Myanmar is like a goldmine for photographers. With it’s countless pagodas, stupas, and temples, accented by the always passing red-robed monks.
There’s so much to see though, and if you only have a limited amount of time, you need to do it correctly! For me, I only had an extra week in between trips, so I decided to look on TourRadar to see if any of their tours were available on my dates.
I found a Myanmar Photography Tour by a local company that was reasonably priced, and included everything I wanted to see plus a lot more!
In all honesty, I can’t emphasize enough how well planned out this tour was, it was seriously impressing! From getting picked up at all the airports with signs, to having all of our flights and rides pre-booked, we literally didn’t have to lift a finger besides to take the photos!
I’m excited to now be able to share which areas were my favorites and some photo tips! Below is the itinerary I did, which you can check dates for and book on TourRadar.com!
This tour is jam-packed with sightseeing, and most of the days you’ll go straight into sightseeing from the plane, so be prepared for that! Make sure you’re dressed, ready, all charged up, and have eaten, because most of the hotels are far from the airport.
Be sure to arrive as early as possible, or the night before the tour starts! You’ll go straight into sightseeing in Yangon on the first day!
To be honest, we missed sightseeing in Yangon because we forgot to get a visa so had to take a later flight. But our hotel had a prime view of the main site to see there anyway!
Scwedagon Pagoda is famous worldwide for its golden stupa being the “heart” of Buddhism in Myanmar. It’s also the largest one in Myanmar, and over 2,500 years old!
Bagan is drastically smaller and calmer than the capital city of Yangon, which is a nice change. You’ll start seeing pagodas and stupas as soon as you leave the airport, and you’ll likely be sick of them by the end of the trip!
If you’re looking for the best photo spots, take note of areas where you see clusters of pagodas, and go back to them at sunset! You probably also want to know where you can get that iconic shot of the hot air balloons at sunrise over the pagodas too right?
We actually were taken to the wrong spot so almost missed the shot! Tour guides and drivers will take you to the token hill where EVERYONE goes to watch sunrise and sunset, but the temples are too far to get a good shot. You need to look for a cluster of temples near where the balloons take off and shoot from there!
Unfortunately on this jam packed tour there’s not a lot of free time, so it’s really good for you to know this info ahead of time. You can make it for the sunrise photo before your flight the next day, since you only get one opportunity!
Here’s some other things you’ll do on this Myanmar Photography Tour:
A very colorful, busy market with mostly produce for sale along with some other things. We saw Thanaka wood being sold and saw for the first time how it is turned into paste and used by locals as sun block and beauty cream.
Throughout the rest of the trip we saw it EVERYWHERE, even at restaurants and hotels! You’ll also see it on the cheeks of EVERY local, especially women and kids. I didn’t opt to try it out because it looked a little too much like white face paint for my taste, but bought some to take home for face mask nights!
There’s a good chance nothing will compare to the massive pagoda you saw in Yangon, but this one is very beautiful as well! We learned here how to tell the differences in age of the Buddha statues, and it has to do with what culture the face of it looks like.
If it has an Indian face, it’s the oldest, since Myanmar adapted Buddhism from India. If it has a Chinese face it’s second oldest, from when China ruled there, and if it has a Burmese face, it’s relatively new.
Other temples you’ll visit are; Ananda Temple, and Thatbyinnyu Temple, which is highest temple on the Bahan Plain.
This temple is noted for its plaster carvings and glazed sandstone decorations. There are four entrances and four giant Buddha statues all with different meanings. There’s also a lot of good shopping here namely because you can bargain down prices and get stuff for photos in your next destinations!
Lacquerware is the ONLY handicraft specific to Bagan, which is why your guide will emphasize the importance of seeing the factory where it’s handmade. It’s a 6 month process, and the result is an unbreakable, finely detailed piece of art in many forms. I really wanted to buy a cup or bracelet, but unfortunately had food poisoning and the smell of the lacquer made me queasy. So maybe if one of you go, you can send me something!
After that I got pretty sick (I had to go back to the hotel to vomit and nap), so I asked the tour guide to adjust the schedule so that we just go to the picturesque clusters of pagodas and temples.
