oo Lwin and Yangon Central Station did).

• Although these routes are pretty famous, there are still VERY few tourists on the trains. So it was nice.

Okie on to the routes, the views and the wonderful burmese people.

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Gotveik Viaduct – Pyin Oo Lwin <-> Nawmpeng (6 hours)

Route

Pyin Oo Lwin 8.22a.m. –> Nawmpeng 12.25

Nawmpeng 12.30 –> Pyin Oo Lwin 16.05

(I took the bus to Pyin Oo Lwin from Taunggyi and arrived at 5 a.m., giving me enough time to go to my hotel and change before going to the train station at 7 a.m. to buy the tickets. After buying your tickets you can go to the train market to have breakfast. The train starts at 8.22 and it usually starts a bit later than that.

Looking at the train timings it looks a bit scary because you may miss the train from Nawmpeng back. But I arrived slightly earlier in Nawmpeng, and the train back to Pyin Oo Lwin came later at 1.30.

View

To be the honest, I slept on this because I was dead tired after two consecutive days of ‘sleeping’ on night buses. The view all the way is pretty boring although still nice. It only gets WOW when you are approaching the famous viaduct. And everyone, including the locals will get a wee bit excited.

People

On the way back, I just conked out and wasn’t planning to wake up for the viaduct, but the locals know I am a tourist so they woke me up so I didn’t want to let them down and decided to take pictures.

You realise that you should probably pack some lunch based on the timings. They do sell corn and snacks on the train though, and you can also buy noodles from the locals. I didn’t because the noodles looked super oily – so I ended up starving – BUT a kind old man gave me a banana and we had a good conversation without words haha – just lots of smiles :) This food thing is going to be a recurring pattern in all the train rides haha.

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Yangon –> Thazi –> Kalaw (22 hours)

Route

You can take the Yangon to Kalaw train directly, but that will take 27 hours. I managed to cut short the duration by taking the train to Thazi via the Yangon – Mandalay route, and then switching to another train towards Inle Lake.

There are many timings to play with, so I was really stressed when researching for this one  (I wouldn’t know if they changed until I reached the station). But it worked so you can try this if you are doing this sometime soon.

Yangon –> Thazi  1700 – 0500 (Train No. 3)

Thazi –> Kalaw 0700 – 1.15 (Train No. 141)

That gives you time to pee at Thazi (I didn’t dare to use the train toilet) and have breakfast.

View

You can sleep on the Yangon to Thazi part because it’s a night train. However you won’t actually be able to because it is super noisy bustling on the train. It is also more rickety, maybe because it is faster than the other trains. But yea, the sound of the train moving is just very loud and it doesn’t help that the sellers are always walking by and shouting.

Oh and this train comes with a restaurant car, and waiters dressed quite fancily come take your orders. But I packed food because I knew they would serve in styrofoam and I wasn't sure how the food would be like.

But it was great because I finished Orwell's Burmese Days in one go on this 22 hour trip haha.

So the best part about this trip is the setbacks as the train ascends the mountain. When I was looking at google maps, it took just 2 hours to cover 4/5 of the distance from Thazi to Kalaw. But the last bit, took super long because of the setbacks.

Another interesting thing was the jackfruit trees. I just cannot fathom how the huge jackfruits can hang from the tree without falling.

The view as it ascends the hill.

People

On this trip, there were two young families with kids who sat beside me. So I was starving and I saw this lady selling rice without styrofoam (most of them do), and I was interested. And the mom helped me to get the rice! And not only that, she gave me more food from her own tingkat. So I gave her hyperactive kid some nuts haha.

#zerowaste myanmar – they literally just threw the banana leaves off the train after that (what the uncle on the previous train also told me to do with the banana peel).

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Yangon –> Yangon (3 hours)

Route

This is the circular train! It is just a loop which brings you around Yangon, and you can take it any time before 5pm. We also didn’t take this at the Central Railway station. Instead we just found a station on the loop using google maps – Phar Yar Lan.

I would say that this train was the dirtiest and most uncomfortable out of all of them because the seats often had weird stuff on them haha.

View

While it is just around Yangon, it actually goes into the outskirts of Yangon, so there’s a lot of small villages and bustling markets to see!

People

Uncle gave us corn. We gave him pineapple. Hehe.

It was really fun to people watch on this train because unlike the other two long distance trains, people get on and off fairly often. This is also the only train where you can stand at the door opening and let your legs/ head/ body hang out depending on how brave you are. Fun!

So there it is. 3 different train rides, 3 different experiences, tons of food and smiles exchanged :)

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I was alone for the rides to see the Govteik and to Kalaw, but a) I felt incredibly safe and b) I didn’t feel that alone because the burmese people are all so nice although they are always so shy hehe.

GO FORTH AND TAKE TRAINS.