Yes, We Have No Banana Pancakes #3: Inle Lake to Mandalay: Bus-ted – Myanmar

Inle Lake to Mandalay: Bus-ted

Our journey from Inle Lake to Mandalay started out pretty well: the bus was only two hours late leaving the station (and by ‘station’ I mean ‘teashop by the side of the road’) and we bumped along at a respectable twenty miles an hour for the first four hours. We had a couple of very violent, quasi-pornographic American movies to keep us company, and then some Burmese covers of old American songs (‘Country Road’ was a particular favorite) blared from the speakers, but around midnight the bus came to a dead stop. Apparently we’d just crossed the line dividing an adventure from a fiasco.

The Burmese, like southeast Asians in general, have an infuriating way of accepting things they can’t change: the other passengers calmly settled down to wait while E and I craned our necks around looking for someone to tell us what was going on and how soon we would get moving again. Eventually the one English speaker on the bus told us we’d all be spending the night on the bus due to a stopped vehicle up ahead. I must admit to a moment (okay, about ten minutes worth of moments) of neo-colonial grousing, ala ‘Don’t they know how to jump-start a car in this country?’ but eventually we settled in for the night.

The complement of passengers seemed mostly comprised of squalling babies, along with a fairly large contingent of hacking coughers and a sprinkling of carsickness sufferers and inveterate betel-nut juice spitters, so a long night it was indeed. In the morning we saw what had kept us waiting: a very heavily laden truck about two miles ahead had nearly been run off the road by a passing bus; it had two wheels still on the road and the other two over the cliff. The road was quite narrow and it took another four hours for the 200 delayed vehicles to get moving again. All in all, the nine hour bus trip took 24 unforgettable hours. That must be what the folks back home meant when they wished me a memorable trip….

Mandalay: The Magic Mistake
One of the things I like most about travel is (don’t tell E) being wrong so often. The dish that looks inedible turns out to be tasty, the sullen driver breaks into a smile, the dull temple fascinates: it’s great when not getting what I want turns out better than what I thought I wanted. I’m still not crazy about Mandalay – maybe the ridiculous bus ride and the unrelenting drizzle and the shin-deep mud in the market affected my attitude just a wee bit – but E and I took a wrong turn after dinner one night and I ended up having one of the happiest times of my life.

We came across a temple festival, sort of a block party with a Buddhist theme. There was an old man making cotton candy from scratch, and a lady selling those little lens-shaped coconut cakes I like so much, and a hand-operated carousel with decrepit and lovely trishaws, horses, elephants, tuk tuks, cars. I met up with a girl around age 10 and her 3 year old brother and somehow, without a word in common, we communicated to each other that I would pay for her brother to ride the kiddy carousel, that she would then take him home, that I would wait for her, and that we would then ride the ferris wheel together.

While I was waiting for her to return after dropping off her brother (who wanted to ride the carousel twice, despite having had a stricken expression and an iron grip on the reins of his horse for the full duration of round one), I played a gambling game with a bunch of boys. Then E and the girl and two friends of hers and I piled into the ferris wheel and proceeded to get absolutely giddy from giggles (on the slow bits) and terror (on the turns). A ferris wheel is surprisingly scary when it seems to be powered by kerosene and populated by a gang of teenage operators who climb the frame and hop from car to car while the dang thing’s in motion. After we were released, we let the girls go again with some of their friends and then we said our goodbyes, having made ourselves and about 15 kids extremely happy for less than $5.