You can ask yours to adjust your schedule as well depending on how you’re feeling and what you want to see, but the ones on the existing schedule are: Manuha Temple, Myingabar Gubyautgyi Temple, and Dhamanyangyi Temple
The itinerary also includes a horse carriage ride to the hill that overlooks Ayeyarwaddy River from Buphaya but again, I wouldn’t recommend doing that. I was literally shocked at how crowded the hilltop was, plus there were many people smoking cigarettes, and tons of people trying to aggressively sell things.
Instead head back to your favorite pagodas of the day, or ask your guide to take you to some that are good for sunset photos.
Get ready for another full day of sightseeing and photography, because you’ll go straight into it again from the airport! There were two places that really stood out as stunning for photography in Mandalay, one that you’ll see on the first day, and the other the second day.
There’s a lot of monasteries the first day, and I never really feel comfortable photographing monks, so we asked to breeze through those relatively quickly.
Here’s what you’ll see, and my favorites are starred!
You’ll be able to see the daily life of the monks here…and also insane amounts of Chinese tourists. In fact they said parts of the monastery will be closed to the public soon because the Chinese tourists are such disrespectful guests.
To be honest it was definitely uncomfortable watching them take photos of the monks bathing (which is not allowed), and looking at them like wildlife.
The popular thing to do here is wait for lunch time when you can see ALL the monks walk down a certain road to go eat. The street was packed with the Chinese tourists though, and they’re very pushy so we didn’t stay to watch the monks walk.
To be honest again though, I did the sunrise food offering to the monks in Laos and that was a much more enriching and REAL experience.
This is the token photo spot of Mandalay. If it’s on your itinerary for the afternoon, ask if you can switch it to sunset, because that’s the photo everyone wants! Pay 15,000 (about $10) extra to have one of the colorful boats take you out onto TaungTha Man Lake so you can see the sunset and reflection of the bridge (with tons of Chinese tourists on top of it) on the water.
Be sure to go about 20 minutes BEFORE sunset is supposed to happen. All of the big tour groups send their guests out on the boats just before sunset.
There’s another popular photo spot here, which was proven by the photoshoot that was happening when we arrived. The outside makes for a stunning backdrop, as well as the inside with its 30+ white shiny Buddha statues.
Not going to lie, I was pretty excited for a boat ride on the river, even though the water looks like chocolate milk. I didn’t know what we were going to see or what to expect, but I will say that I was impressed by several things I saw in Mingun!
It was also the hottest I’d been the entire trip, so be sure to bring a hat and sunscreen! Or, buy a pretty umbrella and fan from the local vendors like I did (both for the heat, and the photos).
Here’s what you’ll see in Mingun starting with my absolute favorite:
This is PHOTOGRAPHY HEAVEN! We went there last out of the three things, but I wish we went first so I had more energy before the heat wave took over.
It’s a completely white structure with about seven layers of waves going around it that’s reminiscent of a wedding cake. You can climb on the waves and play around with angles and colors for some incredible photos!
Also, if you need some help taking photos, there’s kids there who you can pay to show you the best photo spots, and take your pictures!
Named so because as you can probably guess, it’s unfinished! It reminds me of Petra except its facades aren’t carved into mountains; the mountain is man-made of bricks!
It’s so big because the leader who ordered it to be built wanted it to be taller than the mountain behind it. There’s also two massive lions in front of it, but they’ve mostly crumbled due to earthquakes.
Apparently the second largest ringing bell in the world is located in this tiny village in Myanmar. You can take a big piece of wood and hit the side to ring it, or even go inside of it!
Our always-laughing tour guide was determined to take us to the best photo spots after I told him I needed the best photos for my blog and social media, so took us to this un-scheduled spot.
There’s two fully-intact (but drastically smaller) lions that sit facing the river, and about ten steps leading up to a temple each with four white statues sitting on them. In monsoon season, the water gets so high that the lions get surrounded by water!
After seeing those three sites in Mingun, you’ll take the boat back to Mandalay to see a couple more things. We cut out quite a few things on the itinerary, like more markets and handicraft factories, because we were already exhausted and also determined to make it back to U Bein Bridge for sunset.
Some things we did see though that I’d recommend are:
Kuthodaw is famous for being the site of the “World’s largest and heaviest book”. I was super confused when we got there and I didn’t see an actual book.
But then realized the joke (and reality) is that each 2 “pages” of this book are inscribed on a 4 foot marble slab and housed in their own little white stupa. It’s interesting to see, and the stupas make for a nice photo.
