After saying goodbye to Simon in Yangon, Saioa and I decided to go visit Mawlamyine, which is the third largest city in Myanmar (but still only home to 300,000) and served as the capital of British Burma in the 19th Century. George Orwell lived there for years and Rudyard Kipling came to visit for a few days and fell in love with a Burmese babe.
He wrote: "I should better remember what the pagoda was like had I not fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with a Burmese girl at the foot of the first flight of steps. Only the fact of the steamer starting next noon prevented me from staying at Moulmein forever."
Well. We checked out that pagoda. Didn't fall in love with any Burmese girls (bummer). Pagoda was a pagoda (have seen so many) but the view over the town at sunset was lovely.
We spent a couple of days exploring the town. Plenty of really lovely curious locals that were really excited to engage us in conversation with whatever limited English vocabulary they had at their disposal. Anyway, it really wasn't much to write home about, and unlike Kipling, we really didn't feel any desire to stay forever - so we decided to bail to the beach with the limited days Saioa has left in the country.
We took the night bus at 9pm to Yangon with our fingers crossed we'd be able to just change directly to a bus to Chaung Tha Beach without having to catch the pricey taxi into town and back out to the bus station again.
(Got a little stir crazy on the bus)
Well we arrived at around 4ish in the morning.. I think. Turns out the bus doesn't terminate back at the bus station like we'd hoped, but in the middle of nowhere.. But with plenty of taxi drivers to fight over us. They wanted some ridiculous prices to take us to the bus station.. 'Negotiations' started at $10 each with a bid from Old Guy... Young Emo Kid insisted the same price.. Then Old Guy and Emo Kid would just keep yelling over the top of us about how it's a good price because it's a long drive, while we tried to ask around for a better price (that price was ridiculous, btw.. we had no idea where we were but generally it costs $6-$7 total for the 1hr taxi ride to the bus station from the centre of town).. Fat Nice Guy offered us the more reasonable price of $7 total.. Old Guy and Emo Kid berated him for that one.. they usually all try and band together to keep the price ridiculous so we have no option other than to take it. So we went to get in the taxi with Fat Nicd Guy but Old Guy insisted that we would go with Emo Kid for that price. We tried to insist we go with Fat Nice Guy but they bullied him into staying put and made us go with Emo.
So we piled in his taxi with a small family, which was not part of the deal (not that we minded, but if you're sharing a taxi, you don't pay the same price). Also, it wasn't even his taxi because there was a photo of some other guy on the dashboard. We went and dropped off the small family first, and then he asked me where we're going! The whole time he had no idea. I'm trying to communicate to him we need the bus station for Chaung Tha beach (there's actually 2 bus stations - we were just assuming it was the main one).
"Where you go?"
"Bus to Chaung Tha beach"
"Direct?"
"Yes, direct bus"
*Emo kid dials someone on the phone, talks to them and then passes it to me*
"Hello?"
"Where you go?"
"Bus station to Chaung Tha"
"Ah Chaung Tha. $150"
"What?!? No. Bus."
"Chaung Tha Beach. $150"
"NO. BUS STATION"
*silence*
At this point I'm flipping crazily through my guidebook trying to work out which bus station it actually is (may have been good to work that out before half asleep at 4am) and manage to find the name of the bus station (wasn't the main one - thank god I checked!). From there Emo Kid and I understood each other and it was about 20min of driving (while he also combed his luscious Emo Kid hairstyle) til we were there. Sai decided that $7 was steep considering a) he made that price with zero idea where we were going b) we shared with a family who also paid him and c) it only took 20min so we passed him a $5 and were done with him.
We had the fantastic luck of getting 2 of the last actual seats (not the fold-down aisle seats) on the bus that left an hour later. We sat in a local tea shop and drank a type of Burmese tea (which I'm addicted to - it's a bit like Indian chai but without the spices and it's made on condensed milk rather than milk and sugar) and ate this local bread stuff which I can only describe as being some sort of croissant-churro hybrid.
The bus was a bit of a dump and had a large population of mosquitos, but on the upside, the exterior was painted with rainbows. About 3h in without a stop Saioa and I were painfully regretting those cups of tea, but were at the very back of the bus and there were 20 people sitting in the aisle between us and communicating with the driver that we'd very much like to stop. Luckily a girl next to us in the back seat was getting off so we took the opportunity to pee behind a bush on the side of the road (in a very classy fashion, of course). This lovely old woman held her jacket up for us for extra privacy.
The rest of the bus ride was less eventful. The 27 miles after the turnoff for Chaung Tha was only one lane wide and incredibly winding so it took almost 2h!
Chaung Tha is incredible. We're staying in our own little bamboo bungalow. I'm writing this now from our front deck (will have to go to the main hotel down the road to actually upload) where we can have breakfast and tea served to us if we so choose. We spent the afternoon swimming in the beautifully warm ocean, watching the sunset and drinking coconuts.
Also, there are children selling fireworks on the beach and they are being set off almost constantly at the moment. I'm going to buy SO MANY fireworks tomorrow night!! SO MANY.
Also, I may never leave. You all know where to find me.
To be continued.
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