I knew the journey would be slow going, but I was under the impression that it was a 12-hour trip for some reason. After a conversation with one of the guys working on the train (in broken-English) however and I discover it's actually to be an epic 17-hour trip. Great. Having known this, perhaps I wouldn't have opted for the wooden bench seats of Ordinary Class...
I found myself sat next to an interesting young Burmese guy with zero English ability and opposite various other passengers at various stages of the journey. There were two other foreigners in this section, though by and large we mostly kept to ourselves. I dozed off a few times (difficult as it is to sleep dead upright on a wooden bench) and spent quite a few hours staring out of the open window at the villages passing us by. I was surprised at just how beautiful the view was, at how many pagodas and bullock-drawn carts I saw along the way. Sitting on those horrible seats for 17 hours was bad, but being able to see the countryside between the two cities was worth it.
Onboard the slow train to Mandalay
Traditional villages out in the countryside
The atmosphere aboard the train was also very interesting. I managed to thoroughly capture the attention of the train staff (conductor-like workers that keep an eye on everything along the journey) and I often saw them wandering into my car, sitting nearby and reading a newspaper while surreptitiously glancing in my direction every few minutes. Likewise, my fellow passengers seemed intrigued by my presence and I could often discern them talking about me - presumably wondering why I was in Ordinary Class instead of with the majority of other tourists in the First Class car. The highlight of the trip though were the vendors that kept hopping on and off the train around station stops. It seems you could buy just about anything on board - from freshly cooked stir-fry noodles to meals of rice and fried fish (I tried it, it was delicious) or beer or whiskey or soft drinks and fried samosas, fresh fruits, cold crepes, spring rolls, packets of chips, cigarettes and even shampoo toiletry packs. I did buy a few things though unfortunately I think I was charged "foreigner prices" for most of it.
Arriving in Mandalay at 11pm and without a hotel reservation wasn't the most relaxing way to approach the city, but sharing a cab to a recommended guesthouse with a fellow JET (a Canadian guy from Kochi) made things a little more palatable. Unfortunately, the guesthouse that we headed to was full (lucky for Phil he had a reservation already!) and so I set off down the street to try my luck at finding a room at a few other places. Five guesthouses later and I was starting to think that I'd have to sleep on the street, until I stumbled across the Sabai Phyu Hotel. Thankfully, the guys at the desk (who spoke PERFECT English) informed me that they did indeed have a vacancy and that the room would cost 12USD a night. Without even bothering to look at it, I filled out the paperwork, paid my money and took the key. It was just after midnight and I had finally found a place to sleep. I'd not had dinner and enquired about places that might still be open (with a teahouse/restaurant just two blocks away my best bet) but after getting upstairs and unpacking my stuff, I was plum tuckered and instead crawled straight into bed.
The next morning I was on a mission to change Japanese yen into Burmese kyats and set off towards the nearest bank to complete the exchange. Once at the bank however, I was told that they don't change JPY and that I'd have to try the next bank... Jostling from one bank to another, each time in vain, I found myself back at the guesthouse thoroughly stressing out about running out of cash. I had maybe 200USD (and 50,000yen) on me and needed to make it through 5 days of travel before I could reach the apparent banking mecca of Yangon again. I sat down on the front steps of the guesthouse to have a cigarette and ponder my options, which is when I met Bastien, Ulysse and Jas - two French guys and a German girl who become my travelling companions off and on for the remainder of my trip...
The trio - who had been travelling together for awhile - were in the process of arranging motorbikes for hire and in order to make up numbers, invited me along with them for the day. Seeing that this would be much cheaper than hiring my own motorbike tour guide for the day, I decided to take them up on their offer and soon we were on our way out to find Amarapura and the U Bein Bridge - the boys on one bike, Jas and I on the other. The bridge itself, though rather famous, was quite difficult to find and we ended up backtracking several times until we decided to stop for lunch instead. We stepped into a little tea house by the side of the road and each gobbled up two sweet steamed buns (filled with red bean paste and shredded coconut) along with some sweet, milky tea. The tea house was crowded with 20+ people all - rather intently - watching a Thai film on the flat screen TVs. After a few cigarettes and some get-to-know-you conversation later, we took off again in search of the U Bein Bridge, the handmade teak footbridge that graces the cover of the Myanmar Lonely Planet guidebook. In the middle of the afternoon and at low tide, we found it to be a less than spectacular sight but Jas and I took the time to walk across it anyway (it's over 1km long) while the boys had a second lunch and a beer.
U Bein Bridge
Finding our way out of Amarapura was just as difficult and realising that the boys had a puncture didn't help our cause in getting back to the hotel before sundown. However, the evening ride back into Mandalay City along the lakeside was a beautiful, if not slightly scary, experience. We arrived back at Sabai Phyu at 7pm much to the ire of the men who had rented us the motorcycles, insisting as they were that we were due back at 6pm. It took a few thousand kyats (a couple of dollars) to smooth the situation over and once settled, the four of us agreed to meet up again in 45 minutes to go and get some dinner.
Ulysse and Bastien waiting for their punctured tyre to be repaired
Wandering down the darkened streets of Mandalay we found a night market and several street vendors selling curry. We picked a busy looking place, grabbed ourselves a table and tucked into a number of plates of curry each. I decided to try chicken, beef and goat - all of them were delicious! After dinner the boys wanted to find an internet lounge to check their Christmas emails, so Jas and I bought a couple of cheroots (cheap Burmese style cigar/cigarettes) and sat on the stoop outside the store, smoking and chatting for the next hour. By 11pm we were ready to call it a night and so off we went to bed, with plans to meet up the following morning to do it all over again.
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