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| Burmese trucks - I just want one. |
There’s a famous poem by Rudyard Kipling
called ‘The Road to Mandalay’
or some such thing. Now as we all know, poems that aren’t limericks are far
too awful to consider actually reading so I haven’t read that one, but as my
bus swayed and jolted down the actual road to Mandalay I wondered how a poem
about being crushed against a window and sandblasted with dust while dying for
a pee ever got so popular. I later learned that the man named after the area
behind a sawmill (“Where do the offcuts go, boss?” “Just throw ‘em in the
rudyard.”) had never actually been to Mandalay.
This, in limerick form, is what he would have written if he had.
There once was a
road to Mandalay
It
was shit
Now I know that’s not technically speaking
a limerick, but it captures the essence of my experience. The bus, in true
Burmese fashion, was hopelessly overloaded with three people to every double
seat and the aisle full of plastic stools that bounced and slid on cracked
linoleum as we slammed through potholes and swerved around ox carts. We stopped,
or at least slowed slightly, every few miles to pick up passengers from the
ends of dirt roads or ten-hut villages choked with dust. All day we passed flat,
dry fields. As we crawled through towns girls rattled stones in dented pots,
begging for money from the passing motorists. As our shadow flickered through
the grass, I could see the silhouettes of the handful of guys who rode on the
roof, laying on sacks and luggage. After a rest stop I began climbing onto the
roof but the driver pulled me away, saying it was dangerous. I tried to explain
that I just wanted slap the guy who’s red beetel-nut spit kept flying past, and
sometimes into, my window and then return to my seat but it was a hard concept
to mime and anyway it was a lie – I’ve always wanted to ride on the roof of a
bus, and it looked infinitely more comfortable than my seat. I past the next
four hours in my sun-nuked seat with no food or water and my sunscreen safely
packed away and lashed to the roof.
Mandalay’s bus station is actually an enormous dirt parking lot filled with
hundreds of buses. Ticket sellers sit behind sandwich boards advertising prices
and departure times. They are all private companies and popular routes are often
serviced by a dozen buses, the prices depending on their speed and state of
disrepair. Air conditioned coaches sat beside windowless 1950s school buses
without seatbacks and between them all a near-gridlock of honking taxis and
reversing buses. As we rolled to a halt in long grass next to a chain link
fence I disembarked through a mob of taxi drivers, swooning like a Victorian
lady-in-waiting. I let an older guy lure me onto his motorbike taxi with the
promise of a drink. I chugged a litre of water, letting it dribble down my neck
as though I was advertising a rehydrating sports beverage (Why do they do that,
by the way? I watch those adverts and think, “well, I’ll certainly avoid that
product, it looks incredibly difficult to drink.”) before whirring towards Mandalay.
The city was a hot
square grid made of concrete and dirt set against a huge palace compound fenced
with a moat and high walls. Beyond the palace rose Mandalay hill – its gold-roofed pagodas just
visible through the smoke haze. Mortorbikes were banned in Rangoon but Mandalay
was choked with scooters going the wrong way and blocking intersections while
tiny blue Mazda utilities the size of pedal cars squatted under a load of
crouching passengers. I had, my driver told me, hit afternoon peak hour. The
first three hotels I tried were full but eventually I found a room up seven flights of
stairs. As I fumbled for my passport at the reception desk, a group of
businessmen elbowed me out of the way and started jabbering at the clerk, all
talking at once. He gave them a key and they sat down on the lobby couches,
ashing their cigarettes on the carpet and talking so loudly I could hardly hear
my room number. Soon they left.
“I’m sorry about
those men, they are Chinese,” said the clerk screwing up his nose and glaring
at their retreating backs. “They’re so rude.”
Mandalay is only a day’s drive
from the Chinese border and the clerk told me that trucks bring a stream of
cheap electrical goods and plastic tat into Burma through the city.
“They get rich but
we get nothing.” I felt like pointing out that he was employed by a hotel full
of Chinese businessmen but he had mentioned something about a hot shower and I
was excited. It was my first hot shower in Burma and by the time I had
scrubbed myself a few shades lighter it was dark and I was starving. I found a
restaurant – all Chinese food, I noticed – and sat planning my next move. I had
hoped to go from Mandalay through the border
town of Lashio and into Kunming
in China, the same road that the Chinese trucks were plying, but with fighting near the
border the whole area was off-limits. I rather snidely considered disguising
myself as an endangered species or an old growth forest – a sure way to get
into China
– but of course I would be immediately killed. Or mulched.
The next day I got
talking to a Chinese backpacker – the first I had met – who was drunk at
lunchtime and looking for company. He was on his way back home to Xi’an in central China by land. I told him that I
wanted to do the same and he became my instant best friend.
“Then we will go
together!” He exclaimed, toasting our journey.
“But I can’t go
cross the border. I think I must fly.” I said.
“No, no. I will
check for you.” He fished in his pocket for a mobile phone and made a call to
the Chinese border post.
“No good. He says
that only Chinese people can cross. If you try you go to jail. Or maybe Burmese
people shoot you,” he leaned closer, “They’re crazy, you know.”
It looked like I
was flying.
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| Best. Thing. Ever. |
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