From Burma to Myanmar Read online

  Time dragged on. The ride was wonderful but the stops became tedious and I could see no reason for them being so extended. We sat in Kalaw station for more than an hour and a half. It was half-past one in the morning when I finally climbed down from the train at Thazi. The station was a mess of people sleeping on straw mats or blankets on the cement platform floor under the tin roof. The passengers had had to dismount on the wrong side of the tracks and the rest of them nipped across the rails to the other side, but I could see the lights of an approaching train. I stood there feeling helpless. The tracks were deep and looked dangerous to cross in the dark. And my bag had to be carried.

  Eventually a station person came to ask where I wanted to go. I said I wanted to take the sleeper train to Yangon the next night but right then I wanted a taxi to a guesthouse. Another man joined us, then another and still more until there were six men standing in a half circle around me all telling me the train to Yangon left at nine in the morning and that I should wait there until then as there was no taxi. ‘No sleeper’, they shouted like a Greek chorus. I knew this was rubbish and yet one of these men was the on-duty station master. Another man told me that he was the police—‘Special,’ he said. Did that mean like the SS? He wore a faded T-shirt that said Ralph Lauren. I don’t think so.

  Finally they all escorted me across the tracks. The station master took me to a room next to his office and, unlocking a big padlock to let me in, said I could sleep there. Inside were two small, beat-up vinyl couches and several rows of the ubiquitous train station issue red plastic chairs. Ralph Lauren sat himself down in one, cross-legged with his bare feet pointed away from me, as is polite. The rest joined him. Were they going to watch me all night? It was unnerving. But eventually they got the message and left me to it.

  I slept semi-concertinaed on a short couch for an hour and then got up to answer the insistent demand of my bladder. I asked the station master where the toilet was and he pointed out the back—the dark backyard of the station yard. I didn’t find the loo out there but I did find a horse and cart and its driver sleeping on the seat. Great was my joy. ‘Guesthouse?’ I shouted to wake him. He nodded. I grabbed him and trotted him to my bag which he dutifully carried back to the cart. Collecting the rest of my things, I departed as fast as I could, thanking the station master as I went. He didn’t want me to go but nothing was going to keep me from a possible bed, not to mention a toilet.

  Clip-clopping through the three-in-the-morning pitch dark around town, we came to the Wonderful Guesthouse. It was secured all across its front with heavy iron screens as though they were expecting the Mongol hordes to descend on them in the night. I had a horrible feeling it was closed for good. It looked abandoned. And there was only one other place to stay in this town. But the driver knew better. He located a bell and rang it insistently and repeatedly until a light came on. I stood there looking as pathetic as I could. Bedraggled and frowsy as I was, this wasn’t hard. They were full, the woman said. I pleaded for a bed, looking even more forlorn. Then the kind woman said, ‘You like the manager’s room?’ Would I ever!

  As she let me in she said, ‘I cannot charge you for this room. I just give you’. I insisted and forced half the usual rate of ten dollars on her. The room was tiny and really just a store room with a bed crammed in among shelves loaded with towels, sheets, blankets and cleaning supplies. But it had a toilet, oriental, but stationary. Something that has enormous appeal after train loos in Burma. There was also a hose fixture on the wall to act as a shower.

  Gratefully, I fell on the bed. There were no sheets but a blanket was good enough. After a couple of hours I surfaced and the owner fed me egg and bread, coffee and banana. Then a thought occurred to me. ‘Does the manager usually sleep in that room you gave me?’ ‘No, my son does’. This was the good-looking young man who helped to run the place, who was right then smiling at me. I was amazed he could still smile at me after I had turfed him out of his bed at three am. Wonderful indeed, was this place.

  When I left I gave the rightful owner of the bed I had used the pillow I had bought for the night on the bus. It was filled with silicon and was not the usual cheap affair of the market. I had bought it in upmarket Ocean Supermarket and it had cost a whole four dollars.

