Are you planning to travel to Myanmar anytime soon? Check this train travel guide to the country, including how to buy train tickets online in Myanmar for the Yangon to Mandalay route.

If you are adventurous enough to visit Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, you should probably check the trains in the country. Myanmar has been just recently opened to foreigners, and its railway history begins when it was still a British colony, in the XIX century.

Tourism in Myanmar Overview

Being until recently a country closed to foreigners, due to its long lasting dictatorship, Myanmar remains relatively untouched. The country received about 2 million foreign tourists in 2013. which is about 15 times of what its neighbor, Thailand, receives.

Most citizens of ASEAN countries can visit Malaysia for short periods without a visa, while most Western tourists need a visa. The good news is that Myanmar offer a 28 eVisa system, which currently can be picked up on arrival at the country’s main airports. The Myanmar eVisa is especially good as it allows visitors to avoid the usual hassle involving visiting an embassy or sending documents by post.

Once you get into Myanmar, you can enjoy its exotic and unique train network. It’s important to point that unfortunately you cannot travel by train to Myanmar, as there is no international railways lines currently connecting Myanmar with its neighbors.

Another convenient way to travel in the country is by bus. However, some distances can be

How to Buy Bus and Train Tickets Online in Myanmar (2019 Update)

Since I have written this post two years ago, the tourism infrastructure has improved a lot in Myanmar. The improvements are both in terms of offline infrastructure, but also online. Nowadays for example it is possible to buy train tickets, and also bus tickets in Myanmar online.

That applies to the Yangon – Mandalay route, but also to many other routes. You can also buy tickets from Mandalay to Bagan, and you can now buy online bus tickets for many destinations in Myanmar.

You can click buy train and bus tickets online in Myanmar using Bookaway. It is also a good idea to do it, as you can plan your trip in advance and browse for the ticket which is most suitable to your travel needs.

Below you can search the options for bus and trains available from Yangon to Mandalay, with live prices.

Trains in Myanmar (Burma)

The Railway network history in Myanmar is one of the most uniques in Asia. It started when the British build the first railway tracks in Myanmar, then Burma, in the second half of the XIX century.

Across the years the Death Railway, which once connected Myanmar to Thailand became one of the most famous in Asia. It was built by the Japanese during World War II and used forced labor of many prisioners of war, including Americans, British and Dutch.

Trains from Yangon to Mandalay

There is an “express train” from the country’s capital Yangon to Mandalay, running a few times everyday. Even if the distance is just 650km, the train network in the country is very obsolete, and the journey takes roughly 15 hours. The advantage of the train compared to the bus is that you can sleep much more comfortably on it.

Hotels in Yangon

BEST WESTERN Chinatown Hotel – an excellent choice in one of the most central areas of Yangon.

Clover City Center Plus Hotel – a hotel offering great value for the money in Yangon.

Hotels in Mandalay

Mandalay City Hotel – a great hotel in Mandalay with a swimming pool.

Royal City Hotel – an affordable option just a 5 minutes ride to the Mandalay Railway Station.

If you are traveling to Mandalay by train, click here to check hotels in Mandalay on Booking.com.

Traveling to Asia? Check our Asia section with amazing guides to this exciting continent.

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For those who wish to travel Asia but don’t want to go to the usual places, Myanmar is a great place to visit. It has great historical and cultural attractions, as well as traditions you won’t find anywhere else. However, while it does have unique qualities, its tourism rate has actually dropped this year.

Why is there a drop?

On Friday, the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism said that the number of tourists visiting the country have actually dropped. Most of them are from western European countries. From what the Ministry saw, the reason for this drop is due to the August 2017 military operation against the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army.

Since the operation began, accusations of systematic abuse by government forces was reported. Around 700,000 Muslim people in northern Rakhine were forced to flee because of the abuse to Bangladesh. The reports caused many people to stray away from the area.

According to the Ministry, from January to August this year, only 110,000 European visitors visited Myanmar. This is a 2% decline than last year’s record. Although there are political, diplomatic and security measures being done to stabilize the region, the government also has new efforts to get these tourists back to the country. Their latest project is the visa-on-arrival for European, Russian and Australian citizens.

While the visa-on-arrival access is available since the beginning of the month, experts and stakeholders say it is not enough. For the joint secretary of the Myanmar Tourism Marketing Association Daw Phyu Phyu Mar, the government needs to invest on new infrastructure to make it traveling easy in the country. There is also a need to develop Myanmar’s other destinations which has the potential to become great revenue generators for the country.

The government also has to start promoting the country to Western countries. This will help introduce the country to the world. The deputy director general of the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism Daw Khin Than Win said that it is too late to organize such events. However, they are using digital marketing to launch such efforts and there is a plan to visit China.

Myanmar Travel Tips

Want to learn more about the country? You can check out the Myanmar Tourism Marketing site or the website of the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism. We also lined up a few guides here on the website for you to try out. Some of ours guides include the private tours available in the country, where to stay in Yangon and how to travel by train.

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