Atawalpa

The incessant banging of the train due to the poor maintenance of the rails made it difficult to stand without falling. Olivier could feel the warm blow of the dusty wind from the opened windows of his sleeper cabin. There was no trash bin to dispose of the ears of corn he had eaten four hours ago. As the train was approaching the outskirts of the city at around 3 in the morning, a miserable nightlife could be seen next to the tracks: run-down bars where people play billiards and drink a local whiskey for just 200 kyats (15 dollars cents) the glass. A few minutes later, he arrived at the Bago Railway Station. As he went out of the train, a hoard of wild dogs was aggressively barking and approaching dangerously close to him. An old Burmese man smoking the pipe successfully made them go away by yelling and clapping loudly his hands.

Built during the British period, the Bago Railway Station has since a long time passed its glory. Plants and moisture were growing inside the walls, with most of the paint rumbled. All the people waiting at the station had the appearance of those who have suffered too much during their life but still manage to find the strength to continue to fight for themselves. Olivier promptly found a tuk-tuk taxi to take him to his hotel. As they were driving in the night, all the dogs awakened by the vehicle’s noise were desperately barking. There was not a single pedestrian on the streets. Like an oasis in the deserts the hotel appeared. A security guard opened the closed gate and the night receptionist gave him the room at 5 am, even though he only booked for the next night. Maybe they took pity of this teen arriving alone in this dark time. As Olivier entered his room, he was immediately shocked. For 35 USD a night, it included a marble bathtub, a modern parquet floor, access to a swimming pool, and American breakfast. The contrast between the aged poorly maintained train cabin, and the trendy design of the hotel room was too much to cope with. He felled asleep for 3 hours.

Myanmar Railways have no computer system, no website. The day before his departure to Bago, Olivier went to the Nay Pyi Taw Railway Station to try to buy a ticket. The station supervisor explained to him that tickets could only be issued on the day of departure. But no worries, he would make sure that there was a place available for the foreigner tomorrow. He was right, as when Olivier showed up the next day, his handwritten ticket was already prepared. He was escorted to the Station Master’s office where they wrote down its passport details, and he was then taken care of by a supervisor to his private double-sleeper cabin. Two blankets and one pillow were provided. A grey metallic drawer was placed next to the window for storage. The price of the ticket for the 7 hours – 300 kilometers journey was 7000 Kyats (5 USD).

He woke up in his hotel room at 8 am and headed to breakfast, where he had waffles and eggs.

“How much is a taxi to go to the shopping mall?” asked Olivier at the front desk.

“2000 Kyats by tuk-tuk and 1000 by moto.” replied the staff.

“I would like the moto please.”

“Sure, I will call somebody to pick you, it will just take two minutes.”

The shopping mall was a shady building whose only international chain was a Japanese Miniso. There was an Espresso bar with black leather chairs. In the queue were two young men with a strong American accent that sounded straight out of a Netflix TV show. Bago has few foreigners enough that anytime they meet, they tend to interact and sit together.

“We are working for the Peace Corp. We still have one month to do here, and after we will be moved to a village in Mon State.”

“Me, I am working for a luxury hotel in Nay Pyi Taw, the capital.” explained Olivier.

“The Peace Corp pays us rooms in a small inn. We made friends with the cooks, and they let us use the kitchen. We do a lot of pasta when we are tired of Burmese food. It is not like Bago has any real Western restaurant.” said one of them.

“Life in Nay Pyi Taw is quite different. There, we have two Italian restaurants with Italian chefs. One can have the finest cheese platter. Go to the Indian buffet at the Park Royal Hotel on Tuesday evening. When your family comes to visit you, they can choose which 5-star hotel they would prefer to stay.”

“That for sure does not sound like life in Myanmar.” said the other one.

