Adventures in South East Asia

4 ~ Burmese bus experience

Getting from point A to point B often proved to be the most entertaining part of a trip. Myanmar was no exception. Bryan, Mariano, one of the German twins and I hopped in two cabs to the bus station outside of town. Our cab made it through in good time, but the other was pulled over by "police" asking for fees to enter this area of the country.

The bus station area was a dusty, disorganized affair. A fair number of old buses sat outside of small ticket buildings, all lined up in rows down the unpaved street. I had never been to India, but I imagined this would be similar to their rural bus stations. Bryan, who had been there in his other travels, confirmed my suspicions.

I was probably only using India as a comparison because of the few Bollywood films, or those set in India, I had seen in the past. To completely generalize, people in the West, myself included, really had no idea what life was like in the East unless they had visited or taken a specific interest.

I had been so wrong about everything, arriving in Bangkok ten months ago. In the Toronto airport, I had turned to my friends excitedly saying, "Take it in! This will be the last time we'll be surrounded by signs we can read and have English as the official language."

I had naively expected dusty, bumpy roads with cattle and elephants roaming freely among the thatched-roofed homes. Thailand laughed in my face as we drove down the smooth, ten-lane, paved expressway with signs in both Thai and English, which looked exactly like the ones we had in Canada except adorned with Thai.

We had driven past nearly a dozen brightly lit, beautifully designed bridges and a downtown probably larger than my entire city. Considering the Bangkok metropolitan area had a third the population of my entire country, I couldn't be surprised.

My eyes had grown big as we passed Ikea. All I could think was man, we haven't even finished building ours yet. Well played, Bangkok, well played.

Back at the Burmese bus stop, we had a few options to pass the time. We could go inside to use their squatter toilets, sit on the sweltering bus or remain outside with our bags to be targeted by every vendor who saw us as potential income. While others smiled politely and ignored the vendors, I tried to learn a few words in Burmese, which really didn't stick but gave us more to do than stand awkwardly beside each other. The Burmese man had a kind smile while his age-spotted face crinkled, even when he knew I wasn't going to be a customer.

The bus ride was depicted on travel forums as an awful experience to avoid if possible. On principle, I didn't waste money or fossil fuels flying to easy-to-reach places. I looked forward to the Burmese bus experience. As promised, the bus delivered obnoxiously loud Burmese soap operas, music videos, and freezing air-conditioned temperatures, making winter a reality again. When it was 40 degrees Celsius outside, who would complain?

The soap opera, which went on at least three hours, involved a dangerous love triangle between a girl, a bad boy and a guy in a wheelchair. From the moments I caught, the story involved masks, video chats, and random supper dates where the girl would stand people up and induce an awful lot of drinking, even by my standards.

After a year of sampling random video clips on buses, Cambodia did take the cake for best ridiculously overdone music video romance plots involving gangs, murder, hospital scenes and street fights, all in less than five minutes. Thailand had some good ones too. They were so expressive you really didn't need the language to figure them out.

Our Burmese bus stopped three hours into this intense drama to kick everyone out for some supper at about 10 p.m. A large market was set up on the street, selling everything from fried animal parts, to noodles, to apples. We took this time to stretch our legs and the handful of us who spoke English, including Mariano, my Italian breakfast buddy and Bryan, commented on the ridiculous Burmese drama we were half watching on the bus. I was happy I no longer had a Burmese preteen sleeping on my shoulder. Bryan told me it could be worse and I could have a 27-year-old Italian instead as he poked fun at Mariano's sleeping habits. Personally, I would have chosen the Italian. His age did surprise me as I had him pegged as over thirty, maybe it was just the shaved head and wide grin that took up most of his face.

We arrived in Bagan at around 3:30 a.m. Bagan was not a city with nightlife, nor was Myanmar a country that stayed up much after dark. My theory hinged on the military-issued curfews which figured so prominently in their past. Perhaps, the country hadn't yet adapted to freedom, or maybe I had things completely wrong. I was not sure why the buses arrived at such a time either, probably so we would groggily stumble out of the bus into the hands of the buggy drivers who would quote prices we were too sleepy to convert into reasonable amounts.

We crammed three people and our bags in a horse drawn buggy and rode five minutes down the road to the guesthouse Mariano and I had both booked separately from our hostel in Yangon. The money for the short carriage ride was worth it because our driver beat on the gate until whoever was sleeping in the lobby woke up and let us in.

Luckily, Mariano and I had reservations, for tomorrow night, so we were graciously shown upstairs to the computer area. The man yelled at the other employee, sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor, to get up. We frowned and told him it was really alright, but he left nonetheless, probably because he didn't speak English. The Burmese man gestured to the empty twin mattress on the floor, next to the singe computer and desk, and left us there. There weren't even sheets on the mattress, only stains.

Looking at each other, Mariano and I burst into laughter at the ridiculousness of this situation. Beyond eating breakfast together on one of my more social mornings, I really didn't know this man at all. Here we were with a dirty floor mattress, which a random person just vacated, to sleep on together at this strange hour. I sneaked around the corner to find a partially upright cot in the restaurant area that I chose to sleep on instead while we both laughed ourselves to sleep.

It wasn't a bad rest besides being severely judged a few hours later by the clientele eating their breakfast with a sleepy backpacker on display. I grabbed my bag and stumbled upon the other half of our party, Bryan and the Germans, who had found a more secluded home on floor mattresses in an unfinished room, open to anyone walking by.

Bryan and I laughed about our first Myanmar bus adventure over some less pretentious breakfast at a local joint down the street. It was delightfully local and spicy, just what I was looking for. The adventures had just begun.