12  Pyay

I left for the bus station at nine next morning in a taxi. It was a very long ride in dense traffic. The two seats I had bought, one for me and one for my legs, were in a big purple bus. The ride to Pyay (pronounced phewy), took six hours with time off for good behaviour halfway there. Pyay is situated on the Irrawaddy River north of Yangon on the Bagan Road that follows the eastern bank of the river.

At first we drove through the sprawl of outer Yangon for a long way. Then we followed an almost continual procession of little low village houses and shanty stores and stalls that lined both sides of the road, interspersed now and then with a monastery or gilded stupa. There were trees and grass on the verges and tropic-stained white stone walls.

After about an hour, green patches of paddy began to appear, followed after another hour by large expanses of crops, mainly corn. There were goats and chooks, the odd pig, and many cows. Twice I saw groups of boys sharing a soccer field with a herd of cows. I had been told that cows are so expensive in Burma that they are smuggled across the border from Thailand. They always had a guardian—sometimes a boy would be sitting watching just one cow. If they really are so valuable I suppose it is necessary, but I wondered what it was like to sit and watch a cow all day.

Then it rained; bucketloads of water fell. The pale grey sky along the horizon was slowly obliterated as dense charcoal-black cloud spilled in loops and whorls down into it. This cloud contained more rain that, when we made a comfort stop, descended with a vengeance. The path to the line of loos in the rear of the roadhouse was across an open yard, and a young girl kindly lent me her umbrella.

The roadhouse was merely an open-sided shed containing rows of long wooden tables on which at intervals sat thermoses of tea and hot water and most unsanitary looking communal cups. From the selection of edibles on offer, I bought boiled eggs and a bag of unidentifiable sticks of what looked like biscuit material, passing on anything with claws and legs that could have been insects or spiders.

On the bus music videos played nonstop on a screen that unfortunately, I sat almost in front of. The tapes were long and the songs all sounded the same to me, while the films that accompanied them were mostly of young men and their mothers who seemed to be doing the prodigal son act. After a while this became a bit of a worry. Did all Burmese boys have Oedipus complexes?

I heard spitting sounds and then realised it was people ­spitting their chewed betel into the black plastic bags that hung by each seat. When full they were left, hanging, for the poor cleaner to remove. Betel chewing was also the cause of much spitting not just on the bus but everywhere, as evidenced by the red stains on footpaths. But somehow this spitting did not bother me like it had in China. It was a different kind of expectorant noise.

At one time the train line ran beside the road and we passed a decrepit train lumbering along with people hanging out of window apertures (there was no glass) or sitting like cattle on open, flat bed trays with metal side rails.

I was pounced on as I climbed down from the bus at Pyay and I agreed to a price for a ‘taxi’. This turned into a tuk tuk that bounced and blew me over the poor streets for what seemed much further than the four kilometres I was told it was to the Lucky Dragon.

This hotel turned out to be terrific. It consisted of neat bungalows in a great position on Strand Road, which runs along the riverfront. The view to the water and the green hills on the opposite bank would have been lovely except for the long shed-like building that was being constructed on the other side of the road right in front of the hotel. I asked the receptionist what it was but she did not know. I said, ‘It has ruined your view’. She shrugged and said, ‘It’s the government’. That answered it I guessed.

That night I chomped through a meal of chicken and vegetable, stared at all the way by the entire cast of the dining room and kitchen as I ate with the flat shovel-shaped implement I had been given.

In the morning I was served breakfast that had been fried a long time ago—the eggs were stone cold—and I was presented with imitation orange juice (powdered) but lovely fresh pineapple. The same breakfast almost as Motherland’s, but not as good.

I went for an exploratory walk and found a train station in the town close to the hotel. But it was not the one for long distance trains, a pleasant man with a little English told me. He also gave me the unwelcome news that the train to Nay Pyi Taw, where I thought I would go next, left at five am. No way. Buses take twelve hours and leave at night. Even worse! The route is through mountains on not very good roads. I didn’t fancy that, so I decided to go to from here to Bagan which was also on my list. The train to Bagan departed at night and arrived mid morning.

