Bago and Inle Lake

Brangelina

While in Bago my travel companion Michel and I went to the back streets of the town where the locals live.  These streets aren’t paved and the houses are made from wood or other materials people could find to build their home. Most of the houses are on stilts to protect it from flooding. Some houses are made from brick and are painted colourful or even have an iron gate in the front. But most people live outside and have a little house for shelter and to sleep. Amazingly one thing that some houses have are a television which is on most of the time and many people mainly children are glued to it watching some soap series. If you look properly you notice that some houses include a shop or workshop for people to make their money, I’ve seen a many seamstress, cobbler, bookstore, cycle repair or selling some food and household goods.

Walking there people and specially children came out of their houses or stopped what they were doing to watch us or say hello. Most of the time the children come over but when you say ming guh la ba (hello) they start giggling or run away, only to find out that they are following you later or ask a picture to be taken. Walking there I felt l like Angelina Jolie again and as my travel partner could get away as Brad Pitt, walking there and meeting the locals.  The famous Brangelina have their own brood of children but even if they weren’t ours we always had a large amount of little ones around us to catch our attention.

Children

All of they are so cute and adorable it’s hard not to take their pictures or catch their attention all the time. They are always happy and return your smile, have no sorrows or are happy with their situation. The older ones look after the younger ones or carry them around if they can’t walk yet. Babies are sleeping in a small hammock or just lay on the floor and are doing need any toys to be entertained with. The older ones play with dogs, water, a tyre, each other, piece of rope, one plastic toy, and play hide and seek or domino with beer bottle lids. It’s great to see that these children don’t need much to be happy and entertain themselves. It’s such a contrast with the Western world and we shows that there’s too much available then the demand. As you can see in the picture lots of children and people have paint on their faces. This is a protection for the sun but also as a decoration. Women sometimes make beautiful drawings on their faces and children have bunnies on their cheeks. I still haven’t been able to find out the exact story behind it but it’s a nice touch to the face.

Children from about 9 yrs old work in restaurants, tea houses or cafés.  It’s amazing how many of them work already from such a young age. They are very friendly and try to talk to you in English or understand it but must of the time we fail as my Burmees isn’t up to date either. The big smile makes up for the wrong delivered food or not understanding your question or orders but saying: yes, yes no problem.

They work hard and I do hope they go to school at some point or get an education to help the country grow and learn a profession if they want.

Bus ride

Yesterday I experienced my first night bus to cover 300km from the South to the North. The journey took about 10 hours and costs 16.000 kyat ( £12). You travel in an old air-conditioned bus which is full of locals with a couple of travellers. The road is only for buses to transport people along form North-South and vice versa. Unfortunately, the road isn’t wide enough for 2 busses so this slows the process as when one approaches from the other side you have to stop to let them pass.

At the start of the journey it was still light so you could look out of the window to see what was going on.  There’s TV screen in the front playing very loud music and later on showing a very bad version of the Myanmar version of Eastenders. The acting is so bad that I feel sorry for the people who are watching and understand the storyline. The sound is so loud that even with your IPod on volume 10 you can hear the noise of the TV. I tried to ask them to turn it down but that was only granted for 5 minutes and after that it was loud again till 11.30pm (thank god)

There’s a regular stop at a big gas station which includes big diners for a quick bite to eat or drink and loo break. Sometimes they just stop in the middle of nowhere and you just can do your business in the field.

We were told that the bus would arrive in Kale at 5am so I’ve booked a room for that night as we only had to wait for hopefully a couple of hours to get our room. But at 2am the bus stopped as we already arrived in Kalaw and we were misinformed about the arrival time. The little town was quiet, dark and I knew that all accommodations were full. We walked to our hotel and the ‘security guard’ said they had no room till later that day! We tried 2 other places to see if they had a room or bed for us to crash on for a couple of hours. By doing that we had to wake up the ‘security guy’ and then the owner to make sure they didn’t have any space for us. In the end we waited outside our hotel till 6am when the night porter woke up and let us into the reception. Then by 9am we finally we got our room and could have a couple of hours  sleep before exploring the town and make some more travel arrangements to avoid similar situations. On top of that it was raining and cloudy.

So we’ve left Bago now to explore the area of Inle Lake which is in the middle of the country. Bago was worth the short visit as it’s only the hub to visit the Golden Rock. The city is a busy strip of main road with hotels, shops, many people, motorbikes and traffic.

Our hotel was on the main road and the noise was only stopping for a couple of hours at night, the rest of the day and night you could hear the motorbikes,  cars, trucks and busses using their horns to indicate that they were there due to no traffic lights or road signs. After a day or two the noise gets to you as its never ending.