Getting from A to B....and often back again.
27 Jan:
Transport has significantly improved.
Our last couple of journeys - from Bagan to Mandalay and from Mandalay to Hsipaw - were fun. We took a 13 hour boat trip from Bagan to Mandalay, and what a great trip! (except for having to get up around 4 am!) We basically sat outside almost the whole way on a 'two story' boat, under a blue sky, watching the changing shore-line, fisher-boats, tugs, and people-movers go by. Just lovely. I'll do up a blog with some pics when I can ever get a fast enough internet connection. They even served a modest breakfast and pretty tasty lunch on board.
Mandalay to Hsipaw, turns out, was easiest doing a 'shared taxi'. We shared a taxi with two other people, along a windy road through the country. Pretty good way to make the five hour journey (though we could have happily replaced one of the other passengers) Since then in Hsipaw we've been using foot power to get around. Things have been in reasonable walking distance, and the roads aren't the busy...but are frequently occupied by young Buddhist nuns and monks from the local monasteries,doing their once a day rounds.
19 Jan
Hardly know where to begin.
Let me get this straight....I have been to India a fair number of times and have traveled on every sort of motor/animal/ etc driven vehicle. The most common have been buses and trains. Of these trips, some have been, to say the least, not too comfortable, and some pretty wretched.
However, last night,Mern & I took the night train between Pyay and Bagan. It finally arrived at 11pm (supposed to be 10pm), and arrived in Began at 10:30am. We actually even struggled to get tickets on this overnight, and paid 'a guy' to get his brother in Yangon to get us tickets. Sleeper accommodation was not possible, so we ended up on 2nd class, 'soft seat'. Fine, we thought, sit up and try to get some shut-eye on the way. No A/C, but 'windows open',which for the weather at this time sounded ok. Right.....get ready for the worst train ride ever.
Get to the station, had some nice interactions with local folks, then get-on-the-train. Holy crap! I can honestly say, even Indian coaches looked better. People had pulled seats off their frames & were laying on the floor. To get our seats the station guy kicked a couple of people sleeping on the floor on them off of our 'seats'. Absolutely vertical backs with a bit of padding. The whole train was literally rotting away. The walls, some of which were in wood, I could actually just peel away with the rot. Filthy, even the entire ceiling. Wires hanging down near lights where water was coming in through the ceiling next to the lights. The 'toilet' - well, I really wouldn't want to be a woman even trying to use the thing. All the windows wide open and, unfortunately, felt like the coldest day of the year here. Paul put on a bunch of more clothes but was still cold (and so was I, hoodied up). The doors - especially the one next to our 'seats' - had there locks broken so would swing and slam pretty constantly. Paul or I were up & down all night trying to lock the door closed - get up, push the door shut, try to attach the clasp, sit, then 5 minutes later do it again. I had a laughing fit at one point when I was trying to find something in the door frame to try to jam it open, and ended up actually peeling rotting siding off the walls to try to do this. And when I say slam, I mean SLAM! The connecting metal areas between the cars were smashing and grinding whenever the car moved at all - deafening at times. When you looked down through the carriage to the other connected ones I was happy not to be seasick, as they all moved in different directions while we careened down the tracks, so everything seemed to just swing madly.
Of course this is all complicated by the fact that the train car is constantly swinging to & fro and bouncing. Just the car? Nope. The tracks themselves are pretty much a mess and the train bounces along on them drunkenly trying to stay on them. When the train actually speeds up, hold on!
Most of the locals were 'sleeping' through this on the seats placed on the floor, and the roaches were quite good size, so I wasn't copying them. We both tried every position possible on our seats to desperately try to get some kind of snatches of sleep. Sitting straight up, leaning (bouncing) against the wall (Mern's wall was wet,wouldn't you know), scrunched up fetal positions (lucky I'm not that tall, and that I brought Anne's inflatable plane pillow with me), stretching out with legs across the corridor, etc.
I was able to actually grab some periods of sleep, but Mern didn't.
In the morning we just hoped for some warm sun, but no luck till about 8am. It's been raining here for a number of days, and was overcast with only short glimpses of a pale sun. It did finally clear up and boy did the sun feel good. There's actually some sort of 'food service' on the train, and a well-dressed young fellow was offering tea etc. With the state of the water on the train, and the lack of any cleanliness we both politely declined. I was able to get a few pics from the train, but we bounced around so much it was pretty tough. The track did smooth out a bit nearer to Bagan, but I was pretty thrashed by then.
