by Lydia Laube
The driver was an exact copy of one of those bald laughing Buddha statues. He even had the same curious curled-up earlobes. Taking off, we squelched out of the mud pack that was the station yard and very, very slowly crawled along the ruts of the so-called road beside the river. The road continued like this for kilometres with the town spread out along it, consisting mostly low one-storey buildings interspersed with the odd pagoda. When I had been told that this trip of forty eight kilometres took two and a half hours I had wondered why. Now I knew. Take a terrible road one car wide, a decrepit bus full to the brim with sacks of rice, baskets of produce and as many Burmese as could be squeezed on (plus one foreigner), then add a whole pile of steep mountains, winding tracks and goods and people to pick up and drop off along the way, and two and a half hours seemed about right.
The country we travelled through was beautiful and so green, with rice paddies and a lot of water. We went up and down mountains with little sign of habitation except the occasional incredibly ramshackle wooden dwelling that was more a hut than a house. I took only one photo, of a WWII army truck that was a glorious, unbelievable wreck but still in use. An Australian RTA inspection unit could have spent a week defaulting it.
Now and then I saw the bus driver take a wad of betel nut and pop it in his mouth—hopefully not to put him into too tranquil a state on these precipitous hillsides. Sitting as I was directly behind him, after a while I had the feeling that something did not quite feel right. I could not work out what was wrong until I realised that he should have been on the other side of the bus. They drive on the left of the road in Burma but the bus was a right-hand drive vehicle.
My arrival in Ngwe Saung was painless. Fighting off the proffered motorbike, I showed the address of the guesthouse I had chosen to a boy who summoned two trishaws and for the agreed price of one thousand each we set off on what must surely have been the most picturesque ride of my life. I was pedalled along the edge of a marvellous beach fringed and shaded by coconut palms, while on the other side of the narrow road the jungle crowded down thickly. Every now and then we passed a few bungalows of a guest house or resort. It was cool and the road was a narrow, paved strip—fortunately almost all flat for the poor boys pedalling. But it was a long way, at least a couple of kilometres.
The guesthouse Shwe Hin Tha sat smack on the sand, the reception desk in an open-sided thatched-roof pavilion. The nearby accommodation was a row of bamboo bungalows. I chose one only ten paces from where the waves broke on the shore.
I was immensely comfortable there. The breeze off the sea kept the heat down, the room was big and the bathroom Spartan, but I had everything I could want except full-time electricity, which came on from six in the evening until ten. And when it came on, it did so with a bang. The room was suddenly brilliantly flood-lit by a big globe that seemed to attempt to make up for its former absence with its brightness.
My room had a covered porch fringed by palm trees that faced the waves curling on the sand. It was outfitted with heavy wooden chairs and a big low table. As I sat there, a girl came by to ask if I needed anything. I enquired about food and a much-needed meal of hot and sour fish was brought to me promptly. Unfortunately I had forgotten to ask if the fish came complete. It did. I got the whole shooting match—bones, head, tail, eyes and all—tasty but hard work. I thought it strange that there were no seagulls here but lots of dark, chirping hopping birds like minors came begging when they saw that I had food.
Then I had a great siesta. Towards dark, another girl wielding fly spray called in and also lit some mosquito coils. Shortly after the water was hot enough for a much-needed shower and hair wash. I need not have worried about the state of my hairdo as it was blown all over the place immediately by the constant breeze.
I went to bed, all night in my sleep blissfully aware of the rolling surf and the voice of the sea.
5 The dawn comes up like thunder
It was pouring rain when I woke in the morning which made it pleasantly cool. Breakfast was served in the restaurant, another thatched, open-sided shelter a short step way on the sand.
A group of young Burmese came to use the bungalow next to mine. One girl appeared at my open door, then came inside. Although she could not communicate with me in any way, she stood close to me, staring. I went out onto the porch and she followed and sat next to me. Eventually I had to go for a walk to lose her. It was as though she saw me as a sideshow entertainment. Or maybe she thought I needed company after discovering that I was alone.
