The Ultimate Trip - Has ended

Our last tourist stop in Myanmar before heading back to the streets of Yangon was Bagan. Bagan is known for its large number of ancient pagodas, similar in historical significance to Angkor. But Bagan is completely different from its Cambodian relative. And we found it much more enchanting, if on a very different scale.
The bus dropped us at the first hotel along the road and we managed to bargain the room rate down to $8 per night for a double with A/C, hot water, bathtub, and cable TV! Since Patrick was again ill, I went out to explore the area on my own. The ally that our hotel was on seemed to be door to door restaurants and shops catering to tourists. I picked one restaurant, Aroma II, based on a recommendation I had read and had a surprisingly good Indian meal.
The next morning I hired a horse cart for the day to take me around the sights of Bagan. The horse looked a little boney and didn't seem to want to walk too fast, but I was assured by the driver that she was treated well. I really wanted to believe him, even when our first stop was to put on a shoe that she was missing. The horses in Bagan actually looked a ton better than horses we have seen elsewhere. We were told that this was due to tourists insisting on healthy work animals. I guess that tourism isn't all bad.
But what I really want to describe to you is the beauty of Bagan. I don't think that any words I choose can do this area justice, but I will try anyhow. The area of Bagan is an arid plane along side the Irrawaddy River and at the time that we visited, during the dry season, everything was brown. Rising up from the dry, golden earth were hundreds upon hundreds of pagodas, of all shapes and sizes, in every direction you could look. Some were small, family donated pagodas, and some were huge pagodas built for the kings. They each had a different style, depending on the period they were built. There was the ancient Hindu temple built in the Indian style, the hundreds of round Bagan style pagodas from the 11th and 12th centuries, pagodas with gilded roofs, and some that had been white-washed with lyme. The whitening with lyme was a traditional practice until recently, when the government deemed it 'untouristic'. Apparently, they were afraid that foreigners would assume the white pagodas were not old and hold them in lower esteem so it was banned. There were also many new pagodas being built in the same style as the older ones. Building a pagoda is an important ritual for Buddhists and like the donation of Buddha statues, families, communities and others groups pool their money to build in Bagan. Someday the land in Bagan will be nothing but wall to wall pagodas. It is almost there now.
I had the fortune to visit many quiet pagodas where I could climb the steps and sit looking out on the sea of paya, all their spires pointing toward the heavens. For a tourist destination, Bagan is actually quite a quiet town. There were very few people selling wares, except at the handful of "important" pagodas (go figure, the more holy a site is, the more likely someone will try to profit from it). I spent almost the whole day wandering in these 'ruins' and only encountered 4 or 5 other tourists. It really felt like I had the place to myself.
The Bagan pagodas also were not as well preserved as those in Ankor and some had even been 'restored' in true Myanmar fashion, without a thought to preservation. However, there were 3 or 4 that stood out as amazing. In one, beautiful 12th century frescos of the lives of Buddha covered the walls and ceilings and had survived time and invasions to be well restored by UNESCO. Another had intricately carved sandstone walls, covered in Buddha images. But the real beauty of Bagan is how numerous the pagodas are, how quiet the area is, and how unfazed the locals are by the foriegners who come to visit.
Although the architecture was not on the grand scale of Ankor, it was much more peaceful, what I would expect a holy place to feel like. It is a great place to sit and reflect, or just to sit and watch the sunset.

Along with white sand beaches, coral reefs under crystal clear water, hill tribes and inexpensive food and hotels, Thailand is famous for its massages. Not 'those' kind of massages, but real traditional Thai massage for everyone. Where else can you get a one-hour full-body massage for $4 USD? Crazy. In a one hour Thai massage session, you can have your muscles pulled, stretched, pounded, and massaged into oblivion. It can be a workout and sometimes it is not the most relaxing, but in the end I always feel better. My masseuse today worked herself as hard as she worked me and her strength was attested to by her well toned muscles. It is really something I can't get enough of and thus far in Thailand, I have had 3 1-hour Thai massages, 1 2-hour Thai massage, 1 1-hour foot reflexology, and 1 1-hour body scrub.