“Look, there can be not capital cities in the world more unrepresentative of their countries than Nay Pyi Taw. Nay Pyi Taw is a planned city well divided in zones dedicated to a single activity: hotel zone, ministry zone, touristic zone… It is eight times the surface of New York City, but even in its center, there are more fields and jungles than buildings. Meters from the hotel zone I can see farmers making a subsistence life. Almost all the roads are well maintained but empty. The main symbol is the 20-lane highway in front of the parliament, which barely sees more than one vehicle passing at the same time. Nay Pyi Taw even has an International Airport able to handle 3.5 million passengers per year, who is used at around 10 percent of its capacity.”

“Well, Bago is quite the opposite. It is chaotic and filled with life. The roads are badly maintained and crowded. Everything looks dirty and cheap. There are none of the luxuries we are used to in Western society.”

The last time Olivier came to Bago was one year ago. The city did not change in the time being and offers possibly the worst quality of life in the country. It has both the inconvenience of a big and a small city without any of the advantages. Crossed by a highway, it has traffic jams and noise like Yangon but is as underdeveloped as a second-tier city like Taungoo.

There are two kinds of Western travelers that go to Bago. The first are tourists from abroad who come to visit the Shwemawdaw Pagoda, higher than the Shwedagon in Yangon. They also see the Kanbawzathadi Palace, burned down in 1599, and rebuilt in 1990. Some of the original wooden pillars found underground are exposed inside. They do not stay in Bago during the night: around 5 pm, they either come back to Yangon or head in the northern direction to Mandalay. They take lunch in restaurants also catered to Chinese groups.

The second kind is expats living in Yangon, who arrive on a Friday evening by car to spend two days of swimming.

The hotel even had a decent rooftop bar, maybe 25 meters high, where Olivier had fried cashew nuts and egg curry with rice.

During the sunset, he came back and ordered a Hot Americano, which was a complicated affair. First, he was served a latte, then an Iced Americano and the last try was successful as he received his Hot Americano.

It was Saturday, and Olivier still had Sunday and Monday off but was not sure where to go. He was only 80 kilometers from Yangon and saw that hotels there were at a good price. He decided to go to see his old friends from the time he was living there.

The next morning, he woke up at 5 am and took the hotel three-wheeler, which dropped him directly in front of the mini-bus heading to Yangon. He was given the best seat at the front and spent one hour and a half listening to the prayer songs coming from the speaker.

As they entered Yangon, the mini-bus was stuck behind a city bus behind a traffic light, and Olivier quickly moved in. 20 minutes later he was at the Sule Pagoda. He had breakfast at the hotel where he worked when he first arrived in the country. A bellman dress in a black tie and grey vest opened the door to him. This building used to be the headquarter of the Burmese Socialist Party, and the historic logo with a rice plant is still visible at the entrance. The restaurant, under a glass roof, had the most beautiful tableware of any hotel in Myanmar. One almost wants to take a picture of the napkins and the coffee cups. The buffet even had ripened cheese, and pastries made by a famous chef with 200 000 likes on his Instagram account.

Olivier was not going to sleep there as it was a little bit on the expensive side, at 400 USD a night. He went instead to check-in at the hotel Balmi 15 minutes away. It was located in a historic building, though few details were preserved inside. He chose the cheapest room, which had no window, but it may be the only hotel in Myanmar where one can control the lighting from a tactile tablet.

The Myanmar Railways Yangon Reservation office is located in a shady one story-building hidden in a small way just in front of the Shangri-La hotel.

“I would like to buy a train ticket to Nay Pyi Taw tomorrow.”

“Sorry, Sir. Now is vacation time. All the trains tomorrow are full.”

Olivier, therefore, decided he would come back to Nay Pyi Taw by flight. He needed to buy a flight ticket, but since the time his Visa Card had been hijacked, his only working one was an American Express. Of course, Myanmar airlines websites reject American Express. It is accepted on Expedia and Booking, but those charge a much higher ticket rate. He asked the hotel lobby to call a travel agency he knew of, who blocked the last seat available for him. He went there by walk, climbed the half-meter wide stair to the 4th floor, and knocked on the door with the agency sign.

A lady opened to him and gave him a bottle of water. From her computer, she printed a ticket on a thick cardboard note. Olivier was receiving his salary in cash, so he had the pristine USD notes to do the payment.

