Inle Lake Part One - “Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride”
Inle Lake, Myanmar
Before I left Bangkok, I made Herculean efforts to buy tickets on two domestic Myanmar flights. This task was vital because I knew I would be pressed for time during my short stint in Myanmar and as much as I wanted to bond with the locals and subject myself to the notoriously excruciating, unreliable, long haul overland trips within Myanmar, the option simply wasn’t realistic. What’s more, considering my advancing dotage and escalating desire for comfort, I didn’t particularly want to put myself through that kind of guaranteed anguish, no matter the cost savings (yes, I’m starting to go soft, if you don’t like it screw you). I tried to make reservations on both Air Mandalay’s and Yangon Airways’ web sites, which it turns out are ultimately the same damn airline, with the same sub-standard, non-functioning coding on their web site reservations forms. For some reason buying domestic air tickets outside of Myanmar is much cheaper than buying them within the country, so it was a budgetary imperative to complete these purchases before blasting off from Bangkok.
Fishing on the lake When I returned to the hotel, I asked the clerk to contact Mr. China and tell him to bring my bus ticket at 4:00 p.m. the next afternoon, instead of 5:00 p.m., so I would have time to catch the last pickup to Shwenyaung Junction. This request seemed to put the clerk on edge. He nervously informed me that Mr. China was expecting to drive me there himself. I wryly replied that Mr. China was a shit-eating shyster and that I was about as likely to give him head as I was going to give him 5,000 kyat for a return ride to the Junction. Well, I didn’t say it in those words exactly…Take out the “shit-eating shyster” and giving head parts and you pretty much have it. The clerk changed tactics, gravely informing me that the pickup was a bad idea as it would be very slow and make many stops. I told him I had nearly three hours to make the 11 kilometer trip and that I wasn’t worried. Sensing that I had managed to crack the real price of things, the clerk, barely hiding his panic suggested that Mr. China might give me a discount. I showed manifest pessimism at this possibility, but agreed to see what the discount might be.
I swung through the Remember Inn later that evening only to learn that the lone new arrival of the day was a Canadian guy who was deathly ill and had no intention of getting out of bed for a lake tour on a rollicking boat until he could at least keep down bread and water. The staff suggested that I try again after 10:00 p.m. when more people were likely to arrive, but I was too tired to make the journey yet again through the pitch black streets of Nyaungshwe. I was going to have to shell out the full 7,000 kyat for a boat on my own.
I had dinner at Hu Pin, a Chinese restaurant also recommended by LP, which reported that it was the cleanest place in Nyaungshwe, not an easy achievement in a town primarily composed of dirt and betel chew loogies. Sure enough it was spotless. The waiter invited himself to join me for dinner, asking me countless personal questions (“No! For the love of crap! I’m not married!! And I don’t intend to be for the rest of my existence unless it’s to Salma Hayak and an obscene amount of money is involved!!!”) and spending much of the time transfixed with the angry notes about Mr. China that I was furiously tapping into my Palm Pilot.
Back in my room, as I monitored the Pope’s impending death on the BBC, I fired up the calendar on my Palm and planned the rest of my journey through Myanmar down to the hour. It wasn’t going to be pretty. What I thought would be plenty of time to see all of my destinations - by my crazed, rush-rush standards anyway - had somehow considerably dwindled, mostly owing to the full day I lost with that damn 18 hour bus ride. I was going to have to race through Mandalay in two days and absolutely scream through Bagan in about a day and a half in order to catch my plane back to Yangon for a one night layover, then fly out to Bangkok. I went to bed early to hoard sleep.