Every massage has been fantastic, although the weirdest experience was the body scrub. The scrub was a little over-the-top, making me feel like a queen, or at least like someone who can't do anything for themselves. Everything started when I had to strip completely naked so that two women could exfoliate almost every inch of my body with some kind of pumice. Although having someone massage you with grit sounds painful it was actually quite relaxing, except when they hit ticklish spots.
When all of the dead skin had been removed from my body, I climbed into an herbal bath containing essential oils and orchids and was told to soak for 20 minutes. This was the part I had been looking forward to, but the hot water did not seem to be working that day and I ended up with an almost luke-warm bath in an icy, airconditioned room. But it sure did smell good! I soaked in the bath, trying desperately to keep all my skin warm under the water, and having to change positions every 20 seconds to do so. I've always wondered why bathtubs aren't larger, so you don't have to choose which part of your body can stay warm. Not to mention how uncomfortable a short porcelin, or in this case plastic, basin can be on an exposed body. It was obvious to my masseuse that I didn't know how to clean myself becuase after 15 minutes, she took matters into her own hands (literally) and scrubbed me down with a loofa. I've never had anyone else bathe me, and I felt a bit awkward about the whole thing. At least she let me dry myself. I was getting ready to put my not-so-clean clothes back on, when the masseuse ordered me back onto the massage table to have body lotion rubbed all over. After all this pampering, it was hard to revive myself enough to stumble home and into bed.
I really don't know what I'll do when I get back to the Western world, where an hour massage costs no less than $25 for a trainee, and $55 for a professional. It sure would be nice if someone close to me would learn........ right Patrick?

Just a fun fact that I found on the http://www.pansea.com/gecko/index.html website. Looks like a nice place too!

How Geckos still to ceilings:
Geckos scamper across the smoothest surfaces and hang upside down from ceilings. Scientists, lumbering ponderously in pursuit, have spent decades trying to unstick the adhesive magic of these little lizards. They have not caught up, but have now come the closest yet.
Robert J. Full from the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues announce that geckos stick to surfaces by tapping into nothing less than the molecular structure of the surfaces they traverse. They stick by a kind of atomic energy.
Gecko feet stick even in a vacuum, so they can't be suction cups; geckos can walk across polished glass, so they can't be getting any physical purchase on the microscopic imperfections of surfaces.Gecko feet stick to surfaces even when the air around is electrically charged, so they can't be exploiting electrostatic attraction to the surface (the kind of force that allows a well-rubbed toy balloon to stick to the ceiling.) Gecko feet do not have gland cells, so they can't be adhering by some kind of secreted glue.
So a change of perspective was required. Rather than looking at the feet of the gecko, researchers have been looking at the surfaces they cross.
In the 1960s, German Uwe Hiller found that the stickiness of a gecko increased with the 'surface energy' of what the creature was scuttling across. Surface energy is a measure of the 'roughness' of a surface at the atomic scale. A high- energy surface is loosely packed, with a lot of loose atomic bonds hanging around.
Hiller suggested that geckos might be exploiting 'van der Waals forces' -- weak, short-range attractions between atoms of opposite electrical charge. Many of the properties of water, such as its high boiling point, can be explained by van der Waals forces that bind water molecules into loose, short-term associations.
So much for molecules -- could van der Waals forces be strong enough to suspend a macroscopic object, such as a lizard, from a ceiling? It has taken another 30 years for Hiller's amazing idea to be substantiated.
Gecko feet aren't smooth. Each foot is covered in fine hairs, called 'setae' -- about half a million on each foot, or two million per gecko. Each seta ends in a fringe of up to 1,000 submicroscopic hairs called 'spatulae'. There are billions of spatulae on each gecko, creating a surface of microscopic roughness that, apparently, taps into the energy of surfaces.
Full and his co-workers measured the tiny forces generated when a single seta on the foot of a Tokay gecko (Gekko gecko) comes into contact with a surface, and investigated the geometry of precisely how setae and surfaces interact, as they report in Nature1.
The setae tend to point towards the heel. As a gecko takes a step, driving his or her sole into the wall, window or ceiling and pushing it backwards, the setae become maximally engaged. The force on each seta is minuscule, but the cumulative effect is enormous. If all the hairs were simultaneously stuck to the surface, the feet of a gecko could experience an adhesive force equivalent to ten atmospheres.