He took a walk around the Pegu Club, a hangout for British officials during the colonization time who was forbidden to locals. It was being renovated to be able to receive luxury functions and parties once again. Just a few meters away he saw an accident. Bikes are forbidden in Yangon but somebody was ridding one nevertheless. A taxi accelerating in the wrong direction went into it at a turning point. Nobody was gravely injured but the situation looked like some fighting was imminent. In a country when most vehicles are not insured, any road accident often brings big conflicts.

The next morning, he took a double espresso at the rooftop of the hotel where he slept.

“The coffee here is so awful.” said on an angry tone a white lady as he pressed the button on the machine.

Olivier thought the coffee just tasted like coffee.

For lunch, he had a Croque Monsieur at the same hotel he worked first when he came to Myanmar. Then it was time to go to the airport and flight to Nay Pyi Taw, as he was taking back work the next day.

In the plane, he was seating next to a German law consultant living in Brussels.

“Before the Covid-19, I just needed two flights: Brussels-Bangkok with Thai Airways and Bangkok-Nay Pyi Taw with Bangkok Airways. Now I have to do Brussels-Dubai-Kuala Lumpur-Yangon-Nay Pyi Taw.” (This was 9th March 2020)

Seat 2A

I see great potential here. Unfortunately, the report just kind of suddenly ended....

gaobest

Great read and I look forward to more details and information.

I also loved that book The Art of Hearing Heartbeats which takes place in Myanmar and is written by a German author. Such a sweet duology that I’ve reread both books.

Atawalpa

Thank you very much for your comments gaobest and Seat2A. I will post every one or two days. Please find the suite of the report.


During Thingyan, Water Brings Prosperity“Sorry Sir, all the trains to Mandalay are full.”

“What about Mawlamyine? Surely you have some places?”

“Fully booked.”

“What about Nay Pyi Taw?”

“Sir, sorry to disappoint you, but as you know this is the Water Festival. In Myanmar at this time trains are always packed. You should have come bought your ticket 3 days ago.”

During the first Saturday of the Thingyan Water Festival, Olivier could barely walk more than 10 meters anywhere in Yangon without somebody, either a child or an adult, throwing water at him. This tradition is present in different countries in Southeast Asia. Almost all the shopping malls and shops and most of the restaurants were closed. He went to the luxury Pan Pacific Hotel to have a drink. It had forecasted the yearly situation by putting plastic covers on all the chairs and sofas of its lobby. The day before, he had discovered he was much too late to buy a train ticket, but he booked one of the last available seats for a flight leaving on Sunday to Heho, 50 minutes-drive from Inle Lake.

The plane had as many foreigners as locals and stopped in Bagan to drop most of the passengers before a second 25 minutes flight to Heho. During the Water Festival, a taxi mafia greatly increases the price of the Heho-Inle transfer. Therefore, Olivier offered to one Burmese couple and one Greek lady to share the car with him to divide the cost.

“You are working for the new hotel opening on the river? I know well your French chef. I am myself an Executive Chef in a French restaurant in Yangon, and we often go to drink together.” explained the Burmese guy.

The Greek lady was working for an NGO in a small town at the edge of a conflict area.

“If we need to go outside of the city center in the countryside, we need to have special permits. To obtain this permit is very simple. I mean obviously, you need to know somebody that knows someone that has a contact somewhere, that’s all.”

This did not sound to Olivier like “simple” at all.

The road passed through many mountains before they arrived at Nyaungshwe, a city at the border of the lake where most of the cheap and medium-range hotels are located. The luxury ones are directly on the lake and accessible by private boats.

The hotel Olivier booked, with the original name of “Little Inn” was an excellent value as the room was perfectly clean and spacious, the included breakfast decent, all for 9 USD per night.

Nyaungshwe, with Bagan, is one of the only places in Myanmar that has been denatured by the tourists. He was also not impressed with the hygiene from the restaurants.