I hired a tuk tuk to ride out to the other train station, six kilometres from the town. It was a horrible bumpy grind in an utterly unsprung vehicle and it took a long time. At the station four men lounged on bamboo chaises in various attitudes of repose. These were the station workers. We established that I wanted a sleeper on the night train to Bagan. They assured me that they would try. The train came at 10.30 each night, they said, but it was not always on time. What’s new? This did not surprise me. I got back into the wreck of a tuk tuk and we shook, rattled and rolled back to the town again.

Later I walked along the riverside under the shade of trees, some of them huge, up to a bridge about a kilometre or so from the hotel where I had read there was a waterfront restaurant. The river is edged by a low wall, on the other side of which a steep slope runs down to the water. This would be covered later when the river rose with the increase from the monsoon rains. All along here now lay what appeared to be the town’s rubbish from the past year, waiting for the water to wash it away. Among the litter, squatters lived in makeshift shelters they had constructed from bits of tin, blue plastic tarpaulins and pieces of bark and bamboo.

It was very hot walking, but the breeze off the water and the trees helped. The traffic along the road beside the river was mostly motorbike and tuk tuk. People sitting on the wall under the trees said ‘Mingala ba’ to me as I passed. Halfway to the bridge I saw the riverboat landing. Several large ferries were moored there and out in midstream a barge was being towed upriver. I had hoped to find a boat from here to the north but it was the wrong time of the year. Bigger boats that took passengers only ran north when the water level was higher.

I reached the bridge, a huge long affair on which a car looked the size of a pea. I went into the Southern Star restaurant, which overhung the water. From my seat I could see across to the other side of the river where a small village hugged the shore behind which green hills rose, dotted with a pagoda or two shining golden amongst the greenery. The Southern Star restaurant had a good view of the bridge and river but it seemed to cater mainly to men drinking beer for lunch. No other liquid refreshment could be obtained apart from water. I ordered hot and sour chicken, which almost took my breath away. But the chilli would do me good, I reasoned, so pushed it down.

Returning, I hoped a tuk tuk would accost me, but I ended up walking all the way back to the hotel where I collapsed on the bed and watched Al Jazeera, catching up with the news until it was time for the night market, held in the small street next to the Lucky Dragon. It was a fizz-out as a general night market, but there was lots of food. I bought edible objects on sticks—the only ones I recognised were prawns and they were delicious.

In the morning I fed the little birds outside my room with some of the unidentifiable sticks of food I had bought at the bus stop a few days earlier. I had soaked them for an hour but they were still rock hard, so I stomped them on the ground. The birds sounded and looked like sparrows, but were half the size of the ones I was used to. Two of them were building a nest under the eaves of the bungalow opposite mine. They pulled dry half-metre long strings from the palm fronds of the small trees in the manicured garden between the bungalows.

Then they flew away with the strings streaming out behind them like banners, and ducked in under the building’s eaves with their cargo. Large carp and goldfish flashed about in pools that intersected the gardens where a gardener clipped the grass with scissors. I also fed the sparrows the crusts off the awful bread I got at breakfast. The bread was the same I found all over the country—dreadful sweet stuff.

Again I found no transport in the street, so I gave up and walked to Pyay’s Shwesandaw Paya in the central area of the town. It was still early enough to be alms gathering (or begging) time and monks and nuns were out in force. A line of nuns, pretty with their pink robes and dark pink wax paper umbrellas, walked barefoot along in front of me. Some were very tiny girls who looked as young as six or seven.

In a commanding position at an intersection in the centre of town is a large golden statue of Aung San, revered former leader, martyred hero and father of Aung San Sui Shi, seated on a horse.

The streets of the town were wide but roughly surfaced. The shops were mostly small and simple, except for the banks, which were grand. I passed the Smile Motel, but it didn’t look like it had much to smile about.