So how, once stuck, does a gecko remove itself? The animal releases each foot by 'peeling' off the setae, rather as one would adhesive tape.

Back in Mandalay for two days and it felt like we hardly did anything. Actually, the first day was spent recouperating from the tiring journey of the previous week and trying to locate some good food. We quickly realized that all the terrific meals we had been having in Myanmar were 100% the result of hiring a food concious guide. Although sometimes we felt that John was nothing more than another person to drag around, we had to admit his ability to find excellent restaurants justified his cost. OK, so without him we would have had an impossible time getting around in the north, but who's counting. Left to our own devices, Patrick and I found ourselves either having terrible meals or returning to the restaurants that John had taken us to.
Mandalay is a fairly spread out city with horrible streets, making travel around town time consuming and rough. Even though it is large, we still felt the same Myanmar hospitality as elsewhere in the country. We were always warey when strangers approached us to say hello, but most of these people truely just wanted to help.
There was one man we met who was interesting, if not a little tiring - Christopher. He claimed to have been a street kid, but was "adopted" by an American woman living in West Virginia. I think she was sending him some money and books, helping him out a bit, and had bailed him out of jail one time. He had traveled, illegally, between Thailand and Myanmar a number of times, and was jailed for 3 years when he was caught. According to him, the conditions in the jails are pretty abysmal, as you might expect. He was very lucky to have been bailed out, otherwise he would likely be still sitting there. Most of Christopher's body was covered in tattos, unusual for people in Myanmar, and he insisted on speaking in what he called "jive" talk. He claimed this was how all 'cool' Americans talked, but I can't think of anyone who seriously says things like: "you need a little 411" and "I'm down with that". Well, maybe a few people, but really? In any case, he was interesting enough and seemed to enjoy hanging out with foreigners speaking English.
The one tourist must we did manage to do was to go to a home factory making gold leaf, a very time consuming and muscle producing process. Everything is done by hand, from making the bamboo paper that separates the sheets of gold leaf to the pounding of the gold into sheets thinner than the print on a book's pages. The pounding is done with special mallets, and these guys repeatedly hit a small piece of gold for about 7 hours before it is thin enough. Talk about a good work out - you should see their arms!
Our last evening in Mandalay we attended a performance of the internationally known Moustache Brothers. This is a group of 3 brothers who perform a traditional act known as pwe (sp?). The act combines dance, poetry, and comedy and is usually performed for hours on end. However, the government has banned the Moustache Brothers from performing because of their political commentary - the kinds of jokes that would be published in our national papers without thought. Two of the brothers were jailed for 7 years in 1996 for making a joke at a performance. The movie About A Boy made reference to the jailing of Par Par Lay, one of the brothers. Since they are not allowed to hold a real performance, the brothers hold "tourist" shows in their home. The police dislike the nightly shows, but seem to tolerate them because the brothers are now so well known internationally. The show is only a shadow of what it normally should be - a 2 hour taste of the humor and traditional dance (performed by the wives). In this way the brothers are able to make a bit of money and get the word out that their government is so corrupt. In fact, they make a huge point throughout the show of how important it is for each guest to spread the word about them. I hope I have done my part.
We left Mandalay feeling as though there was more to see, but glad to move on to a smaller and quieter town. Our next stop was Bagan, an area of hundreds of pagodas.

We are back in Thailand after and exciting, and exhausting, time in Myanmar. I have finished my previous incomplete post (it was impossible to do from Myanmar), and will be adding new posts about Myanmar over the next few days.

Back in Mandalay after an exciting, and sometimes exhausting, 8 days of travel through the North of Myanmar. Travel is excruciatingly slow here, so we could only scratch the surface, but what we saw we loved! So few tourists ever visit the towns we stayed in that the people here are truely surprised to see Westerners around. In all that time we only encountered 3 other tourists, one of which we ended up traveling with. We traveled by train, speed boat, cargo ship, tri-shaw, bicycle, and horse cart, most of the time moving no faster than 15 miles per hour (perhaps the speed boat was a little faster). I will just have to present my journal entries for the past week and let you see for yourselves.....
