On 3rd December 2018, ten girls, two teachers and a well experienced World Challenge leader all set off on a trip to Myanmar (previously Burma) - a country full of life, far different to ours in little New Zealand.

 As a part of the ‘challenge’ of World Challenge, we girls each had jobs like booking accommodation, managing the team’s budget and organising transport, and we also had previously decided our itinerary. After travelling through Auckland and Singapore, we arrived in Yangon 24 hours after leaving Christchurch. While in Yangon, we stayed for 3 nights, and spent the days acclimatising and exploring the largest city in Myanmar. We then travelled 9 hours on a bus to Kalaw, and spent our free day at Green Hill Valley Elephant Camp; feeding, washing and learning about the injured/elderly elephants there. We then began our first trek, taking three days to walk to Inle Lake, while staying in local homestays each night with our awesome local guides. 

Unfortunately, this trek was also the start of some of the girls getting sick. But once we arrived in Inle Lake, we had two days to explore Myanmar’s biggest tourist hotspot which included a lake tour on the traditional boats to see the floating markets. The team then had another long bus ride to Pindaya, where we had a day to explore the town’s markets before setting off on our second trek. We spent four days walking around Pindaya’s mountain range, and ended the last day travelling to the Pindaya Caves, where there was around 8000 images of Buddha. Our next destination involved a relatively quick five hour bus ride to Myanmar’s second largest city, Mandalay, where we stayed three nights shopping and exploring the city. We then travelled four hours south to Bagan, an ancient city full of temples. We spent three nights enjoying the luxury of our hotel’s pool, eating at various restaurants, and admiring the gorgeous sunsets. On Christmas Eve, we travelled back to Yangon for one night, and enjoyed Christmas morning with a group Secret Santa before heading off to our community project. Situated about an hour from Yangon, we stayed in little houses as part of Myanmar’s Community-based Tourism group. Over five days, we painted both the inside of a local school’s classroom and their toilet block, before heading back to Yangon for our last two nights in Myanmar. This consisted of some quick last-minute market shopping before we left to go home. On New Year’s Eve, we had a decent stopover in Singapore, where we did some more shopping, before flying back to Christchurch and landing on the first day of 2019. The four week trip was an awesome experience of culture and definitely worth the months of fundraising and anticipation leading to it, and we will never forget the memories we made together.

Written by Jaime Cunningham and Georgia Solly