It's time for another guest post!
Paula shares her story about a hot air balloon ride in Bagan, Myanmar, showing us the best temples from above. I'm so jealous of her experience, that she didn't have a hard time to convince me of sharing her story. I loved exploring the temples by bike but after seeing her pictures I guess I'll have to go back to see them from the air.

So you're planning a trip and you're wondering how far you'll get South East Asia within four to six

months? This is my list of places I visited in four months without rushing from one place to another using

local transportation when possible and flights when needed, including Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar,

Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines and a little bit of Vietnam. It can easily be stretched to six months by

staying longer at a few great places or by adding a few.

I've visited Indonesia on other trips, therefore I didn't include it on this one.

Planning my trip to Myanmar, I told a couple of people about my itinerary:

Starting from Yangon, I wanted to work my way up north over Inle Lake and Bagan to Mandalay. The common response to that was: “Cool, but don't spend any time in Mandalay. I heard it's a horrible place”.

So I was obviously on a mission to find the beauty of Mandalay, and spoilers: I did.

Myanmar won my heart right after I stepped out of the airplane in Yangon.

I walked down the street past a mother with her child eating rice. She looked up to me: "do you want to share?" – I was overwhelmed by her generosity and declined.

She looked at her child: "say hello to the foreign girl". The little boy looked at me and waved, a big smile on his face painted with Thanaka: "Minglabar".