Rangoon to Parthien - On Burma Time

Setting nets on the Irrawaddy river.

I sat in the dirty iron shed that serves as Rangoon’s ferry terminal clutching my $7 ticket for the 20 hour boat ride to Pathien deep in the Irrawaddy delta and waited for the foreigners’ ticket master. There was, I thought as I looked out at a row of a dozen rusty pontoon jetties each with a ferry moored to it, no way I would ever find my boat without him. Most of the boats had no markings although the jetty entrances were marked in Burmese script that reminded me of the patterns in crop circles – intricate, pretty and indecipherable.

True to his word the ticket master strode towards me at exactly 2.30, neatly uniformed and dry-skinned in the sauna air. I followed him as quickly as I could with my pack and a plastic bag full of snacks. In the middle of the open upper deck he shooed away a group of elderly ladies and indicated a patch of steel floor. The deck was divided into a grid of rectangles about 1 meter long and 1.5 wide marked with red paint and numbered. I made myself at home in number 47 while thirty people stared at the funny foreigner with the light-weight sleeping bag and bottled water. The woman next to me looked to be in her seventies with a face like a leather glove. She faced me cross-legged and smoked a huge cigar, the end of which she put into an open tin as she inhaled. She laughed at me and her front teeth were black stumps where the cigar sat. When I refused a toke she laughed even harder. I sat back on my bag, using my towel to cushion me from the raised welds and lumpy steel and watched the deck fill. By the time a procession of families laden with sacks, cooking pots and battered cases had finished stepping over my legs on their way to a free bit of floor, the small deck was crammed. Everyone was good-humoured and gave their neighbours as much room as possible, going to great pains not to step on anyone’s grass mat or plastic sheet, slipping their shoes off where it was unavoidable. I went to explore the boat, feeling big-footed and awkward as I tip-toed and hopped over legs

Home sweet home.

Our boat, like most of the government ferries that ply Burma’s rivers, was a relic left over from British rule. It was100 feet long with three open-sided decks, a handful of empty first-class cabins in the bow and a raked smokestack. It was probably from the 1920s but it felt ancient – every wooden surface was faded, scarred and patterned from the scrape of a thousand heavy bags and the steel undulated and curved organically. Down a set of worn-smooth wooden steps a lady squatted on the floor selling bananas, three-in-one coffee mix and bottled water. I ate a banana and watched men jump between the lower deck and the pontoon carrying sacks of rice which they dumped through small hatches. In the hold more crew worked hunched in the foul dark air to distribute the sacks as ballast. Above them on the heavy-planked deck, barefoot men stacked electrical goods, engine parts and unmarked boxes ceiling high. A thick bamboo pole bent under the weight of a truck engine as 8 men lifted with their shoulders like shirtless coffin-bearers. They shuffled forward to the shouted instructions of a boy who jumped back and forth between the pontoon and boat. Once it was safely on board, the men rolled their necks and slapped each other on the back before repeating the process with an industrial freezer. They all looked like underwear models.

We untied at around 4pm, an hour behind schedule and I leant on the rear rail of the passenger deck and felt the deep throb of the twin engines while I watched the faded roofs and bright pagodas of Rangoon sink into the deep green bush. A man in his twenties tiptoed around a sleeping couple and stood beside me, holding a bag of what looked like the Burmese equivalent of Cheezels. He grinned at me and grabbed me by the wrist, pouring the yellow, crispy snacks into my hand. His grin was infectious and he gestured for me to watch as he threw one of the balls high off the back of the boat. Just before it hit the boat’s wake, a seagull swooped and caught it deftly. Soon a dozen birds dived and cartwheeled after our lofted treats as we laughed and pointed out particularly spectacular efforts in our respective languages. After the bait was exhausted, he returned to sit with his mother and every time I glanced towards them he would catch my eye and grin.

Feeding the birds with Rangoon in the background.

In the afternoon I stood on the small top deck watching the muddy banks slide by under a fringe of lush green bush broken occasionally by open boats tied to grass huts stilted above the mud. Alone on the highest point of the ship and I could see rice fields framed by buffalo tracks disappearing at a ruler-flat horizon. The vast network of rivers that wind through the Irrawaddy delta are still the main, and often only, mode of transport and we passed hundreds of boats. Ugly square barges sitting half submerged under loads of rice and coconuts barely moved against the current. Fast boats bounced over our wake powered by converted car engines that screamed and fanned muddy water high into the air. At the confluence of two big rivers, the banks fell away and the huge expanse of water was dotted with hundreds of tiny curved fishing boats powered by a single scull oar.

We docked briefly at a village where men ran along a long narrow gangplank from the mud bank with more white sacks. In the evening we stopped at a bigger town and dirty-fingered ladies climbed over the handrails, stepping over dozing passengers and selling fruit and fried snacks from wide baskets they carried on their heads. Already sick of bananas and chocolate bars, I bought a couple of shapeless, deep-fried things for about 10 cents. They were a kind of corn fritter, cold but not bad. I hoped they wouldn’t make me sick. There were no lights on deck and after they left, all I could here were snores over the diesel thump of the engines. It was 9pm – bedtime in Burma.

At 4.45am I was woken by the warbling trill of a transistor radio. Three monks sat cross-legged and listened to their morning prayers, swaddled in their red robes against the pre-dawn chill. The chant was musical and repetitive under a sea of static. By 5.30 they had finished and everyone was awake, preparing breakfast and chatting. I gave up on sleep and munched on a tasteless bun from my bag. The night had been damp and my sleeping bag was wet to the touch, the metal deck beaded with dew. The morning sun burnt off the fog and I spent the day watching the bank slide past from the top deck. My bag was unlocked downstairs but I never worried about theft in Burma.

A busy river town we passed in the morning.

At 4pm, 5 hours behind schedule, I figured we were nearly there when my shipmates begun packing, tying their rubbish neatly in plastic bags before throwing it into the river.

From the boat, Pathien looked like a colonial town on the Amazon. Crumbling wharf buildings with broken windows and faded signs obscured by creeping vines sat beside corrugated iron houses suspended above the river on rotting poles. All along the banks, small boats were tied to trees or dragged onto the bank and the whole place looked in danger of being consumed by the bush. The only vehicles that met us at the pier were pedal trishaws looking for a fare. My bird-baiting friend grabbed me by the shoulder and asked for money. I gave him 1000 kyats – just over a dollar – telling him it was for the Cheezels, but I don’t think he understood. After I had my passport details recorded in a bare office I walked along the esplanade past once-grand houses whose top floors overlooked the river. They looked empty and ready to fall down. Behind them I found a hotel on a dirt road next to a weed-choked creek.

Two weeks after my trip a ferry on it’s way from Pathien to Rangoon capsized while trying to dock at a village during a storm. The boat was carrying 78 passengers, 10 of whom were killed. 

Pathien.