Misadventures in Transportation: Boating the wrong way, down a one-way…river?
It was 4am and still dark as the worn down horse and its creaky cart took my luggage and me to the ferry jetty. You couldn’t make out the faces of the people we passed, but could just see their shadows under their cloaks. It was incredibly eerie and colder than you would expect Myanmar mornings to be. Not having seen the boat which I was going to be riding on, when we approached the jetty and I saw a two story white and shiny boat filled with new life preserver, I thought “Oh, this might not be so bad.” What I soon realized that the locals-slow boat that I would be traveling on was only obscured by this immaculate vessel. We walked through the boat I’d looked so longingly for and crossed a wooden plank onto the boat I would be traveling on for two days. There he was, nothing short of a Burmese pirate. Loose-fitting shirt tucked into his dark longyi and head wrapped in a well-worn silk scarf, his arms were folded and he didn’t say a word as my driver and I passed and went up the stairs to the upper deck. I followed his gaze as we passed and as he shifted the betel nut in his lower lip I saw his teeth stained red that, though I knew was a consequence of this unfortunate drug couldn’t help but think of blood.
There, everyone was asleep and tucked away under piles of blankets, lying on thin woven plastic mats to separate themselves from the uneven wooden planks below. The only soul awake was a grey-haired women smoking a long corn-husk cigar. As I found a corner and pulled out my little circle scarf to make myself a bed, I turned and found the smoking women standing in her 4’10 prowess next to me. She grabbed me by the arm and said in broken and heavily accented English, “You sleep here.” She pointed to the mat where she had clearly spent the evening. And, without any apparent choice I cuddled right in between her daughters and waited for the boat to launch.
In the light of day the boat I was on turned out to be a much more hospitable environment. The boat quickly filled and women sat ferociously making tenaca from water and sandalwood on stone slabs (also known as the Burmese makeup kits) and applying it lovingly to their faces. Several even pulled me over and plastered my face with the soft goo. The Burmese pirate I so feared ended up actually being an adorable, stuttering, prune salesman who wanted to “trade” U.S. dollars and coins for his fiber-filled products. The next two days were filled with women watching my every move, especially my cigar smoking friend who happened to show up and hover every time I pulled something from my bag) I’m sure wondering what a foreigner was doing taking a boat for two days when she could have taken the 11 hour fast boat. To be honest, as that nice new boat passed and I saw other white people drinking Banana Lassi, I wondered the same thing. But any envy quickly dissolved when my stuttering heart-filled friend came over to give me “presents” of old Republic of Burma kyats. In fact, bartering seemed to be a theme that I couldn’t play well. Women would ask me if I wanted to trade – what t-shirts I had or makeup. I said I really didn’t have anything but medicine and many scoffed and said, “No perfume?”
That night as we docked and everyone began to fall asleep to the sounds of a loud Burmese movie playing from a restaurant on nearby land, I found the reason I was so grateful to take this trip. As I drifted in and out of consciousness thinking my effect of these wooden slats on my back, one by one, each of the friends I had made came up during the night and piled extra blankets on me.
The next day passed slowly an uneventfully as we watched people transfer to and from the boat. Those who were continuing to Mandalay lounged in the hot sun. When we all arrived in Mandalay, everyone rushed off with barely a chance to say goodbye.
There, everyone was asleep and tucked away under piles of blankets, lying on thin woven plastic mats to separate themselves from the uneven wooden planks below. The only soul awake was a grey-haired women smoking a long corn-husk cigar. As I found a corner and pulled out my little circle scarf to make myself a bed, I turned and found the smoking women standing in her 4’10 prowess next to me. She grabbed me by the arm and said in broken and heavily accented English, “You sleep here.” She pointed to the mat where she had clearly spent the evening. And, without any apparent choice I cuddled right in between her daughters and waited for the boat to launch.
In the light of day the boat I was on turned out to be a much more hospitable environment. The boat quickly filled and women sat ferociously making tenaca from water and sandalwood on stone slabs (also known as the Burmese makeup kits) and applying it lovingly to their faces. Several even pulled me over and plastered my face with the soft goo. The Burmese pirate I so feared ended up actually being an adorable, stuttering, prune salesman who wanted to “trade” U.S. dollars and coins for his fiber-filled products. The next two days were filled with women watching my every move, especially my cigar smoking friend who happened to show up and hover every time I pulled something from my bag) I’m sure wondering what a foreigner was doing taking a boat for two days when she could have taken the 11 hour fast boat. To be honest, as that nice new boat passed and I saw other white people drinking Banana Lassi, I wondered the same thing. But any envy quickly dissolved when my stuttering heart-filled friend came over to give me “presents” of old Republic of Burma kyats. In fact, bartering seemed to be a theme that I couldn’t play well. Women would ask me if I wanted to trade – what t-shirts I had or makeup. I said I really didn’t have anything but medicine and many scoffed and said, “No perfume?”
That night as we docked and everyone began to fall asleep to the sounds of a loud Burmese movie playing from a restaurant on nearby land, I found the reason I was so grateful to take this trip. As I drifted in and out of consciousness thinking my effect of these wooden slats on my back, one by one, each of the friends I had made came up during the night and piled extra blankets on me.
The next day passed slowly an uneventfully as we watched people transfer to and from the boat. Those who were continuing to Mandalay lounged in the hot sun. When we all arrived in Mandalay, everyone rushed off with barely a chance to say goodbye.
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