February 15th, 2013
Having arrived in Mandalay during the afternoon by boat, I
saw no need to stick around and took the first bus east, to Hsipaw. Hsipaw is a staging town for treks into the
surrounding villages, and I planned on renting a motorbike to do some two-wheeled
independent trekking. What few trekkers made it to this outlying town in Myanmar’s
Shan state generally walk either parallel to, or on, existing “roads”. The
locals that go putting by must think that Westerners folk are strange, flying
all this way to go for a needless walk. If they had gone through the trouble of
building a road, I wanted to ride on it.
On the bus to Hispaw, the fatigue of the trip began to catch
up with me. Of the previous 7 nights, only 3 had been spent in a real bed. Along
with a shortage of sleep, I had been continually dirty and eating “dirty”
things. When traveling, I’m good about washing my hands and brushing my teeth,
but that’s all of the mandatory hygine I can handle. As for food, I eat
primaritly in the streets. View through the lens of the wider world, the
minimum requirements for cleanliness in America looks like a treatable neuroses.
Travel has taught me how robust the human immunological system. Its amazing to
see what humans can can eat and not get sick. In 5 years of constant travel as
a street meat fanatic, I have gotten sick from food I ordered only once.
Feeling uneasy on the bus I wondered, would this be the second time? My
allergies were going berserk, and I downed Claritin like tic-tac’s. Something
was up.
I got off the 7 hour bus ride feeling a bit delirious and in
want of a real bed. I arrived at a guesthouse only to find that they were out
of single rooms, but was offered bed in the garage instead, at a discount! Even
though it was technically a real bed it was not, as they say in the developing
world, export quality (translation: fit for use by soft white folk), but I was
too tired to care. I took the bed, and passed out. Throbbing stomach pains woke
me in the pre-dawn hours and I made a run for the bathroom. Thankfully, the
toilets were of the sit down, Western style I am accustomed to, and they were certainly
worthy of export in my opinion.
I went back to bed, expecting that food poisoning was just
around the corner, but fell fast asleep. When I awoke, I had all the symptoms
of a common cold: stuffy head, runny nose, body aches, chills, sore throat,
etc. I was surprisingly happy. I knew what I had: the common cold. This I knew
how to handle. The front desk had even more good news, a single bedroom was now
available, and at a reasonable $10 a night. Wi-Fi, and a great breakfast were
included. The room was quite new, and the common showers were both hot and
clean. Somehow, the trip was hitting a high instead of a low. This notion
followed me throughout my first day of being officially sick. I felt happy
knowing what was going on. I envisioned my next few days: reading,
eating, sleeping, and Internet zombification. Beats the hell out of food poisoning.
Oh, what a glorious cold this was going to be!
I ate my complimentary breakfast and headed into town to
load up on healthy snacks. This is quite the chore in the developing world.
Healthy food is expensive and/or difficult to store. There are endless varieties
of cheap confectionaries, sugared drinks, and all manner of fried and salted
things. When the majority of stores all sell identical products, shelf life is
the priority.
I arrived at the local market close to noon. Most stalls had
shut up for the day, but I spotted piles of my favorite healthy snack in the
developing world, the tomato. Usually less than a dollar a Kilo the tomato,
with obligatory salt shaker accompaniment, is my go to health booster. I made
my selection and off I went, smiling under the hot Burmese sun as I sneezed, sniffled,
and ached my way back to the guesthouse. On the way, I spotted some fantastic
golden pears, and bought some delicious dried fruits as well. Could the day get
any better?
I returned to launch Operation Laziness and over the next
few days I watched movies, surfed the web, and ate a prodigious amounts of
fruit. I attempted occasional walks, but usually felt lousy afterwards, so I
stopped that. For dinner, my routine was chicken noodle soup a la Hsipaw. A common
dish in Myanmar is “Shan noodles”, which are simply various cuts of rice
noodles, served as a soup or salad, along with various veggies and herbs. I usually
downed two bowls of the soup at the street vendor nearest to my guesthouse
every night. Apparently my faith in street food, and the immune system, was
still intact.
I had time for some trip planning. I wanted to get a
scooter, tie my luggage to the back, and take off for weeks to see what happened.
I had done something similar to this in Indonesia, so I knew it was possible.