The first day, he had food in a Burmese and an Italian restaurant, which both made him sick. The second day, he ate in an Indian restaurant and vomited 1 hour after.

All in all, for 7 days, there was a single one where he did not catch a food intoxication.

One restaurant was closed on the first day. On the second day, it was opened but they had neither drinks nor food. On the third day, they had drinks but still no food. On the fourth day, 20% of the food items were available. On the fifth day, they had almost everything written on the menu.

During all his life in Myanmar, this was by far the worst place for his health.

Tourists come here to take a moto-pirogue on the lake, where they can observe a floating village and even floating tomato plants. The most Instagram-worthy picture, often used as a cover for the Lonely Planet, is of a fisherman paddling with one leg.

He requested the hotel a driver for a day-trip to Pindaya.

“It will be expensive. You know what? There is another guest in the hotel who looks a little bit like you. Maybe we can ask him if he would be interested to share it with you? “

As the car headed out of town, the driver filled up the tank with oil that was served out of a copper pot.

The other guest was a medicine searcher in Germany who at 32 years old had traveled to 123 countries. The state of the road was so bad that they stopped half-an-hour to drink tea in a monastery to recover from motion sickness.

When they arrived in Pindaya, Olivier observed some minorities in beige pants that looked too large for them. They also wore vests on top of their collarless shirt, which made him wonder how they could be comfortable at this warm temperature. Pink scarves were forming a perfectly round shape around their hairs. Unlike at Inle Lake, they were not dressing up for the tourists.

The foreigners that pass in Pindaya head directly to some of the biggest Buddhist caves in the world. They are deep, quite dark, and humid. After half an hour looking at the hundreds of Buddha statues, Olivier and his German travel companion headed for lunch. The driver took them to the town’s fanciest restaurant, a large wooden building overlooking the lake. Not air-conditioned, but all the dining rooms were open to the wind. The tables were covered with white table cloths. Each seat had a yellow napkin. The restaurant owner thought it would probably look Western and fancy to put salt and pepper shakers, even though Burmese cuisine is so well-seasoned that those were useless. The food Olivier ordered, cauliflower curry with rice and sesame cookies for dessert, was pretty decent though a little bit on the expensive side.

During the meal, he began the conversation with a French couple at the next table.

“Young man. Did you hear what happened this morning? It is terrible. The Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris burned down.” explained the man.

“We do our trip comfortably.” continued the lady. “From the moment we arrived at the international airport to the moment we will be back there, we have our private car, our driver, and our French-speaking guide.”

Myanmar has a surprising amount of French-speaking people, which is due to the huge investments of programs sponsored by France government teaching the language for a minimal cost.

Before ending the day trip, they stopped at a village consisting of a few bamboo houses and dirt tracks, where the driver knew one family.

“Could you ask them if they ever traveled outside of the region?” requested Olivier.

“The parents say they never went more than 30 kilometers away from the village. The son has been one time to Mandalay, but never to Yangon.”

During his last day in Nyaungshwe, Olivier rented a bike and went for three hours, crossing some bamboo forests and visiting a multitude of small stone stupas at the Inn Dein village. He was too tired to do the same way back, so he hired two moto-taxis, one for him and one where the driver attached precariously the bike with ropes.

Atawalpa

At 4 am, a cloud of mosquitoes attracted by the lights of the train was coming inside, as all the windows were open. Though it was a night train, Olivier was on a seat as no sleeper class existed on this line. At 4:30 am, it slowed down as it was crossing one of the biggest bridges in the country across the Thanlyin River, which goes from the Himalaya to the Andaman Sea. 15 minutes later they entered the city of Mawlamyine. In the night, the golden pagodas on the hills were illuminating the city. A passenger in the wagon was diffusing the morning Buddhist prayer songs from its smartphone.

As Olivier stepped out of the train to enter inside Mawlamyine Railway Station, he decided against taking a tuk-tuk taxi and instead walked the 15 minutes to his hotel. There was an enclosed ATM cabin just in front, with freezing AC inside. Most of the inhabitants in the streets around could never dream to have AC in their homes. But they could come inside the ATM to feel the sensation.