Off the train finally, and even after making it to our hotel and snoozing, I still felt like I was swaying around.
.....And we fought to get tickets on this thing....
17 Jan.
It's been a joy as well a real horror story going through the motions of 'getting someplace'.
For example, we had a bicycle trishaw (where two people sit back to back in a 'sidecar' attached to a bicycle) ride through the streets to a Halal kitchen tonight (in Pyay) - kind of fun and a typical means of transport here. But yesterday and this morning, after a back and butt-breaking full day touring around Hpa-an in a truck-like tuk-tuk (a motorcycle front with a covered bed of seats behind), which had no springs and driving over very rough 'roads' and never exceeding 39 Km/hour (or we would have ended up mashing our heads on the ceiling), Paul and I ended up on two wretched bus rides overnight for 14 hours till noon on our way from Hpa-an to Pyay. The first was a video bus, with a large screen with speakers above our heads, showing incredibly bad music 'videos' and out of sync,lengthy TV comedies in Burmese, all while being squeezed into small seats. The second, starting at 3:30 AM from Yangon (transit point) was a small bus with even smaller seats, driving with minor springs and over really bumpy roads, stopping again and again to pick up people on the side of the road. We did have a nice talk with a girl learning English..but the journey was long and painful, hoping and hoping it was over, but not, and resulting in a lot of real soreness and exhaustion - sleep was really hard to come by to say the least. However, we did have a great AC fairly comfortable bus on the way from Yangon to Mawlamyine below Hpa-an. Right now we're waiting to have a 'discussion' with the 'brother of a connected guy' to buy rare as hen's teeth tickets from Pyay to Bagan. Turns out you 'can't' buy overnight sleeper tickets from this station....unless someone knows someone. We'll see.
Intra city transport is way easier, though if with a tuk-tuk likely to be somewhat painful. I'm simply not a fan of tuk-tuks also because of the way they're built here so I can't really take pics of stuff around me.....and so bouncy that shots usually can't work out anyway. But they're the main transport inside the towns. In Yangon there are a lot of taxis and they provide really excellent transport deals. BTW,looks like scooters and motorcycles are banned in Yangon - it makes sense as they are horrendous sources of air pollution, so their presence is all outside of the capital.
27 Jan:
Transport has significantly improved.
Our last couple of journeys - from Bagan to Mandalay and from Mandalay to Hsipaw - were fun. We took a 13 hour boat trip from Bagan to Mandalay, and what a great trip! (except for having to get up around 4 am!) We basically sat outside almost the whole way on a 'two story' boat, under a blue sky, watching the changing shore-line, fisher-boats, tugs, and people-movers go by. Just lovely. I'll do up a blog with some pics when I can ever get a fast enough internet connection. They even served a modest breakfast and pretty tasty lunch on board.
Mandalay to Hsipaw, turns out, was easiest doing a 'shared taxi'. We shared a taxi with two other people, along a windy road through the country. Pretty good way to make the five hour journey (though we could have happily replaced one of the other passengers) Since then in Hsipaw we've been using foot power to get around. Things have been in reasonable walking distance, and the roads aren't the busy...but are frequently occupied by young Buddhist nuns and monks from the local monasteries,doing their once a day rounds.
19 Jan
Hardly know where to begin.
Let me get this straight....I have been to India a fair number of times and have traveled on every sort of motor/animal/ etc driven vehicle. The most common have been buses and trains. Of these trips, some have been, to say the least, not too comfortable, and some pretty wretched.
However, last night,Mern & I took the night train between Pyay and Bagan. It finally arrived at 11pm (supposed to be 10pm), and arrived in Began at 10:30am. We actually even struggled to get tickets on this overnight, and paid 'a guy' to get his brother in Yangon to get us tickets. Sleeper accommodation was not possible, so we ended up on 2nd class, 'soft seat'. Fine, we thought, sit up and try to get some shut-eye on the way. No A/C, but 'windows open',which for the weather at this time sounded ok. Right.....get ready for the worst train ride ever.