  Then I asked Madame if she knew about the possibility of getting a sleeper on the night train. She did. Madame knew much more than the station staff. She insisted on walking me ‘five minutes’—twenty was more like it—to the station. Now the daytime station master was in charge and he knew all about sleepers. He and his two assistants set about phoning Mandalay. It took a lot of effort by these three smiling young men, but in the end they did produce a ticket for a sleeper on the six pm train to Yangon. It was a relief to know I would have a bed of my own that night.

  I slept some more and surfaced to go down the street to a restaurant for lunch. It was a beer hall full of men who regarded me with extreme interest. I think I had missed the place Madame had directed me to.

  At train time I took a horse cart, the local means of transport, to the station. It had poured rain for the last two hours and I had sat watching it and thinking about the brolly I had just lost. That little pink umbrella had been with me for years since I had bought it in Laos. It had learned to look after itself and must also have had a charmed life because I had left it behind in cafes, shops, markets, buses, hotels, anywhere I could in fact. People were forever running after me with it or I was trotting back to retrieve it. But, sadly, there was no going back for it this time. I hope the tuk tuk man would be kind to it.

  The train arrived from Mandalay bang on time at six pm. Among the crowd on the platform I was the only foreigner, but I had three station workers looking after me, carrying my baggage and shepherding me along like a visiting film star. All that was missing was the red carpet. They saw me installed in my sleeping compartment of the one sleeper carriage on this long train. Then we all shook hands and they waved me off. It was going to be a shock to go home and be treated like a mere mortal after Burma.

  The train quickly gathered speed and we lolloped along at a cracking pace, rocking and rolling and making a very satisfactory train-type sound. Soon we were in countryside that looked a bit dryish now and then. Later, as we went south, there were extensive areas of crops and rice and buffalos, cows and goats. An attendant wandered by with a menu. I ordered and food was produced shortly after. I had asked for noodles and chicken. I got a massive pile of fried rice. I left some on a station platform for one of those poor stray dogs. This train was different again from other sleepers I had had. However, none of them had been new in the last forty years. This compartment had only two berths with narrow beds one above the other and the usual open window. The metal sides were beat up, scratched and scuffed and covered with just plain dirt. A good scrub would have helped a lot. But in general it was superficially clean. At least there was a clean sheet on the cloth seat and a little pillow-cased cushion.

  This was a real express train, unlike some that are called express but aren’t. We only stopped for five minutes at a few stations and actually passed through others, something other trains seemed incapable of doing. I slept after a less than satisfactory visit to the heaving oriental loo. It was nice to sleep with my face level with an open window but it was strange to wake up when we had stopped in a station and find people on the platform closely inspecting me.

  18 The final farewell

  This journey was fast and in twelve and half hours I was in Yangon station. Five minutes before arrival people appeared on the train offering taxis. I accepted one man and he lumped my bag out onto the platform where he sold me to a driver, an older man who insisted on taking my hand to lead me down the stairs. At the bottom stood a posse of other hopeful drivers, who cheered and clapped my guardian as though he had secured the prize. Which he had. He charged me double the going rate. We got into his old car and lumbered off. No sitting in the back with this bloke driving, he almost pushed me into the front seat with him.
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br />   Early morning Yangon was alive with street vendors and monks making their alms rounds. Motherland welcomed me back and had me in my room, after the compulsory breakfast, by eight o’clock.

  Three hours’ sleep later I staggered out to wash. The water from my new room’s sink flowed down over my feet to exit via a convenient hole in the floor. Easier than mending the break in the pipe, but where else would you have to strip to your knickers to wash your hands?