The inn was composed of a few one-story bungalows. All the staff belonged to a single family: the mother was the kitchen chef, the father in charge of the Front Desk and food service, and the son cleaned the rooms. At 5:30 am, it was too early for check-in, so Olivier requested the Wi-Fi password and spent some time talking to his brother based in the United States on Skype. He asked where the common restrooms were, and the father brought him in the back of the family one-room apartment behind the front desk. At 6:15 am, he could check-in and breakfast was delivered to him, drip coffee, omelet, and toast.



Mawlamyine, at the time called Moulmein, was the capital of British Burma from 1826 to 1852. At the end of the 19th century, it was a cosmopolitan city, with a huge population of English, Americans, and Armenians. You could go directly by ferry to Penang or Kolkata. Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden had consulates there.

Today it is a city rarely visited, with crumbling colonial buildings, churches, and mosques all sandwiched between the river and the hills where the Buddhist temples are located. Olivier, still tired from the night train, walked up to the hill to save the price of a tuk-tuk.

He had lunch in the internet-recommended Cinderella restaurant, the only in town to have tables with white tablecloths. When he ordered an Americano, the waitress asked him if he wanted local coffee beans or Illy. Illy was almost twice the price. He also requested for some Australian wine, which was served in the proper glassware. The waitress took 20 minutes to be able to open the bottle. The place had the charm of these only chic restaurants in town that are so common in third world countries. They are too expensive for the locals and live with the very few foreigners that are passing around. If the waiter earns 100 USD a month and a dish on the menu costs 10 USD, you do not need to be full at every service to make some decent profits.


After lunch, Olivier took a taxi to the Win Sein Monastery, 20 kilometers in the south. It is the biggest reclining Buddha in the world, 180 meters in length, and 30 meters high. Inside, Olivier observed the multiple paintings on the concrete, describing diverse events about the life of the Bodhisattvas. On the way back, he stopped at a Hindu holy mount and a Buddhist one located in front of each other. Both offered views more than 30 kilometers around.

Olivier had dinner at the balcony of his room. In Myanmar like in India, even cheap hotels almost always have room-service, probably because of the low labor cost. He ate century eggs with white rice. For some reason this Chinese dish found his way across many establishments in the country.

“Which time does the train to Yangon leave?” asked Olivier to the owner-receptionist.

“8 am.”

“Can you please wake me up at 7?”

The next day, after a quick breakfast, Olivier walked 10 minutes to the Railway Station. The sidewalks on its immediate surroundings were the most well-maintained in town. Buying an Upper-Class ticket was done quickly, and soon he was on its way for the 9 hours day trip to Yangon.

For lunch, a vendor assembled a fresh noodle salad in front of him. She put her big iron container on the ground with noodles, green chili, and five different pots of sauce. In a small bowl, she mixed a little bit of all the ingredients, then put the preparation in a plastic bag, and gave it to Olivier with some chopstick for 1500 Kyats (1 USD).

18 hours on the train in one weekend had wiped him out of energy, and he spent 1 hour and a half in a bath trying to recover.

sincx

Wow, a great read. Very unique narration style; I like it!

Would be even better if you can add a few photos along with the text

Atawalpa

Thank you very much for your comment sincx. To be honest with you, I am much less good with taking pictures than writing...Beginning of July 2020, as the coronavirus situation in Myanmar drastically improved, Oliver did his first bicycle exploration since March.

The streets of Nay Pyi Taw were surprisingly crowded, compared to usual time at least. As of everybody wanted to move now that most of the restrictions were lowered. He rode 18 kilometers until a shopping mall. As he left the hotel zone, he saw in less than five minutes 10 trucks passing, something almost surreal in a city where everything is usually empty. He passed some of the many museums the city has, still close due to the lack of travelers. He could see the golden Uppatasanti Pagoda far away behind large fields. Journalists often wrote that Nay Pyi Taw is a capital built right in the jungle. This is totally wrong. There are some jungles of course, but much more fields and plains. In no way does it look like a city emerging from an Amazonian forest. Rumors, wrong or right, pretend the Uppatasanti, which only dates from a few years ago, was built in large part thanks to child labor. What is certain is the military junta was not known to have sleepless nights because of labor conditions. It was a common practice to ask every village to give one man for free to help construct the infrastructures. The Mandalay Palace was rebuilt thanks to forced volunteers. Many of the country relatively modern looking highways were done almost by hands.