We got here just in time for local prayer time, which was pretty interesting to see.
To be completely honest, I had no idea what Inle Lake was, or what there was to do there. All I heard was to be sure to wear bug spray because there’s Malaria there.
WELL. Let me tell you! I was BEYOND impressed with Inle Lake, and it might even be my favorite part of the whole Myanmar Photography Tour! We glided along the smooth surface of Myanmar’s second largest lake in a longtail boat, which had seats and umbrellas for us to shield the sun.
After about an hour we reached the village that’s built on stilts over the water and it was just absolutely fascinating and stunning!
We only had a couple of things listed on the actual itinerary, but we spent almost the entire day on the water, and that was the most entertaining thing of all!
Here’s what you’ll see on Inle Lake:
We had lunch every day but I’m listing the one on Inle Lake as a site because it was such a different experience! All the food we were served was fresh from the floating gardens, including my favorite which was a thinly sliced tomato and peanut salad.
The restaurant was on stilts over the lake, and we pulled up in our boat to get to it! I literally felt like I was in a travel movie!
We were trying to avoid more handicraft factories knowing fully well that they take up time and expect you to buy expensive things, but I’m actually glad we stopped at this one. Namely because we got to see how thread is made from lotus stems!
It’s a fascinating process (and even more fascinating to learn of yet another use for lotuses!), and the clothing they make from the finished thread is meant to bring good luck.
After the handicraft factory I started to get worried about time and photos (I hadn’t showered or had time to get ready when we left at 5am for the flight), so asked our guide if we could stop at the hotel for an hour for a much needed break.
I’m incredibly glad we did, because the hotel we were booked at with the tour (the Amata Inle Lake) is a GORGEOUS lake-front resort! We had to push through floating lotus fields to get to it by boat, and then we were warmly welcomed off the boat by the staff.
We also needed this extra time to book a fisherman for sunset photos later.
OH! BY THE WAY! Those famous Nat Geo photos you see of the Inle Lake fisherman are all 100% staged. The fishermen don’t use the massive cone shaped nets anymore…they use regular ones, but of course the cone shape looks better in photos. We paid a local guy about $13 to pose on his boat with the net! If you want to get that photo, ask your guide to book a fisherman!
Anyway here’s what we did after our break:
This monastery on the lake was given its name by a Lonely Planet writer after witnessing literal “jumping cats” that a monk had trained out of boredom. The cats don’t jump anymore because the monk who trained them left, but you can still see a bunch of cats hanging around.
You can also get a good view of the floating produce gardens! It’s quite interesting to see how the hydroponics of being planted on the lake makes them grow so well! Afterwards we got to boat through rows and rows of floating gardens as well!
Our paid fisherman met us on the lake at sunset and immediately started posing. I felt kind of bad because he did not look like he was enjoying it, which I didn’t quite get since we were paying him more than he’d make from fishing in a month.
I definitely got what all the hype was about for the photo though. His pose and fishing net looked incredible against the fiery backdrop of the sunset, and mirrored its image on the inky surface of the lake.
Sadly that’s all the time we had on Inle Lake, but it’s definitely somewhere I’d suggest trying to spend an extra day in!I would have absolutely loved to have just spent the whole day boating around the floating villages, with a chilled glass of wine and my little paper parisol.
I REALLY wish we could have taken a later flight back to Yangon to enjoy Inle Lake a little more, but we were up again at 6am to leave for the airport.
We actually ended up skipping the sightseeing when we got back to Yangon to get some work done, and then went out on our own and had a lovely time. There was a nice rooftop bar and restaurant right called Vista Bar next to our hotel and the famous Schwedagon Pagoda, so we sat up there for sunset and dinner. They actually had surprisingly good sushi and decent pricing on wine!
If you do want to continue the sightseeing portion of the tour though, here’s what’s on the itinerary:
-World Peace Pagoda
– MahaPasana (gread cave for Buddhist synod)
– Scott’s Market
– China Town
If you want to book this tour, you can find it on TourRader here!
Disclaimer: This post is in collaboration with TourRadar and uses affiliate links so that I can make some moolah off of my hard work! All opinions and writing is my own!
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We will be there in Myanmar this January. A business trip, and I will include Myatheindan Pagoda on my trip.
Nice! Hope you have a great time!