Trapped in tourist rules - mandalay

After getting some 'freedom' in Bagan with our ebikes, we were curious about Mandalay. However, we were again locked in a tourist route. In the beginning it sounded great when a taxi driver approached us and offered to take us around the outskirts of mandalay for one day. We wanted to see the famous bridge there anyways, so we took his offer of showing us the outskirts.

What we didn't know: every tourists takes this tour with a different taxi and everyone goes to the same places. Tourists are not allowed anywhere else so when we asked our driver to show us villages and nature, he refuse because he wasn't allowed to. We saw a lot of nice things, but again this isn't real myanmar, it was a typical show off tourist tour. 

Our highlight was the lunch break: after visiting a mountain our driver told us we can get lunch at the "viewpoint restaurant" - this name sounds already expensive. It was probably full with all the other tourists that we met at every sight during that day. So we asked to get lunch at a cheap place (luckily our driver did - We still paid the tourist price but that was ok). 

I'm happy to get to see parts of the real myanmar in Yangon and Kalaw and I'm hoping for changes in the government to make it possible for the locals to get their business going with the tourism. Today, too much money from tourism goes to the government and to locals suffer. Myanmar is a beautiful country with amazing people and I hope we get to see more of its beauty soon.

However, we still had a beautiful day: