Our Morning After Mt. Kyaiktiyo- On the Way to the Train

An abandoned old house in the forest near the Kyaikto Train Station

After the golden boulder, the shared truck from Mt. Kyaiktiyo dropped us off at the train station. We got noodles at this restaurant that night for about 30 cents each. It was really tasty! We were excited to go back there the next morning for breakfast when we were leaving town, but they told us they didn't have any food. We were really disappointed.

A special tree in the middle of the train station parking lot.

The train station ticketing windows

After the above restaurant told us they didn't have any food, we went to this guy. He said good morning and seemed to understand and speak fairly ok English. We pointed at the noodles and chicken and asked for two noodle soups, which is pretty much the most common meal in Myanmar. After waiting for ten minutes he presented us with two tomato and onion salads, for breakfast. I was super pissed. Then he tried to charge us double what he initially told us. I did my best to finish my breakfast salad, left and got noodles at another place on the other side of the parking lot. If you're in Kyaikto, don't trust this guy.

random shrine near the restaurants in the train station parking lot area

That's the train station in front of me. The ticketing window is under the corrugated roof on the left hand side of the big palm tree in the middle of the picture.

The Reigning Golden Boulder Champion - Mt. Kyaiktiyo

This is scene approaching the boulder. It was insane. Apparently it isn't normally this crowded, we were just lucky!

You can see men approaching the boulder to affix gold leaf to it on the right.

This is the bus on the way down. You can see Jin on the right in the hat. The guy on the left with his hand out is attempting to get money from the passengers for the fare down the hill.

There were infinite make shift tents with local people hanging out. These people were not homeless. They were just hanging out for a very long period of time for some reason. Pretty much every inch of the sides of the walkways was taken by different people in their tents.

You have no idea how difficult it was for us to get this picture. It took several people many attempts to even use our more simple camera. Then we had to wait for at least ten minutes for the crowd to dissipate enough for us to get a picture. Plus, about ten different guys asked me to take pictures with them while I was waiting for them to get out of the way.

Golden Boulder Showdown - The Challenger, Nwa La Bo Pagoda

Nwa La Bo Pagoda, about 12km outside of Mawlamyine. This golden boulder is actually three boulders precariously resting atop each other.

These young ladies were way more interested in taking pictures with Jin than in actually checking out the Boulder or Pagoda.

ah, symmetry

The dark spot is where local men(only men are allowed to touch the rock) have purchased gold leaf strips(sold outside) and affixed them themselves to the boulder. 

When we left, there were some women outside collecting donations from cars and trucks driving by. They told us to wait by them. We couldn't understand each other, but they were pretty adamant about helping us. We watched car after car drive by without picking us up. Finally, this truck pulled up and we thought we were getting a shared pickup taxi back to Mawmalyine, the same way we had gotten there. It turns out it was just two friendly guys with a truck who drove us to town. They didn't want any money or anything. We had a nice shady seat in the back of their pickup.

Back to Yangon, we thought!

We left our happy hotel and walked a few blocks back to the train station in Kyaikto. The tickets to Yangon were only $1.20, for the five hour ride. They only had 'ordinary class' seats available, but we didn't mind as we thought it would be a very local, interesting way to save a few bucks and get a good story.... boy were we right!
The man who sold us the tickets told us in broken English to get the train at 1250pm. Since it was about an hour before then we got lunch at the train station and sat around waiting, watching some old northern exposure episodes inside the hot train station, trying to stay out of the hot sun. Looking up at the train station arrivals board, the train to Yangon was stated to arrive at 1235, and we were told it would be at the station for 15 minutes. At 1235, sure enough the train came.
The train cars were very, very poorly marked..... as in no markings. We searched for a ticket taker, conductor, attendant, but could find no one in any sort of official capacity. Some very friendly train patrons helped us find our train car. There were no chickens, livestock, or roof riders, but every other 3rd world cliché was surely being abided by. Just the sight of the hard, wooden bench seats caused my ass to turn purple. We shuffled down the aisle of the train, avoiding people with fruit baskets on their heads, giant bags of who knows what everywhere, old ladies sitting on the floor, all that good stuff. Jin had been practicing her Burmese numbers and was showing off her newfound abilities by trying to read the almost entirely faded numbers painted on the seats. Finally we made it to our seat, which was taken by some rather old ladies who were not the least bit interested in accommodating us.
There was nowhere at all to sit. Straddling the aisle sitters, we stood in utter confusion, trying to figure out what to do. A young man came over to us, looked at our ticket, along with a few other curious onlookers and ordered the ladies out of our seat. We both felt a little guilty, but their obvious lack of care in any way for us diluted our benevolence.
Sitting down, we noticed a circle of people around us, excited to stare at these curious newcomers to their train car. What joy.
Sitting, sweating, the object of countless stares and confusion we smiled awkwardly as I did my best to breath deep and end the fountain of sweat pouring from every inch of my body, all the while sitting in a wooden sauna that the Burmese call "trains."
In case you didn't know, Myanmar has some of the worst maintained trains in the world. The car literally bounces up and down to and fro, they even have a special word for derailments, though I cant recall it at the moment. Anyways, it was quite the uncomfortable adventure. Bouncing around for hours on a wooden bench with a group of teenagers staring at you from 24 inches away, sweating profusely and trying not to worry too much about a derailment is always interesting.
Jin noted that the sun seemed to be on the wrong side of the train, but perhaps we were just heading south before turning west on to Yangon. We watched the pagodas go by, the farmers working their fields, I read a few hours of Burmese Days, and I occasionally nodded at my smile challenged audience. Rivers, vistas, cows, dogs, payas, and even the sun came and went, and finally we reached a giant river which must be the long awaited Yangon port. I hung out the door of the car, going over the giant bridge, watching the water underneath go past, happily dreaming of our air conditioned room, with wifi, and showers.... oh the joys of travel.
Then we arrived.

In Mawlamyine. Yeah, the place we left the day before. First came a little whimper from Jin as she watched the train station sign greet us. Then some questions, then the stark realization that we had just sat for hours on the train going the exact opposite direction. Not one ticket taker or staff member had come through our train the entire journey. At least ten local travelers had inspected our ticket, none of which had remarked anything other than, "here's your seats."
We sulked, and exited the train, pissed as all hell. For once, Jin was more angry than me. I was simply mystified, unable to comprehend what had happened.
Sensing Jin's motivation to destroy, I simply followed, playing my calm husband routine(perhaps the first time I've gotten to enjoy this role!) Jin stormed in to the train station office, explained our situation, how there was no staff to help us, we hadn't seen a soul in uniform in hours, and how the message board had stated the 1235 train was going to Yangon. The staff was polite and courteously offered us a free overnight train ticket back to Yangon, on the hard bench. We both flat out refused. Sleeping in one seat on a wooden bench, in a hot train car, with locals bewildered and confusedly staring at you is not my idea of a good night's sleep. And while I'm all for saving money and having an adventure, this was not the time nor the place that I wanted such an experience.
I contemplated taking a taxi back to our beloved Aurora Guest House on Mawmalyine's main street.
Jin stood strong.
Eventually we got them to give us a free first class ticket back to Yangon.
We had an hour and a half to kill in Mawmalyine so we walked out of the train station, and found a restaurant where we got some local curry at a side of the road restaurant. I ogled at the guest houses lining the street, thinking perhaps I could offer them a dollar or two to use their shared bathroom to take a shower and wash the sweat off before my 9 hour train ride back towards the way we came.
We sat and ate the rather boring standard curry we've been living on for the past few weeks while our restaurant stand owner sat down and semi intruded on our frustration with small talk about his love for Obama after his recent visit to Myanmar. I sat, politely engaging in small talk, most of which he didn't understand, trying to be friendly. He mentioned that he owned the guest house right next door and I seized the opportunity, asking him if I could pay him to use a shower in the very dingy truck stop hotel. He instantly agreed and I was happier than could be.
The hotel was straight from a horror movie, and despite the local charm, I had one of the most enjoyable showers of my life. A new man, I thanked the owner profusely, trying in vain to pay for my services used, and unabashedly grinning at my newfound nonstickyness.
We hopped on the train, basically an Amtrak train car with about a billion hours of use and no maintenance and happily ate our ambiens and passed out, awaking during the turbulence(or a new definition of "train hopping") just long enough to roll over and try to get comfortable again. Totally confused about what to do at 4am in Yangon, we walked the few blocks back to our previous haunt, the Tadar Guest House and found all the staff 110% passed out on both couches and a cot on the floor of the lobby. Feeling guilty about bothering anyone at such an early hour, and not wanting to pay for that night(8 hours until noon) of the hotel, I let Jin sleep on the three square benches while I laid on the tile floor between our hosts sleeping on their cot and couch. A bit nervous about our precarious bed, I laid motionless on the floor, just happy to not be on a train and hoping to get a bit of rest for free.
After a while, the cot sleeping manager rolled over and curiously looked at this pathetic foreigner sheepishly grinning back at him. With a touch of pity, he quietly awoke, and gave us a room(for the next night thankfully.) Me and Jin thanked him again and again, locked our bags in our new, clean abode and swiftly exited the hotel, catching a taxi for sunrise at Shwedagon Paya, the "most sacred Buddhist pagoda in Myanmar."

Golden Boulders, Mack trucks, and Happy Hotels....

So we left Mawlamyine a while ago, and had quite the adventure getting back to Yangon via the Golden Boulder of Mt. Kyaiktiyo(pronounced Chai tea O.)
We left Mawlamyine in the morning and hopped on a bus to the city of Kyaikto. Kyaikto has nothing of significance except for a big main street, a train station, and that's about it. We got to Kyaikto and hopped on a shared truck to Kinpun, basecamp for the golden boulder. It costs 50 cents a person to sit in the back of a truck with about 15 other people for 20 minutes. Kinpun sucks.
It's basically a generic tourist trap of a truck stop where endless souvenir stands and hawkers disrupt your every moment. The town is basically a nightmare where any moment a tourist bus, pickup truck bus, tourist van, local truck, or modified 18 wheeler tourist mover could run you over without even the interest to check if you were a pothole or a person.
Once of the shared pickup truck we wanted lunch, but only had about 15,000 kyat(pronounced chat) left, about $15. We got some super cheap noodles and a few mini hot dogs on a skewer for less than a dollar in the bus station parking lot, sitting on mini stools six inches off the ground while busses backed up in to parking places behind us, beeping just beyond the flies circling our heads.
To get to the golden boulder you sit in what looks basically like a Mack truck, but with the back of a pickup truck. In the back, there are slats of wood across every 12 inches or so, or just enough leg room for your average 10 year old. People sit about 8 to a row, with about 8 rows of benches. It's quite uncomfortable. The trucks leave from a giant garage/shed with 3 lanes of trucks, 3 trucks in a line. Each truck has a set of concrete steps, about ten steps high that lead you up to the pickup. It was mighty hot.
We walked right from our noodles, past the only bank in town without even noticing it, staring intently at the shade and chaos of the garage full of pilgrims, curious locals, and a few foreigners trying in vain to document the chaos on their cameras. Likewise the locals did the same, snapping pictures of us snapping pictures of them. A crossfire of tourist shenanigans.
The busses, though full, hesitated to leave. Intent on not spending the night in the holiest of truckstops, me and Jin threw our giant backups in the cargo hold of our Chinese Mack Trucks, alongside the giant sacks of cauliflower and onions being brought up to the tourist hotels on top of the mountain. The truck left and started off to the mountain road.
We made it a few kilometers, seeing the Golden Boulder just up at the top of the mountain as we pulled out of the shed. We headed for the backside of the mountain, going through to the end of town and circling around to the unseen forest behind. We stopped for about ten minutes as the other trucks from the shed slowly lined up behind us and the workers did their best to get the 5 dollar fare from each of the fifty people on the truck. Seriously sweating, knees rubbing against the girl in front of me(and the wooden board she was sitting on,) hips nestled snuggly against my middle aged neighbors longyi(pronounced "Long gee"(basically a Burmese sarong for either men or women)) I tried to breath deep and not drench everyone in sight with my overhydrated perspiration.
We watched as truck after truck came down the mountain, curving down the switchbacks from above. Finally, all the trucks had passed us, and it was our caravans turn to head up, us leading the way. We went a few kilometers and stopped again.... same thing.
40 godforsaken(buddhaless?) minutes later we arrived at the top. Porters rushed to offer us the possibility of paying them to carry our bags to one of the many hotels we were intent not to stay at. We tried to find a currency exchange among the thousands of people wandering around between hotels, restaurants and tourists stands at the peak of the mountain. An ATM would have been better. We went in the "foreigners ticket office" and tried to pay the 6 dollars that only tourists were allowed to pay, but we seemed to be the only foreigners trying to buy tickets(there was no ticket takers, much less gate) and they offered us an absolutely horrid exchange rate for our US dollars, so we told them we'd come back after we found some kyat. We didn't. No one cared.
With a supreme lack of eagerness, we took off our shoes as we entered the temple area. The gesture, was feable as the dirt from shoes perhaps would have spruced up the piles of garbage, stains of betel nut spit, and general filth that lurked at every nook and cranny of the many nooks and crannies. There were thousands of pilgrims, or possibly vagrants sitting with their fuzzy ecstasy blankets propped in to makeshift tents, shielding them from the blinding sun at the mountains' peak. We wandered around, tiptoing through the sludge to make our way to the giant golden boulder at the edge of the mountain. We saw it, we took pictures, we even had others take pictures of us(or at least try to.) It was hot, sunny, dirty and golden.
I'm not sure how I feel about the golden rock. Perhaps it was amazing, perhaps it was awful. Looking back it reminded me of the final moments of Woodstock, tents in shambles, trash everywhere, people rambling around, and all with taste of something vaguely monumental in the air.
We carried our large backpacks around, trying to find a way to save our last kyat and walk down the mountain, but it was impossible. As some clamored to watch the sunset, I clamored for sanity, hiking back through the chaos to one of the trucks waiting to take us back down.
Back at the giant shed, we unloaded from our trucks and immediately saw the now closed bank and ATM directly outside where we had walked just hours before. We got offered similarly terrible exchange rates, refused, and spent 25% of our kyat on the 1000kyat ride back to Kyaikto.
We got dropped at the train station, and were told that the night train to Yangon, a 6 hour ride away was sold out. Mightily disappointed, we were told the next train was the following morning and that there was no need to buy tickets in advance. We trudged back to main st Kyaikto and went to the Happy Hotel where we were told rooms were $20. A bit steep we thought, walking outside to look for other options.  A stroke of luck came our way and we noticed another hotel, part of the same building the Happy Hotel, but just 50 feet further back off the street. I was ecstatic when they offered us a ten dollar room with a flat screen tv, fan, internet, bathroom, and even a hint of cleanliness. Buddha smiled from above the golden boulder, for all the glory of the moment was his.

Bilu Kyun - Ogre Island

Across the Thanlwin river from Mawlamyine lies Bilu Kyun, a rather large island with about 200,000 residents spread across many small villages. There are no bridges to the island and few cars. We rented bikes one day in mawlamyine and  took them on the ferry ride across the river. This is a very typical scene on the island, long, straight, flat roads with yellow fields on either side.

The ferry ride to the island cost 2 dollars and was very crowded. We thought we were just going to cross the river to the nearest point on the island, a journey of probably 15 minutes. Instead, the ferry took us to the southern end of the island, over an hour away.

The ferry was full of goods being brought to the island. Lots of people were selling fruit and snacks onboard as well.  Everyone has tiny mini stools to sit on too.

When we arrived at the island the scene was crazy as everyone rushed to offload their goods to their friends on the island. None of these people were there for tourist business, but rather just as workers transporting the goods from the mainland.

We met a couple of friendly couples, one from Boulder, CO, and another from Amsterdam. They had a whole itinerary planned for their day(as opposed to our plan of just biking around and seeing what happened) so we decided to follow them around. They were serious go getters so we had to work hard to keep up with them on our very rickety old bikes.

This is rubber. All around the island there are rubber trees and occasionally one finds this scene of the flattened rubber sheets hanging to dry.

According to the lonely planet, each village has its own specialty product that they make. Most tourists going to the island take a tourist trip on a truck that takes you to seven different villages, each one producing different things. One village makes hats, one makes floor mats of coconut husk, and there is even a town that makes rubber bands. The only village we could identify as producing anything specific was these two ladies sitting on their porch making these hats. They were pretty excited when our new friends bought one for a dollar.

The well next to their house. You can see the notches on the board where they stand and pull up the buckets of water.

This is a pretty typical house for the island. The protruding window on the left(I've been living in China too long and I forget what they're called) are the local sign that you have a nice house as every one of the better houses has at least one of these.




I really liked this bridge and tree.

There are lots of carts like this in use all over Burma. Even today, in Hsipaw, I saw a shop selling a spare wagon wheel outside. The people in these places are poor in terms of money, but I don't think their lives are too terrible. They live in beautiful places, have lots of family and friends, and have fairly simple, safe lives. The only people who seem to be really living in poverty are those who move to the cities from the country and live on the streets in makeshift houses. People in the country seem to have pretty nice lives, although they definitely work hard and don't get a lot of education.

Aboard the boat back to Mawlamyine.

Ahh, Sunoco.

random epic travel picture.

A riverside scene on the way back to Mawlamyine.

Some military boats at the Naval Yard.

Sunset on the way back to Mawlamyine. Right about this time, the boat pulled over, after the military boats, and we thought we were just dropping off some locals. However our boat back home, the last boat from the island, actually went to the far south side of Mawlamyine, and we had to ride backs about 4km back all the way through town at dark. This was quite painful since we had just biked through the sun all day on our very rickety old rental bikes. No foreigners are allowed to stay on the island, there are no hotels, so they are very careful to make sure that you get on the final boat of the day!

another view of the well....

sweet bike, bro!

On the boat home with our our new buddy, Jeff from Colorado. They(him and his wife) are traveling from Asia, to New Zealand, and then Patagonia and South America!