I sat on my porch reading George Orwell’s Burmese Days. What a great writer. And how good to find his book on Burma to read while in the country. I spent several restful days in this delightful spot. Walking to meals was the only effort I made.
On the third day the sky became overcast right down to the sea with the darkest, blackest clouds. Then the rain came in with a roar across the Bay of Bengal and the waves of the pale-green sea rose up into rows of white-capped rollers. All day a terrific wind blew and heavy rain fell on and off. The little island that sat topped by trees close offshore was obliterated by rain and dense, black cloud. Nothing could be heard above the boom of the wild, grey-green white-foamed breakers as they crashed onto the sand.
At dinner I asked for a banana but was told they didn’t have any. I ordered chicken. The waiter returned and told me that the chicken was ‘No good’. I presumed from the way he said this that it had gone bad—past its use by date. At least I wasn’t given it. At breakfast I tried again for a banana and was told again, ‘No got’. Then I was offered banana pancake. This, he said, was okay. The pancake came, sans banana, but was still called banana pancake.
Returning from breakfast, outside my bungalow I found the cleaner trying unsuccessfully to fit into my shoes—footwear lives outside everywhere in Burma. She laughed and came to measure her feet against mine, amused that my feet were so small. At lunch I met a nice lad from New Zealand who had walked down the beach from another guesthouse and had my first English conversation since arriving in Burma while we waited for the current deluge to pass.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that here the guesthouse management did not frown upon clothes washing. They positively encouraged it. For the first time the freebies in the bathroom included a small packet of washing detergent. I appreciated the thought, but the goo was pretty useless—it was the consistency of toothpaste and about as much use on your clothes. However, I used it and departed a Good, Clean Little Tourist.
Another great storm rose up that day and by dark the wind was howling as if a cyclone was coming. The manager reassured me that it was not now cyclone time, merely the rainy season. Still, by the middle of the night I was actually fearful that the roof might blow off. I had never heard rain like that before and I have lived through several near cyclones in the north-west of Australia. From the news reports I had heard I assumed that this band of weather was the edge of a cyclone that had recently devastated Japan and southern China.
By the morning I was sick of the wind, but it was no longer raining, just grey and wild. Breakfast was toast and eggs. I was asked how I wanted my eggs—scrambled, fried or omelette. I said omelette. I got scrambled. I had come to realise that I got what they wanted to give me. However, a banana now came unrequested, two days late.
I found the manager, a personable young man, in the reception area. He told me that my guide book was wrong about the return buses to Yangon. The writer had failed to notice that the bus times quoted were only for the dry season. Now, in the rainy season, there was only one bus a week except for a local one to Pathein that left at 6.30 am. This would mean getting up in the dark (no lights). Anyway, it was out of the question for someone who considers nine am to be the crack of dawn. He tried to find a share taxi for me but there were few travellers around at present, only some Burmese and a pair of Germans at another guesthouse. The manager’s tiny cat came to inspect me. She was not at all like the cats we call Burmese in Australia. She was fawn coloured with darker face markin
gs. Satisfied that I was not a threat, mother cat then brought her four microscopic kittens to meet me too. I gave up on the sharing idea and asked the manager to organise a taxi to Pathein for the following day. From there, I would get a bus back to Yangon.
The taxi came at eleven next morning, a modern 4WD that could have taken five people. Blow those tight backpackers who wouldn’t pay a third of the fare. So in solitary state I set off for Pathein. Shortly we passed the turn off to the elephant camp I had read about. Although Burma has the world’s largest population of working elephants, this was only a tourist place so I let it pass.
It was a pleasant ride back to Pathein and the driver looked after me well. Arriving in the town he took me to a shop to have my passport photocopied three times—the front page and the visas and especially the page with my next of kin. Were they expecting to lose me? I was leaving a paper trail across this land and being monitored all the way, that’s for sure. The bus driver took these photocopies and gave one set to the checkpoint officer each time we left or entered the three districts we passed through on the way to Yangon.