28 Feb 2004
On the train to Myitkyina and what a train ride it has been. This has got to be the oldest, most worn out train we have ever been on. I hate to imagine when the tracks were last repaired. They were built by the British during their occupation of Burma and perhaps that was the last time they had any upkeep. To say the ride is bumpy would be an understatement. The car moves in every direction imaginable, so that even walking to the toilet is an adventure. I almost was thrown against the door earlier! We chose a sleeper compartment for the 27 hour ride ($40 each for Patrick and me and 5000 kyat for John) figuring we could at least get a little rest - as long as we don't get sea sick first. In our 4-bed compartment we were provided with 4 pillows, 3 blankets, and 2 sheets. At least 1 got one of the sheets to put on the bed that had never seen a cleaning.
As the only white skinned people on the train, we are drawing quite a crowd of interested locals. The ticket collectors made a big fuss over us, wanting to sit with us and talk in English. They wanted to know if our cabin was "adequite". According to John, Myanmar people love Americans.
After we tucked into bed it took me a while to decide if the train was jumping off the tracks, or if the shocks were just worn out. I decided on the shocks, because the other options was too scary. That was before I had a look at the rails. The ride was somewhat like riding on a rollercoaster on a boat in rough seas. For the first time ever, I chose to take a motion sickness tablet. I also tried to clear my mind of the knowledge that there have been a few derailments on this line, but only in the rainy season. The most recently reported on was in 2001, but who knows what other problems the government has declined to report.
What little sleep I managed was rife with horror movies involving withces and death. I was pleased when the sun came out to find the train still moving slowly on the tracks.
Train travel still hasn't lost it's romance for me, and is maybe more exciting in Myanmar. All of the windows on our train are open wide and passengers hang out of them watching the land go by, or talking to the people in the neighboring compartments. In every town we pass, the local children wave excitedly at the train, and stare at us if they realize it is a white arm waving back. The train moves slowly enough that a good runner could keep up and gives us time to take in everything. Each train station is packed with women selling their wares from baskets on top of their heads. We can just lean right out of the window to check their goods and buy what we want. Again at every stop we seem to gather a huge crowd outside our window - people who so rarely see white faces that it is still a novelty! The farm land in this part of Myanmar is mostly used for rice and since it is the dry season everything is brown. At least the water buffalo and funny necked Asian cows manage to find food and water. The rivers and streams we pass are full of life - kids playing, people washing clothes and bathing.
1 March 2004
We are leaving Myitkyina for Bhamo by speed boat on the Irrawaddy River today. Yesterday we took a long tail boat to the confluence, Myitson, where the Irrawaddy begins.
If we had any fears of being hearded together with other toursits, as in other parts of SE Asia, they are long since erased. Aside from the ubiquitous "foreigner tax" and being required to stay in "foreigner approved" hotels, Myanmar has virtually no tourist infrastructure. In fact, in most places we have traveled here, we are unlikely to encounter any foreigners outside of our hotel. All of our transportation has been using the same means as locals. In the north of Myanmar, there are so few Western tourists, that people stare at us more than we at them. Maybe because we are so unusual, people are always extremely friendly. Children love to say hi and touch us, adults want to know where we are from , and people in general want to give us gifts. Sometimes it is a bit overwhelming, since all we have done to deserve this treatment was to be born in a rich Western country.
Yesterday, John introduced us to some of his relatives living near Myitson. They live simple lives in small bungalos in a rural community. Many people work extracting gold from the river and most are Christians. John's aunt and her children welcomed us into their homes with open arms and offered us drinks and a place to rest. His cousin's husband is a pastor at the local Baptist church and speaks basic English. We learned that before 1885 most Katchins were animists and even today there is a very small community of 6 families who still follow the old beliefs. We made a present of a one dollar bill to the family and they were so pleased and facinated by it, having never seen one before.
Our ride home from the town by local bus was extremely uncomfortable. We rode in the very back of a covered pick-up truck without suspension, on wooden benches with sacks of mustard seed under our feet. The ride took 2.5 hours on a road that was probably paved last in 1970.
There is no place in the world where people are as friendly as they are in Myanmar. With more than 20,000 monks to take care of, they are accustomed to sharing with each other. Where else would a street vendor make a present of one of her wares without expecting you to buy anything? Our German friend related the story of being taking care of by two Buddhist nuns. She was sitting by the Shwedagon paya when two Buddhist nuns approached her and insisted on buying her lunch. These nuns only live off the small alms that others give them, but yet they were willing to share. They then invited her to visit and stay at their monestary in the north. It is also amazing that in these cities people of such varying beliefs live together so peacefully. There are Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians all living side by side.