  Treating the sandfly bites I had received that morning from the resident population that live in the trees outside Motherland, I discovered a great scratch five inches long on the back of my arm. I rushed to look at the shirt I had just discarded, realising that a cut like this had to have been made on a bare arm. It was. The shirt had a large three-cornered tear down the sleeve. This must have happened when I fell over. Do not read on if you are eating—I fell over in the toilet on the train. A pongy, wet, squat toilet. The train had been shaking from side to side like a dog with a rat when a sudden more violent lurch rocked me over sideways, and down I went, bashing the side wall with my arm. I had hung on to a pipe, desperate not to descend totally to the mess on the floor. When the train straightened, I clawed myself upright. Thankfully I had managed to keep my clothes off the floor. I filled the plastic dipper from the tap that was used for flushing—you didn’t expect a push-button toilet here, did you?—to wash my feet and shoes. Fortunately this toilet was not in the appalling condition that some were, but I disinfected my cut anyway.

  It had rained heavily during the morning and now it was damp and muggy, humid and grey. I borrowed a brolly from the receptionist and walked to the Ocean supermarket to buy a replacement for my lost one. Now I have Pink Umbrella Mark 10 or something near that number. Due to an ingrained superstition that it is bad luck to open an umbrella inside, I did not know until I opened my previous umbrella outside the shop that it sported a big picture of Snoopy dog, which I then had to live with for years. Opening the latest one in the street, I discovered that it had a picture of Barbie, as well as ‘My favourite doll’ written on it. At least I like Snoopy. I loathe stick-insect Barbie.

  Happily ensconced at Motherland, I slept for another ten hours. At breakfast the next morning the waiter said to me, ‘You always smiling’. I replied, ‘I am always happy to be here’. Why not, it was true. I had finally learned to say, yesu ting ba be (thank you) and it was received with delight.

  I took a taxi to see the glass factory I had seen on a TV programme in Australia. It was a long way, at first on a highway, then on an unmarked dirt road that turned into a tiny rutted lane where thick jungle crowded the car each side. Finally we arrived at a wreck of a place. The factory had closed. Behind it in an old open-sided shed, a jumble of heavily dust-covered glassware cluttered a couple of large wooden tables. What remained of the stock was pretty ordinary looking stuff, but apparently in the past this small factory had produced some very fine glass.

  An elderly gentleman told me that the TV programme had been done several years ago and that they had had to close because natural gas for the kiln had gone up to thirty times its original price. He said that glass makers from the famous Italian Murano company as well as from Australia had called there when they were operating. He showed me samples of the sand and potash he had used in his process. The sand certainly was very fine and white. I bought two pieces, more as an act of charity than because they were any good. They are both pale green, a frog and a paperweight.

  By the time I left him the taxi driver and I had spent two hours together. Unusually for Burma he had a fair command of English and we had some conversation. He asked me if Burma was known in Australia. Tentatively I said that Aung San Suu Kyi was known. Not so long ago merely speaking her name got you a gaol sentence (she was referred to only as The Lady), and I was still cautious about saying it. But he beamed and showed me her photo on his phone.

  He dropped me at the market where I bought a painting from the crippled boy who is always there, haunting the entrance. He hobbles along on crutches and seems to have a displaced hip; one leg is withered and hangs loosely at an angle. I had fobbed him off on all my previous visits but this would be my last. Then I ate lunch in a market cafe where I gave a donation to a pink-robed Buddhist nun in return for a blessing after watching her be rudely dismissed by two horrible Europeans. Later I passed a tiny, very old nun, and, seeing that her small begging bowl was empty, I chased after her and dropped a couple of notes in it. As I did, I looked up to see a stallholder smiling at me. People sometimes did this when I gave to beggars too, so I think it was okay.

  I walked across the road to where I had been told there is another market, but didn’t find it. I went in an ornate gate that I thought could be its entrance, but was met by a man who indicated that I should have my shoes off as I was actually entering a mosque. I backed out and walked on, thinking I was heading towards the Queens Park Hotel, but when the Sule Pagoda appeared at the end of the road I knew I wasn’t. I ended up on the waterfront, having gone in the completely opposite direction. Why do I keep trying? Perhaps because on the rare occasion that I get it right it gives me such a thrill.