The bus was a big surprise and so was the bus company office. This was a new company operating at reduced prices in order to get custom. My ticket cost three thousand kyats, about three dollars. For this I was given a bottle of water, a banana and an air-con waiting room with a proper toilet. We were ferried from the office to the bus station and bundled into the posh Yangon bus—the luggage even went underneath it and not in the aisles for everyone to clamber over.
I was the only foreigner. I sat next to a middle-aged Burmese gentleman who greeted me politely. Halfway to Yangon the bus stopped for food and comforts. I followed a line of women heading, I hoped, for the toilet. It was an oriental squat affair and now I saw the value of wearing a longii. Hitch it up and it keeps out of the grot, unlike trousers that have to go down and are in danger of mixing with it.
We had left on time and so arrived at the prescribed hour in Yangon, but then I found that the bus station is way out of town, strangely and inconveniently positioned an hour’s ride from the city. By the time I made it into the welcoming arms of Motherland, where I had a booking, it was dark.
The room I was given this time was similar to the one I’d had before, but it had better views from the windows. Now I had trees (almost my favourite things) to look at, as well as a large rubbish heap (not high on the list) that people came to fossick in. I washed and had a much-needed meal of chicken and vegetables. Apart from the banana the bus had provided I had not eaten since eight that morning.
It rained heavily during the night but was steaming hot again the next morning. I taxied to the railway station. I know that buying a train ticket gives money to the crap government but it was only fourteen dollars. I wanted now to travel around the Gulf of Martaban in the opposite direction from where I had just been on the delta. My aim was the town of Moulmein, capital of the Mon State in south-west Burma where 75 per cent of people are Mon. I would like to have gone by boat but foreigners were not allowed to travel this way.
What a great echoing cavern the covered shed that was the Yangon railway station turned out to be. It had absolutely acres of free space and lots of counters manned by platoons of staff, but there were no customers except me rattling around in there—possibly because buses are not government owned and are much cheaper. Not to mention that trains are said to be dangerous, derailments occur in wet weather, and the occasional one is still blown up by people who are peeved with the government.
In the middle of all this empty space a man sat at a small rickety wooden table decorated with a tin teapot, a china cup and an exercise book. Above him a big sign said, ‘Complaints’. Oh yair! Who would be game to complain here? And an exercise book! Any complaints could be erased easily.
I asked directions of one man behind a ticket counter and was sent to another way down the line. I eventually garnered the unwelcome information that there were no sleeper trains and that the latest daytime train departed at 7.15 am. After much deliberation I opted for that. I would have to break my rule of dawn being at nine just this once. I had to give the teller fifteen instead of fourteen dollars as he did not have a dollar change. I guessed that they did not do much trade with foreigners, the only passengers who had to pay in dollars.
From the station it was only a short walk to Bogeye Market. I needed to change some money and the money changers there are reliable, quick and give the best rates. In the street of opticians, an Indian man accosted me and tried to lure me into his shop. When I said that what I needed was a battery for my watch, he took me to a shop that did this. My watch had died the minute it hit the tropics.
After walking in the wrong direction for a while I gave up on the attempt to find my own way back to Motherland and hailed a taxi.
I watched the rain pouring down all through lunch, but then it slackened to a light sprinkling, so I set off again. As soon as I was well away from cover the rain immediately increased to a torrential downpour. Despite my umbrella I was soon drenched, wet through to my skin, even my underwear was soaked. I took refuge under a tree, then a bridge, but the rain still kept up. Finally, I made it to the shopping centre I had been heading for that I had been told was just around the corner. It was, but I went around the wrong corner, did my usual thing and got hopelessly lost. At the heavily security guarded door, I squelched inside, dripping onto their nice clean floor. With the soaked longii stuck to my legs binding my ankles together, I hobbled along like a geisha.