2 March 2004
The people of Myanmar have stolen our hearts (and their food has stolen our stomachs). We can hardly walk down the street without kids and adults shouting hello. Everyone is so thrilled to see Westerners visiting their towns. Today we biked to a bamboo bridge, about 1/4 mile long, and found a group of Buddhist nuns bathing. They were not one bit shy when I waded across the river to photograph them. The younger girls were splashing about and hamming it up for the camera while a couple of girls were having their heads shaved. There was also a family there for their daily afterwork bath. On the return, we passed a field where a group of women were working. Against the late afternoon sky, their hats and rakes made a great picture. However, as soon as I stopped my bike to take the photo, they were calling to me and giggling. They seemed to love having their pictures taken. I motioned for them to come closer, and they coyly walked over. It was obvious that they were loving the attention and afterward they wanted to shake my hand.
The bridge itself was amazing. A rickety bamboo structure that was held by pairs of long bamboo poles stuck in the river bed about 4 meters apart and crossing each other halfway up their height. At the place where the poles crossed were placed long boards to walk on and the whole structure was held together using bamboo strips. The bridge is used as a roadway for everything. We watched while people on bicycle and motorcycle and many people carrying baskets on their heads laden with their wares crossed the bridge. It was a bit scarey to cross, though, because every time another person was close, the whole bridge would quiver.
4 March 2004
After a frustrating day running between the harbor and the government offices, we discovered that foriegners are not allowed on the fast boat between Bhamo and Katha. This was a surprise to all of us since it is the same boat that we took between Myitkyina and Bhamo. It seems that the government deems the trip between Bhamo and Katha to be too dangerous for foreigners - I think they just want us to spend our money on their boat. We were basically left with three options: (1) spend an extra day in Bhamo to board the government ferry bound for Mandalay - a 3-4 day trip; (2) spend an extra day in Bhamo and catch a MA flight to Mandalay on one of their Fokker F-27, a plane they manage to fly into the ground with frightening frequency; or (3) board a cargo ferry leaving today for a long 9-12 hour trip to Katha, followed by a 12 hour bus ride to Mandalay. We opted for the third to save time (ha) and maybe our lives. We were about to start on the "real" Myanmar journey.
Last night we were told that the ship would be ready to leave between 10am and 12pm. Patrick and John hurried off to the dock this morning to secure our passage in the ordinary class ($4). For this fare, passengers are allowed to sit on the steel floor of the second deck, along with huge sacks of produce. Buying the tickets turned out to be a journey of its own. First the ticket seller had to be located (1 hour), then he had to be convinced to sell the tickets (20 min) and finally he had to handwrite our 4 tickets (20 min). Along the way we had met Maren, a German woman traveling along our same path, and had convinced her the trip by boat and bus would be better than the flight she had already booked. By the time Patrick and John arrived back at the hotel to collect Maren and me,it was already 10am. John was very anxious that the ship might leave without us, so we rushed to the river - our bags carried in a horse cart and we on foot - stopping quickly to buy straw mats for sitting, water for drinking, and a big watermelon to share. At the dock we hopped a longtail boat for the for the 20 min ride to the ship dock, where we were each escorted to our 1 meter x 3 meter sections of metal that would be our home until Katha.

What will happen on the boat trip? Will we make it to Katha? And how will we find a bus to Mandalay from Katha? What new obsticles will our duo encounter in the next 2 days? Check back tomorrow to find out.

It is a good thing that we bought the mats, because I don't think that our Western butts could have stood the long journey on just the hard metal. We claimed our spots, spread out our mats, ate some lunch, and settled in to wait for the ship to depart. At 1:00pm they were still loading the boat. Young, and very thin looking, men were carrying bundles twice there size onto the ship. Two or three guys would hoist the package onto the back of one guy, who would walk down the steep slope, barefoot, across a narrow plank over the water and onto the boat. It was
amazing to watch how quickly they could load the masses of cargo that our ship was carrying. Finally, at 2:30pm the ship gave a final blow of its horn and we were off, only 4.5 hours late! At best we expected to arrive in Katha by midnight for a short sleep in a local hotel, at worst we thought we might arrive in the early morning. There would still be plenty of time to catch a bus or hire a taxi for the trip to Mandalay. We took bets on our arrival time. I bet 3am, Patrick bet 4am and Maren bet 5am.