A few minutes later, Olivier passed around an area of affluent villas. They had sculpted door fences, Greek columns at the entrance and fake tiles on the roof. Some of them were already semi-abandoned. On this Sunday morning, many trash bags were on the side walk as this day the garbage collectors pass around to take it.

Inside the shopping malls, around 70 percent of the customers were wearing masks, and every restaurant employees. He sat in an establishment with many transparent partitions on the table, and a sign at the entrance explaining it was mandatory to wear a mask while ordering at the counter. He had a black coffee and some vegetarian springs rolls. He worked for a while his Burmese on a book he just bought at the supermarket upstairs. It was actually a book of translations for Burmese people wanting to learn English, but it worked very well in the opposite direction.

After going down a hill, he arrived at the Ywadaw village, right next to the modern highways. It had a tiny train station in wood which one can only access through a dirt way. He had a conversation with one of the railway employee in a mix of Burmese and English.
"Is this station from the British period?" asked Olivier.
"There was already a sort of station here, but this building only dates back from 30 years ago."
Expect from the concrete floor, the building had so few traces of modernity that Olivier would have believed without question the man if he would have told him it dated from the Bagan kings.
"How many people are working in the station? Do you have any technicians or engineers based here?" asked Olivier.
"We are 7 people working in the station, but only for the selling of the tickets. No technician is based here. If needed, they come from Pyinmana Railway Station. Five express trains pass here every day but do not stop. Only two slow trains stop per day."
"What measures do you have to take with the coronavirus?"
"Everybody has to pay double price as we only allow one place out of two to be occupied inside the train."

Olivier thought it was better than what some developed countries were doing. His father had taken the train three weeks ago in France, and there was no special seating measure to guarantee social distancing.

He continued to the village center, where a few roads had a concrete pavement in their middle approximately two meters large. He rode a few minutes in the field around before having a beer at the only bar of the village. The building was all in wood. Inside were two billiard tables, and a group of young was having a party.

He headed back, and from the primitive Railway Station it only took him a few minutes to be back on the city’s modern highways. He went to the same shopping mall for his lunch. In the restaurant, all the waiters were wearing masks and face shields. A sanitizer pot was on the table. He ordered some vegetarian dumplings, confirming with the adequate Burmese word, and receive minutes later some dumplings with chicken. The waitress realized the mistake and changed it immediately.

On the way back the rain came strongly, which slowed him down. During the raining season in this region, it generally rains a few hours at the end of the afternoon. Olivier only drove on the sidewalk as pedestrians in Nay Pyi Taw are as rare as Trump supporters in San-Francisco. During this weather, he noticed the motorbike drivers became irritated and drove much more aggressively, so he was afraid to be on the road. Of course, he needed to watch out for the constant holes. At one point the sidewalk was broken for 2 meters, and it was inundated with around 8 centimeters of water. He walked carefully and received water on his face any time a motorbike passed.

He passed in front of a building belonging to the Yunnan Gold and Mining Group, with inscriptions in Chinese characters. As there is no gold nor other mining to do in Nay Pyi Taw, the goal of this office was surely to create and maintain relationships with old servants in white clothes from the ministries. Not far some teens were playing football on the grass under the rain, with nothing to cover their back and belly.

To take back some energy, in the evening, he had some raviolis filled with spinach in their creamy sauce with black truffle and coffee.

sl1ppy

many thanks for this, I never tire of Burma stories - a magical place

Atawalpa

On Friday, Olivier asked one of his colleagues the cheapest efficient way to go to Taungoo, where he booked a hotel for Saturday night. She kindly offered to call a motorbike-taxi who would pick him at 6:30 am from the hotel, and bring him to Lewe, the southern suburb of Nay Pyi Taw. From there, he might (or not) find a bus to Taungoo.