I had been walking over the six-foot wide duckboards along the footpaths without realising what they covered. They were gappy and uneven, but until I came to a place where a section was broken and I could see underneath it, I had no idea that flowing along them was a deep stream of sewerage decorated with rubbish. On one side, rows of dilapidated pipes were wired haphazardly to the edges. This was the water supply. It looked worrying. In other places the sewer was covered by concrete slabs that had gaps big enough to fall through.

At the Paya I had to climb up several hundred steps of an enclosed walkway lined on both sides by small stalls selling religious artefacts and souvenirs. This is one of the country’s major religious pilgrimage sites. The steps were tiled, smooth and slippery, very narrow and steep. I didn’t do so badly getting up although it was awfully hot and airless. My legs had had a good training on the Buxstar’s stairs—eighty four up and down at least five times a day. But at the top I discovered that on one side was a large tower that housed a lift. Bugger. I had left my shoes at the base of the steps and it would mean sloshing along in the mud of the street to get back there if I took the lift down. I thought about it, but didn’t do it.

The Shwesandaw Paya was possibly built around the 5th or 6th centuries AD and is said to house a tooth and four hairs of the Buddha. An impressive height, the top of its stupa is three feet taller than that of the Swedagon’s in Yangon. When I made it to the top of the stairs I walked around the base of the stupa, eyeballed most of the way by a giant seated Buddha statue, the Sehtatgyi Paya (Big Ten Storey) that resides on the hillside opposite.

Coming back down the Pyas steps was scary. I had nothing to hold onto and I could see the drop below me, along with the possibility of a broken neck. I edged down one at a time, putting both feet on each narrow step. After a while a young woman came and walked behind me, ready to collect me if I fell.

Back on terra firma again much to my relief, I accosted a tuk tuk driver sitting by the roadside. They didn’t chase after tourists here. I suppose because we were a rare animal in these parts; I was stared at everywhere I went as an oddity, but not unkindly. I saw no other Western foreigners in Pyay, but I did meet some Thai women tourists in the hotel foyer.

The driver of this glorified motorbike that I had commandeered agreed to take me to see a site that was ten or so kilometres away. We took off, the engine struggling valiantly—it was a lot to ask of a small motorbike engine. But first we went to collect ‘my brother’, who came too. Was I not to be trusted alone with this young man? The term ‘my brother’ can cover any degree of relationship up to and including friend. Whatever he was, the two of them looked after me well. They hauled me in and out of the back of the tuk tuk when the going got too hard for me. Mind you, they never touched the nun we picked up, only her baggage. My purity was so far in doubt it didn’t matter. They grabbed me one either side and heaved me about like a sack of potatoes.

We rode out on the appalling road of yesterday, past the train station turnoff and into the countryside on dirt roads, crashing and banging. After three hours of this I gave up worrying about my bones and joints. Now my concern was for the damage I was doing to my internal organs.

As we turned off onto the dirt road we were hailed by the little old nun. She wore pink robes and had a large bundle on her head. We backed up and she climbed in over the high tailgate a whole lot more nimbly than I could.

Passing two oxen drawing a wooden cart, we went further down the road to drop our nun at her monastery, or is it convent, a few decrepit stone buildings without the benefit of doors or windows. I wondered at the privations there. It had an elaborate, garishly decorated entrance gate though. A bit further on was the entrance to the site I had come to see, the ruins of the once enormous ancient Pyu city, Thayekhittaya, which had ruled this area from the 5th to 9th century AD.

Here the government fleeced me of ten dollars hard cash. This fee included an obligatory visit to the museum, which was a total flop—pitch dark and containing a lot of boring old bits of stone.

The route around the city was a dreadful fifteen-kilometre jolting track that took forever in the tuk tuk. There wasn’t a lot to see—a city entrance gate, a bit of wall and a couple of red brick pagodas, nothing fancy. Every now and then I was pulled out to go off and look at an item of interest. I liked the pagoda that was a cave, inside which Buddha images hid in secretive alcoves and the big cylinder-shaped pagoda that is said to be the oldest of its kind in Burma.