At 5pm John again started to look anxious and seemed to be pacing around an awful lot. It didn't bother us much because we had just traveled through the most beautiful section of the Irrawaddy river - a narrow passage between high cliffs with small pagodas on the little rock outcroppings. We were still basking in the beauty of the trip at 7pm, when the ship made an unexpected docking in a small town and we were told that the ship would not leave again until the morning. Our plans now altered, we had no choice but to sit back and have a good rest. This is really how the people of Myanmar travel. They have no choice, since boats, trains and buses seem to keep whatever schedule they choose. Of course, it didn't help that it was dry season and the Irrawaddy was extremely low meaning that travel at night could result in our boat getting stuck on a sand bar. It was better to wait out the night at a dock, then to be stuck for days somewhere downriver. However, we did not relish the idea of sleeping the night on a flimsy straw mat atop a steel floor, not when we were anticipating a nice cozy bed in a hotel. Luckily, "bribery is a way of life in Myanmar" (Bob Zackroff, 2004) and for a 2000 kyat per person 'donation' to the crew, we were given beds in the upper class cabins. They were nothing to write home about, but certainly easier on our backs than the floor!
Take care, toilet is everywhere!
After we stored our bags in one of the locked cabins, we went out to explore the tiny village our ship had docked in. It was really just a one horse town with nothing going on, or so we thought. All the villagers had traveled south 10 kilometers to participate in the big temple festival. Not wanting to miss the excitement, we boarded a small wooden boat heading to the festival not knowing what to expect. The only light on the boat came from the boy sitting at the bow with a flashlight alerting other boats of our presence. If other boats couldnt see us, they could most definitely hear us - the engine was deafening. As we drew near the site of the temple it was clear that something special was happening. Hundreds of boats had been anchored on the shore and we could just make out the temporary bamboo structures at the site. Thousands of colored lights lit up the temple and the fair grounds and when the engine was cut we could hear plenty of music and revelry. There were hundreds of people having a great time at what appeared to be a Burmese county fair! Everything that you would expect at a county fair was there: carnival games and rides, sweet foods, prizes, music, stages, bingo halls and vendors selling chinese imports. Yet, none of this seemed to have anything to do with the temple. There was no praying, no sitting quietly in the lotus position, no pious gestures. In fact, the monks were even running some of the games. On closer inspection, the monks were following in the tradition of churches everwhere by running
the numerous bingo booths. There were even amusement park rides, although they were all pretty simple and manually operated. Our favorite ride to watch was the ferris wheel. The wheel was 10 meters tall, held 8 boxes with 2 seats each, and was contructed of wood and nails (I think there were nails). Once all the seats were loaded, 3 men climbed to the top of the wheel and took turns hanging from the chairs to start the wheel spinning. As they reached the ground, they would jump off and climb back up the frame, launch themselves onto the bottom of a chair and keep the wheel spinning in this way. It was really amazing and I would have stood there mesmerized all night if
Patrick hadn't dragged me away to see the rest of the fair. We were definitely not brave enough to try that ride. The next morning we were awoken early, so as not to be caught by the ticket collector, who would charge us $24 for the use of the cabins.
Where in the world is John?
John did not wake us up, as we were sure he would do. He is always on time and seeming to parent us. We enjoyed not having him hover over us and thought of how we could tease him about being the last up. There was a slight concern over his whereabouts, since he did not sleep in his assigned cabin, but our thoughts were quickly on to other things.
The ship moved slowly that morning, due to heavy fog on the river resulting in zero visibility. Because everyone had slept on the deck, we were witness to their morning rituals. The washing up (all the Myanmar people bathe at least twice a day), the combing of hair and the applying of Thanaka (see: http://www.geocities.com/~kenghor/myanmar/myanmar1.html). This was the most fantastic and drawn out ritual. Almost every person, man woman and child, wears Thanaka. It is made fresh from the bark of a special tree in this way: first the bark is rubbed on a flat stone to make a light tan powder, which is mixed with water. Coloring may be added to make the powder a darker shade. The liquid makeup is then applied to the whole face, like a foundation, using fingers and a toothbrush and left to dry. When dry, the makeup is obvious, like caked clay, and on children often makes then look like clowns with big round circles on their cheeks. But the women claim that it gives them clear and younger looking skin. Maren and I sat close to one group of young women as they created their face paint and then applied it. They found it extreamly funny and offered to apply some to our faces. As much as I wanted to try it, I couldn't, knowing how easily my face reacts to foreign substances.
