February 3rd , 2013
It's concerning when the 26 hour train ride you just booked cost half the price of the 9 hour bus ride you just took.
"Ordinary class?" The man in the ticket widow asks for a second time, eyebrows raised
"Oh yeah. Ordinary class" I confirm casually, like an old hand.
After a polite scoffing; a head shaken in bemusement, I am issued a ticket. It is not until I'm told the price that to I begin to reconsider.
What little I have seen of Myanmar has been great so far. As with most places that see few foreigner visitors, the people of Burma account for nearly all of my enjoyment in my two short days here. I've been stuck in cities (which I typically dislike) or in transit (which I sometimes enjoy. I am, after all, a traveler).
Yangon was pretty much what I expected a city of 5 million people in the developing world to be: a fairly developed concrete jungle of bad roads and aspiring strip malls.
One of my favorite features of cities in the developing world is that food stalls spill out onto the street, sometimes taking up half the sidewalk for an entire block. A tunnel of umbrellas and makeshift awnings trap vaporized flavor; the backpackers entrée.
Dwarf-sized plastic stools and chairs take a further half of the remaining sidewalk. The impedance created is fortunate; this seemingly chaotic world forms perfect order. Walking slowly, wandering eyes begin to connect. Timid "hellos" are issued by the bold and the curious. You turn to notice that all eyes are on you: the oversized, white skinned, alien looking creature (just like on TV)! It's a good thing I'm always hungry, because whether I like it or not, it's time to eat.
Interactions like this let me know I'm traveling again. As I stepped of the bus in Mandalay at 5am, I had tea with a moto-taxi driver. He spoke good English and we talked about potential travel itineraries for me. He knew right away what I was looking for. Over the course of two hours of tea drinking, he convinced me that I should keep pressing north to Myitkyina, and make my way back to Mandalay by boat. It should take about 10 days. We finally had a destination to which he could taxi me: the train station.
"Ordinary class okay" he said with a smile as he road off. Sounds like perfect chaos.