An ox cart plodded past us on the terrible track. They were making better time than we were. The cart was loaded with great stacks of the leaves that are used to make roofing thatch. My two escorts chewed betel, perhaps I should have too. It is supposed to make tribulations such as this jolting journey easier to bear. I thought they were nice boys until I discovered that one was forty-seven. It should be illegal to look so young. It’s downright criminal.

I returned to the Lucky Dragon beaten into submission, a wreck—dirty and with hair everywhere. But still I arranged to go on another jaunt with these two and their tuk tuk the next day. Masochist that I am.

Cleaned up and out on the street again, I found another restaurant overlooking the river close by the hotel on the other side of the road. After recovering from the shock my appearance in their doorway gave them, the management dredged up an English menu. It was very old and in tatters, pages torn in half and all the edges frayed. It offered a couple of odd choices, Fried Sparrow or Fried Insect.

I fancied prawns but got sweet and sour chicken instead. I had not suffered any ill effects from the prawn skewers I had eaten the night before from the street stall, but they had been fried in front of me for long enough to be sterilised. Once again there was no tea or coffee or any other drink but beer. As I ate I watched a small canoe with a square red sail and a large riverboat go by.

After lunch I collapsed on my bed. It was very hot. The rainy season was not well under way yet and this central area of Burma does not get the rainfall of the south that relieves the heat somewhat.

At breakfast the next day, instead of the usual stone cold eggs and hot coffee I was given hot eggs and cold coffee.

Although we had agreed to set off at ten o’clock, my friends were at the gate with their tuk tuk waiting for me at half past nine, so I had to go. The market we had arranged to visit was closed as it was Sunday, but there were still lots of sellers with their wares on the roadsides around the edges of the market. Moving slowly up the narrow street, the driver beeped his horn repeatedly to get a dog out of the way. The dog finally moved slowly just a little to the side, then turned and gave us a most aggrieved look. How dare we!

I told the boys I wanted to buy a pillow for my night on the train. I wasn’t sure of a sleeper and a sit-up was likely. So they took me to a shop where they and the entire staff escorted me upstairs. The pillow cost two dollars fifty and was wrapped in plastic. My progress through this shop and up and down the stairs was conducted like a royal tour.

We set off to travel sixteen kilometres south along the Yangon Road to the Shwemyetman Paya—Pagoda of the Golden Spectacles. The green of the countryside was stunning to someone like me from the ‘bare brown land’. No dirt at all showed here. The grass grew from the edge of the road, then after a couple of feet it was accompanied by bushes, then later trees, some of them enormous and old. At one place a rice crop was being harvested and several workers in coolie hats were cutting, bagging and loading the hay onto an ox cart beside the road. The road traffic consisted of a great many bikes, motorbikes and the odd cart. Once off the main road the path was dirt but it was not as bad as the one to the train station.

The first pagoda we arrived at had eighty stone Buddha images seated in alcoves in a square, twenty to each side. They were all dressed in gold cloth and had offerings in the bowls before them. An old monk with some English pointed out to me with some pride that they all had their eyes closed except one, but what this signified evaded me. I padded around the site barefoot, now and then on sharp stones that hurt even my tough feet. Behind the shrine there were large aviaries of birds, some were pretty parrots and a couple of the smaller ones looked like budgerigars. And there were several large pens containing dozens of big white and brown rabbits. They don’t eat them here so I wondered why they kept rabbits. One resident cat and dog also wandered around.

We moved on to the Spectacles Pagoda. Inside this big pagoda sat a large white-faced Buddha wearing an enormous pair of gold-rimmed specs. And on one side of the gigantic statue was a substantial glass case half full of spectacles. Supposedly put there by cured supplicants, most looked new and unused to me. But, sceptic though I am, I still made an offering here—my eyes aren’t what they used to be.

Back at the hotel I rested for the remainder of the day. I had paid for a late checkout at six. I was preparing for my train ride, expecting the worst—that I would have to sit up all night.