At some point in the late morning, we realized that John was still not with us. This was totally unlike him, he had this need to always be in control. We came up with various stories for where he could be. Perhaps he had taken a girlfriend in the last town and couldn't get to the ship before it left. Right now, he could be riding in a longtail, trying desperately to catch up with the ship and his foreign charges. Or maybe he returned to the festival the night before, and had been so caught up in the bingo and drinking that he forgot to come back. It also crossed our minds that the ships crew could have thrown him overboard for demanding so much respect from them.
At 10am, when he still hadn't appeared, I went looking for him. The reality was far less interesting. I discovered John still in his cabin, having overslept - by 4 hours! He seemed pretty disturbed by getting up so late and refused to even talk about what had happened. We had a good chuckle about it.
Our ship docked in Katha at noon. We were finally there! Getting to Mandalay from Katha should be no problem, we thought. As you can guess, things did not go as we hoped. The only car in town was available for the low price of $150, way out of our budget. However, he was willing to take us to the train station an hour away for $10, which we accepted. Before leaving, we toured through the market of Katha and discovered a great little town. The market was quiet, the town clean, the dirt streets tree-lined, and most of the houses made of teak. And there wasn't a single other tourist in town. It was exactly the kind of place to spend a few days in and I really wish we had. But we were determined to make it back to Mandalay with enough time left on our visas for other parts of Myanmar.
Leaving Katha turned out to be no easy matter. The driver who offered to bring us to the train suddenly changed his mind. He was too tired to bother, but was convinced again after we discovered him sitting at a tea shop on our way to the bus. So we made it to the train station with 3 hours to spare (enough time to down a few beers, eat some dinner, and even have a Myanmar style bath). Our reward? There were no upper class seats available and we were forced to buy ordinary class seats for the 12 hour, overnight ride. In ordinary class, the seats are wooden with high backs and the cars are without light. It was much less fun than it sounds. We felt sure that the hundreds of people waiting on the tracks couldn't possibly all be waiting for the same train, but we were again wrong. When the train pulled into the station there was a huge rush for the ordinary carriages and each door was jammed with 40 people trying to get on an already packed train. Somehow, John made it onto the train and we shoved our bags through a window to him. Our only way on was also through the window onto the packed and completely dark car. As I stood up between the seats, I couldn't believe the crowd. Every inch of the car was filled with people and bags. From outside it was hard to tell because there was no light on the train and it was night, but inside the car you could feel the heat from the bodies and I knew it would be a long night. People were still being forced onto the train through windows and when Patrick boarded he made a grand entrance. With the help from someone outside, he managed to do a summersault in and land upside down! We actually weren't sure if we could get him right-side-up again, because it was so packed. Again John came to our rescue and kicked 3 people out of our seats and the 4 of us shared 3 bench seats for the journey. Forget going to the bathroom (not that I really wanted to attend a toiled being used by 200 people without cleaning) or even just stretching are legs. There was not an inch to spare, with people curled up in the isles, under the bench seats, and in front of the toilet door. Needless to say, we did not get much sleep that night.
In the morning I felt great to have survived the trip! We made it to Mandalay a little worn and having traveled longer than we planned, but we also saw some amazing places that other travelers missed. It was a part of Myanmar that I am definitely going to visit again - the places are beautiful and the people kind.

The trip also really opened our eyes to what travel in Myanmar is like for its citizens. These people have the means to buy comfortable travel, but are not allowed. The comfortable classes, on trains, busses and planes, are reserved for government officials and VIPs. It can be very difficult, or impossible, for a common citizen to travel with any comfort, in fact, they can even be bumped off a flight in favor of a tourist. Add to that the time it takes to travel even short distances and you are left with long and hard travel conditions. Even for those who can afford much better.