However, in Indonesia, scooter rental cost $2-3 a day for long-term rental of
quality Japanese machines. In Myanmar, for reasons I have yet to divine, the
going rate is $10 a day for a bike of dubious Chinese construction. What really
baffled me was that nobody would budge for long-term rentals. I asked a dealer
how much a brand new motorbike was and he said they go for $375. I seriously
considered buying one. I told the dealer that I wanted to ride 20 days on a
motorbike, and then sell it. He said I’d lose a lot of money buying one only to
sell it shortly thereafter. “Bad deal for you” were his exact words. He
estimated that I would lose at least $100 in the transaction, and advised me to
rent one. When I mentioned that renting one for 20 days would cost $200 he
seemed genuinely surprised. “When you put it that way” his furrowed brow seemed
to say, “these rentals are pretty expensive”.
What I wanted was unbridled freedom, and renting would
require lots of backtracking. There are restrictions throughout Myanmar of
where tourists can rent motorbikes, but I was curious what would happen if I
owned the bike. Rudeness was not my intention, but rather a sense of adventure
was. The thought of talking my way through checkpoints around Bagan, where tourists
are not allowed to rent motorbikes for fear that they might injure themselves,
enthralled me. I had gotten a feel for the country quickly. I had been stopped
at military checkpoints and had talked over the situation with numerous locals.
Things were changing fast, and the people were extremely kind to foreigners. My
only fear was getting someone else in trouble for being overly accommodating to
me, a legitimate concern. With each passing day, buying a scooter made less and
less sense. My cold was dissipating quickly, but I didn’t want to rush things
and exhaust myself once again. To avoid any complexities, I decided to rest a
while longer, and then rent a scooter.
Being limited by in area because of backtracking meant that
I would only be able to allot one week to motorbike travel. The negotiation for
the rental was bizarre. Logic that would seem so standard in the West was ill-understood.
The scooters were rented for a certain price per day, and that’s how much they
always cost. A discount for a guaranteed rental, or a discount for not having
to refuel them at the end of each day, did not compute. Fortunately, I’m done
being frustrated by situations like this. They were honest people, and they
hadn’t gown up with cultural conditions that formed my thinking. Here was a
real life window into the workings of human thought. How interesting! Finding
out these kinds of things is a large part of why I travel. Granted, I do think
my propositions were based on sound logic, but as Heidegger said “Has reason constituted itself to be the ruler of philosophy? If so, by what right?” There
is mystery in the world after all. To
hear travelers complain about the way things “should be” in a foreign country makes
me chuckle inside. “I was once like you.” I smilingly think. “Why aggravate
yourself in the face of that which you cannot change?” That thought, I
contemplate daily.
I’ve witnessed the unfamiliar workings of a foreign country bring
people to their breaking point. It’s not a pretty sight. Unaware of how much
certainty they require to stay sane, they venture into an abyss of the unknown
and implode under the pressure. This is more often the case in countries where
people are trying to take advantage of you at every turn, but even in then, why
invite negative thoughts into your being? Why be the harbinger of negative
emotions when there is no benefit? As Buddha said “Being angry is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to get sick.” We humans do strange things.
Finally, a deal on the scooter was struck. $9.50 a day for
the week. Huzzah! Victory at long last. I had given myself one more full day to
rest and bask in what is perhaps the most riveting part of travel:
anticipation. The following day, I would have a motorbike to call my own for a
week. I had a vague idea where to go, but there is a catch. The best places are
rarely in the book. Even when they are, there’s no adventure in it, and adventure
was what I wanted. Therefore, I ‘d have to set out, and make it up as I carried
along. The trekking trails would be a good start. Returning hikers raved about
the towns, the scenery, and the lack of other tourists. By not trekking I would
miss out on camping, which I thoroughly enjoy, but I would make great time and
see the same things.
My first destination would be mountain town of Namshan.
Although only 40 km by road from Hispaw, I was told it should take 6 to 8 hours
to drive by motorbike. That was my first indication of how bad the roads would
be.
I packed up my bags and got and prepared for a good night’s
sleep. I wanted to be on the road early so I didn’t have to ride in the heat of
the day. The scooter was to arrive at 7:30am the following morning, and I
thought I’d be off by 8:00. Though I still had some sickness left to conquer,
the excitement kept me smiling.