The shopping centre was a massive place three floors high, but it was not a comfortable shopping experience because every time I tried to examine something an assistant stood a foot away staring into my face. This was very off-putting even though the assistants were sweet. The shopping centre contained a great supermarket, although I couldn’t work out what was in most of the packaged goods. I bought cheese, yoghurt (which may or may not have been Yacoult), and some dragon fruit.
In the pharmacy I finally got through to the ever so patient female assistant that I wanted some aspirin and hoped that is what was in the quaint old-fashioned brown glass bottle she sold me for the equivalent of thirty cents.
Outside again I sloshed and dripped back from whence I came. In the evening I had a visit from a delightful Australian girl, a lawyer who had been working in Laos for a year. We established a connection—she had gone to school with an old friend of mine’s daughter.
It was great to be back in Motherland where the service is remarkable and everyone treats you like family. The waiter told me at dinner that I smelled nice. ‘I like your smell,’ he said. When I told the staff that I had to leave early in the morning to catch the train, I was written down for a wake-up call and an early breakfast. Unsurprising for a five star hotel, but not usual in guesthouses.
I got up unwillingly at five am to find breakfast ready and waiting. The taxi driver who took me to the station did not abandon me until he had found the platform I needed and handed me over to a porter who delivered me to my train and found my seat (which was a great seat until we moved and it turned into a bucking bronco!)
At first I sat waiting alone in the carriage. Then the vendors found me and came to goggle. Half a dozen of these young people sat themselves around me. One pointed to the scar on my arm and raised her eyebrows in query. It looks strange to others I guess, but now I never think about it nor realise that it is curious to have a zig zag decorating the length of my forearm like the mark of Zorro. I pantomimed cutting and removing an object. Sarcoma and malignancy were beyond this means of communication. Wide-eyed, she absorbed this information and then proceeded to exhibit me, explaining my interesting bits to the others. More vendors of chips and biscuits drifted along to join the fun. When some of them tried to muscle in on me she gently shooed them off. Get your own foreigner, this one is ours.
Unfortunately, no more of my breed showed up to relieve me of the responsibility of providing entertainment for the station’s population. I was the sole fore
igner on the train. Once again I wondered if there was something I should have gleaned from this.
The carriage was decrepit. The seats, although large and reasonably comfortable, were torn and broken, the linoleum on the floor was stained, grubby and worn through in large patches. Everything that could be was cracked or damaged, walls and windows were stained and beyond help. After a few hours the resident rats summoned the courage to come out to play. They chased each other from one side of the carriage floor to the other. Mind you, these were only small rats. Now I saw how I could have been badly flea bitten on the night train from Mandalay to Thazi on one of my earlier visits. The seats had been fabric but I had wondered how an animal could have got into the train to infest them with fleas. Now I knew. Rats! And rat fleas carry typhus. The only thing I am not vaccinated against—and it’s deadly. Surreptitiously I sprayed my seat with repellant.
The train journey began on time and ended only an hour and a half late, taking ten and a half hours, something I was told is perfectly acceptable. We gently edged out of the station with much blowing of the whistle, very necessary in light of the absence of automatic gates at road crossings. We chugged through lots of housing surrounded by piles of rubbish. I am nonplussed by the fact that the Burmese are such clean and beauty-loving people and yet they can live in a house and not notice the mess in the streets around it.
Soon we were in the countryside where everything was lushly green and there was a great deal of water either simply lying about on the ground or in ponds, rivers and canals. We passed over many bridges and stopped for the first time at Bago.
My carriage was called upper class. Finally it was official. I was upper class! My seat was in a row of singles and there were doubles across the aisle. There were few takers for the seats and the empty one in front of me, which was turned to face me, was handy to put my shoeless feet against. I needed this to brace myself. I thought I’d been on rattly, rough rides before but this one this took the grand prize. Not a bit of a jog, trot and lift saddle, this was a full gallop. I had to hang on for dear life and the next day I was stiff and sore and weary from the pummelling I had received. Now and then the noise the train made on the rails made me feel sure that we were about to fall off them—a not uncommon occurrence I had heard. I had been advised not to take the train north right now as that track was especially dangerous in the rainy season.