  This day was Saturday and downtown Yangon’s streets were packed with people. There were countless small street stalls and one lane I went up had second-hand electrical bits and pieces strewn on the ground. Another wide street’s broken and lumpy but tree-shaded footpaths were covered with groups of men sitting on low stools clustered around small boxes commandeered as tea tables. On them sat pots of tea and small handle-less cups like saki cups. This seemed to be some sort of club. Then someone asked me, ‘You want stones?’, and I realised that they were discussing, and probably dealing in, jade or other gems. I saw only a little produced; maybe that came later when the tea drinking was over. These groups continued for miles.

  As I walked I watched the sky become darker and darker and a huge inky cloud gathering, approaching from the sea. Time to give up walking. I hailed a taxi and rode back to Motherland with a driver who told me that he was from South India where people who had been to Australia to work in films had told him about our cheese and milk products. This was what I missed most from home—cheese. Order cheese on something here and you got those appallingly uncheese-like plastic-wrapped slices. And at about a dollar a slice.

  It started to rain as I left the taxi at Motherland, and it was dark and thundering so I decided I was finished for the day. As this was my last day I used all my remaining phone credit to call home and check on the cat. The cat said she was fine. The phone credit had lasted all the time I was in Burma, pretty good for a twenty-three dollar card—twenty-eight days of local and one international phone call.

  At dinner I made the fatal mistake of thinking it was a good idea to try something Western on the menu before I left. It was not. I ordered ‘Maxican burger’. Maxican, whatever that was, it might have been, but burger it certainly wasn’t. It came with an enormous pile of skinny chips that I gave to a young English couple sitting nearby who told me that they had been teaching in South Korea.

  At breakfast I donated all my tatty, indescribably worn, torn and dirty small kyat notes to the kitchen staff. It made an impressively large wad but probably was no more than a couple of dollars. No one minds the state of the local money but they refuse to take a US dollar that is not in pristine condition.

  Sadly I had to leave Burma, and took a taxi through the heavy Sunday traffic to the airport. Remembering that I needed to get rid of my remaining kyats—it is illegal to export them, and why would you when all they would be good for outside Burma would be to wallpaper the loo—I scouted around for something to spend them on and opted for a four thousand kyat bottle of Mandalay rum, strictly as a souvenir of course.

  In the departure lounge I observed the local attitude to litter. A plastic bag lay on the carpet. Two stewardesses stepped over it, one kicked it to the side. Other airport employees did the same. It occurred to no one to put it in the bin, even though, for a change, there was ac
tually a bin in sight—the only one I had seen in this area. I itched to pick up the bag before someone tripped on it—it had already entangled a few feet—but I was curious to see what happened. It was still there when I boarded the plane.

  I arrived in Bangkok towards evening and with difficulty found a taxi. The driver shouted information at me for the entire hour it took to get downtown, only one word of which I understood—‘Bangkok’. In the central area of the town long avenues of trees were hung with masses of golden fairy lights that were just then coming on, making for a pretty sight in the grey cloud of approaching rain. Then, passing a big picture of Queen Sirikit, the driver shouted, ‘Clean’. I’m sure she is, but the other word he used escaped me. More pictures followed and I realised that it was her birthday and what he was saying was not ‘Clean birdie’ but ‘Queen birthday’. He added then that she was ‘one hundled an tenty.’ She would be thrilled. Probably have had him beheaded in the old days. I know she’s even older than I am, but 120! I don’t think so. I said, ‘Queen Sirikit and King Bhumipol’ and impressed him no end. I am always surprised at how much the Thais love their royal family. Then there were pictures of the crown prince. I rather hoped my driver would tell me he was the Clown Plince but he didn’t.

  At Kho San Street the evening was thick with drunken louts of tourists. Moving into my room at the Palace, I decided to try a wee sip of my four dollar bottle of rum. But when I opened it, I discovered that it was not intended for keeping. The lid did not screw back on. You were meant to get it all down in one go. Of course I couldn’t waste it, so life was a little hazy from then on.