Trains in Myanmar can turn bad. A cloud of mosquitoes can attack you. They could arrive 10 hours later than forecasted with no communication to the passengers. Yet, even the worst sufferings of the train could never come close to the horrors of the bus. A terrible smell of moisture made him want to vomit. The bad maintenance made it bang up and down all the time. A loud romantic Burmese movie was shown to provide some distraction to the passengers.

At 11 am Olivier checked in his hotel. It was a small one-story compound at the border of the town and of the rice fields. His vintage room had both walls and floors in dark waxed wood, with a small balcony giving on the lush gardens of palm trees.

He negotiated for 25 USD a tuk-tuk taxi to do the round-trip to Tan Daungyi, a village known for its Naw Bu Daw Mountain which is a pilgrimage for Christians. To go up and down the mountain, two separate one-way roads each barely large enough for a single vehicle. The hillsides are covered with coffee plantation. In the village restaurant, the waiter brought to Olivier a bottle where it was written “holy-water”. No tea was available, something rare enough in Myanmar to be noted. Freshly brewed coffee was offered, though the lack of filter means you need to success to not drink the coffee paste at the bottom of the cup.

It turned out that the way to go there was more interesting than the final attraction. The holy-site turned out to be a plastic statue of Jesus-Christ that would have looked more appropriate in a supermarket.

Olivier had dinner at the hotel restaurant. The chairs had probably been used for banquet events for 50 years in different countries before arriving here. The menu was Sino-Burmese, with a single European dish: French fries. A surprisingly large number of Western tourists were there, most of them just stopping here for the night on the way to Inle Lake or Bagan. In one way, the customer base looked exactly like in an American motel, even though the architecture, design, and management style of the place was as different as possible from a motel.

The couple owning the place was more than 80 years old and spoke perfect English from the colonial period.

“You know” explained the wife to a family of Netherlanders. “During the second world war, one of the most important Myanmar battles happened in Taungoo. The Chinese desperately tried to help the British to hold against the Japanese. With no success. The fall of Taungoo meant they soon invaded Mandalay and Lashio, cutting the Burma road who was almost the only supply chain linking China with the rest of the world.”

After a long night, Olivier discovered the center of Taungoo. A few British villas here and there. Lots of houses in wood. Almost no buildings higher than 2 stories. A new shopping mall that looks reasonably modern, but where you will only find the cheapest junk possible: the low-end of Chinese plastic goods and a burger joint whose food is worse than Burger King. This was the first time in its life that Olivier visited a town whose shape was almost perfectly square. The fortified walls have disappeared, but the attached water pits are still delimiting the borders of the town.

In the colonial Railway Station, the only trace of the 21st century was a phone charger point. Social distinction needed, it had two separate lines to buy ordinary class and upper-class tickets. Olivier received in 3 mn his handwritten (upper-class) ticket for Mandalay. Tickets are only sold on the day of travel, so it is better to come early to be sure to find a place. As the Station does not have any computer or IT System, they used an ingenious cardboard to indicate to the passengers where each wagon is going to be positioned. As he was waiting on the platform, an old man without uniform asked him his ticket to help him to find his seat. Once they were on board, he just said “money”. His face looked as if he had just won the lottery when Olivier gave him 500 kyats (35 cents).

The train took 10 hours to do the 370 km between the two cities. The plan of Olivier was then to spend the night in Mandalay and take the 6 hours train to Naypyidaw the next day.

For most people, this kind of week-end trip would look a bit crazy. Myanmar trains, with no AC, are hardly the places where people want to spend time. As for Olivier, he genuinely enjoyed taking the train. The low-speed allows for a relaxing view of the countryside. He spent time with a plastic cup of Myanmar tea and a meal of dried corn on one hand, and a book in the other. The train passes into so many obscure towns that barely have anything outside of a Railway Station, a golden pagoda, and a few wooden houses.