Get to the station, had some nice interactions with local folks, then get-on-the-train. Holy crap! I can honestly say, even Indian coaches looked better. People had pulled seats off their frames & were laying on the floor. To get our seats the station guy kicked a couple of people sleeping on the floor on them off of our 'seats'. Absolutely vertical backs with a bit of padding. The whole train was literally rotting away. The walls, some of which were in wood, I could actually just peel away with the rot. Filthy, even the entire ceiling. Wires hanging down near lights where water was coming in through the ceiling next to the lights. The 'toilet' - well, I really wouldn't want to be a woman even trying to use the thing. All the windows wide open and, unfortunately, felt like the coldest day of the year here. Paul put on a bunch of more clothes but was still cold (and so was I, hoodied up). The doors - especially the one next to our 'seats' - had there locks broken so would swing and slam pretty constantly. Paul or I were up & down all night trying to lock the door closed - get up, push the door shut, try to attach the clasp, sit, then 5 minutes later do it again. I had a laughing fit at one point when I was trying to find something in the door frame to try to jam it open, and ended up actually peeling rotting siding off the walls to try to do this. And when I say slam, I mean SLAM! The connecting metal areas between the cars were smashing and grinding whenever the car moved at all - deafening at times. When you looked down through the carriage to the other connected ones I was happy not to be seasick, as they all moved in different directions while we careened down the tracks, so everything seemed to just swing madly.
Of course this is all complicated by the fact that the train car is constantly swinging to & fro and bouncing. Just the car? Nope. The tracks themselves are pretty much a mess and the train bounces along on them drunkenly trying to stay on them. When the train actually speeds up, hold on!
Most of the locals were 'sleeping' through this on the seats placed on the floor, and the roaches were quite good size, so I wasn't copying them. We both tried every position possible on our seats to desperately try to get some kind of snatches of sleep. Sitting straight up, leaning (bouncing) against the wall (Mern's wall was wet,wouldn't you know), scrunched up fetal positions (lucky I'm not that tall, and that I brought Anne's inflatable plane pillow with me), stretching out with legs across the corridor, etc.
I was able to actually grab some periods of sleep, but Mern didn't.
In the morning we just hoped for some warm sun, but no luck till about 8am. It's been raining here for a number of days, and was overcast with only short glimpses of a pale sun. It did finally clear up and boy did the sun feel good. There's actually some sort of 'food service' on the train, and a well-dressed young fellow was offering tea etc. With the state of the water on the train, and the lack of any cleanliness we both politely declined. I was able to get a few pics from the train, but we bounced around so much it was pretty tough. The track did smooth out a bit nearer to Bagan, but I was pretty thrashed by then.
Off the train finally, and even after making it to our hotel and snoozing, I still felt like I was swaying around.
.....And we fought to get tickets on this thing....
17 Jan.
It's been a joy as well a real horror story going through the motions of 'getting someplace'.
For example, we had a bicycle trishaw (where two people sit back to back in a 'sidecar' attached to a bicycle) ride through the streets to a Halal kitchen tonight (in Pyay) - kind of fun and a typical means of transport here. But yesterday and this morning, after a back and butt-breaking full day touring around Hpa-an in a truck-like tuk-tuk (a motorcycle front with a covered bed of seats behind), which had no springs and driving over very rough 'roads' and never exceeding 39 Km/hour (or we would have ended up mashing our heads on the ceiling), Paul and I ended up on two wretched bus rides overnight for 14 hours till noon on our way from Hpa-an to Pyay. The first was a video bus, with a large screen with speakers above our heads, showing incredibly bad music 'videos' and out of sync,lengthy TV comedies in Burmese, all while being squeezed into small seats. The second, starting at 3:30 AM from Yangon (transit point) was a small bus with even smaller seats, driving with minor springs and over really bumpy roads, stopping again and again to pick up people on the side of the road. We did have a nice talk with a girl learning English..but the journey was long and painful, hoping and hoping it was over, but not, and resulting in a lot of real soreness and exhaustion - sleep was really hard to come by to say the least. However, we did have a great AC fairly comfortable bus on the way from Yangon to Mawlamyine below Hpa-an. Right now we're waiting to have a 'discussion' with the 'brother of a connected guy' to buy rare as hen's teeth tickets from Pyay to Bagan. Turns out you 'can't' buy overnight sleeper tickets from this station....unless someone knows someone. We'll see.
Intra city transport is way easier, though if with a tuk-tuk likely to be somewhat painful. I'm simply not a fan of tuk-tuks also because of the way they're built here so I can't really take pics of stuff around me.....and so bouncy that shots usually can't work out anyway. But they're the main transport inside the towns. In Yangon there are a lot of taxis and they provide really excellent transport deals. BTW,looks like scooters and motorcycles are banned in Yangon - it makes sense as they are horrendous sources of air pollution, so their presence is all outside of the capital.
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