When he was on the train, he was not waiting forward to arrive at his destination. He was simply happy to watch the landscape while drinking espresso from his portable coffee machine. Most tourists want to go fast. They have a very limited amount of time for holidays, so they want to make the most in terms of sightseeing. For this reason, they move in flight and overnight buses, totally unable to “sacrifice full-days” in train travel. At this stage of his life, Olivier was lucky, due to the nature of his profession, to have a large number of holidays. In 2019, he took around 13 full weeks off to travel, besides multiple weekend trips like this one. For this reason, no need to rush between the Lonely Planet Sightseeing, he could afford to be slow.

To realize how big Myanmar is in term of transportation times, one can see that Google Maps forecasts 48 hours of driving from the upper-north city of Putao to the upper-south city of Kawthaung. By comparison, going from New-York to Los-Angeles, not exactly a small trip, is predicted to be "only" 41 hours. Actually, there are some villages even norther than Putao, but Google Maps cannot predict the driving time to go there. Even by flights, due to the few schedules, it might often take one two days to go from Putao to Kawthaung, as there are few schedules and many stops. Whereas one can take many direct 5-hour New-York Los-Angeles flight every day. The lack of infrastructure make Myanmar bigger for the traveller than it is just in term of Kilometer.

Often, as he was looking at the life of the poor from the countryside, he could not help but wonder if they had it better than the poor from the big cities. They may have less shiny mobile phones, have less money to buy lottery tickets and less reliable electricity. But they live in relatively large wooden houses that are well kept and maintained. They dress well and eat healthy food. The poor from Yangon live in crowded buildings that look so abandoned that nobody could believe people are living there. 10 people will share a room whose walls will be covered with moisture and humidity.

As it is, at 11:15 pm, Olivier arrived in Mandalay. Non-branded hotels in Myanmar are either hit or miss. This time, it was a miss. He reserved on Booking.com a room that was supposed to have a marble bathtub and a balcony. The price was 25 dollars, which in Myanmar is high enough that one expects some decent standards. First of all the night receptionist who spoke almost no English gave to Olivier a room with no bathtub and no balcony, but this was almost the least important problem. There were dead insects in the sink, and urine on the bedsheet. This judgment was from a person who had spent one month traveling in India and staying in accommodations that were less than 10 USD a night. The ridiculous point is that the place even had a small swimming pool, yet they could not provide clean bed sheets.

“I want to speak to the manager” requested Olivier.

“Sorry Sir, the manager took a trip to Yangon, and I cannot join him at this time.”

He envisioned changing of hotel. However, a pack of dogs was fighting outside, and no taxis were available at this time. For this reason, he just moved to another room, who had no urine on the bed.

In the morning time, another receptionist agreed after 5 seconds to lower his room charge to 15 dollars. As a good point, the breakfast on the rooftop was the only part of the hotel that was not disgusting. He then went to one of Mandalay’s best western-style coffee, where he ordered a double-shot mocha with soya milk to calm down his emotions.

During the previous trip, Olivier had already ticked-off Mandalay’s classic tourist attractions, included its palace destroyed in the second world war and rebuilt with a roof in sheet metal. By spending time walking downtown, he confirmed that Mandalay looks like a Chinese town. Not like Shanghai or Beijing but like the sample of a 3rd tier city, Kunming or Lanzhou. Most of the buildings are identical to the cheap massive construction being done in Chinese suburbs. The city also boasts the biggest Chinese temple in Myanmar.

Lastly, Olivier visited the Skinny Buddha Pagoda, whose architecture looks more like a science-fiction movie site than a holy-place. At 4 pm he boarded a train back to Nay Pyi Taw. What was his surprise to see, when he came in, mobile phone chargers next to each seat! You may ask what is the big deal, but knowing as old and decrepit were the previous Myanmar trains that he took, seeing something as modern and high-tech as mobile phone chargers was a bit of a shock.