December 1, 2019
It Started Out Nice
Mawlamyine to Kawkareik (so we thought) Part 1
Mawlamyine to Kawkareik
The day started out nice. The first thirteen miles were a retracing of our ride to Hpa An. There were once again green rice fields, golden pagodas shining in the distance, birds singing beautifully and then the area of big shade trees making the road a dark tunnel and lots of watermelon vendors underneath. Then the long line of tall palm trees on either side of the road. It was all familiar to us and that section of the road was good too. It was slightly cooler, say, 91 instead of 99, but it was still early in the day. Then there were those two bridges where I had been freaking out the first time we rode over them a week ago. I had been dreading riding them again but even that went better than the first time. I was more confident and I didn’t have to stop mid-bridge to freak out and I didn’t slip a tire between rusted slats! Things were looking good.
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Dear little friends,
Yes, it’s me. This day was so significant and so endless we are making it into two posts by both of us. There are entire years that I have completely forgotten, but some days you never will.
When we had told our guesthouse owner in Mawlamyine our plans for the day he looked grave. “You should already be riding, it’s very hot. The road is very rough, very dusty.” How rough could it be? It was flat and we already knew about rough roads and the same highway near Hpa An had been smooth and lovely.
We whizzed past the crossroads where one week earlier we had stopped at what looked like a tea house. No, the woman said she didn’t have tea but she did have packets of coffee mix and tea mix. I chose the tea mix and Andrea the coffee mix. For some reason that had rubbed the woman the wrong way and she told everyone who came into her place about what we had ordered as if it had been a crime. I know the Burmese believe there are “Foods that Shouldn’t Eat Together” because we have seen the posters detailing which foods. But I wasn’t aware that tea mix and coffee mix shouldn’t ‘drink together’ especially if two separate people are doing the drinking. But that’s the way the woman was acting; that we certainly shouldn’t be drinking the two different packets at the same time. She was not nice about it either. It was unlike the typical Burmese person so we just thought she was an anomaly.
I actually did want to stop at her place again to order the same thing we had one week earlier to see how the woman would react. Maybe she would think she was in the Twilight Zone or at least having a vivid case of deja-vu. I wanted to act like I had never been there before. But Andrea was having none of it so we pedaled past without a glance.
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Yes, the road was still beautiful and the bridges we crossed with no drama. Bruce stopped at the same place as last time to take one more photo of a rusting old sign. I noticed an old woman walking toward us on the opposite side of the road, shuffling slowly, her stick-like legs and arms stiff, stopping occasionally to pick some small piece of garbage by the road.
I drank from my water bottle. He was right, it was hot, we should have left two hours earlier. The woman got closer, stooped over, picked up some plastic, reached inside it, and ate whatever was in there, some morsel or other. This lady was not just old, she was starving. I had two oranges in my handlebar bag and a Clif bar. I should cross the road and give her those. Why was she starving in a Buddhist country, why weren’t her neighbors or family or the temple feeding her? Why was I frozen, not moving to give her what I had?
From that point on we were in new territory. The road continued to be rather nice and smooth, the rice was still bright green, golden temples were still shiny and dotted the landscape and the birds were still singing beautifully. Soon, however, there were holes in the road but we could go around them. There was very little traffic and we had the road to ourselves most of the time. Then the holes became more prevalent. They had not been repaired but we could still avoid them no problem.
We had a good ol’ chuckle at the first rough stretch, a climb up onto a small bridge that was so steep and rough that I actually fell off my bicycle a little. Bruce filmed that, I filmed him on the other side. Ha ha! So rough! What a hoot!
The holes in the road started stretching all the way across the road and we could not avoid them. That’s where the repair work started. We saw an occasional road worker placing stones in the holes. Up ahead we saw black smoke which meant they were boiling oil in drums over log fires. The work was haphazard at best. There were few people working and it was sporadic in terms of where the work was being done. Then we saw a girl no older than five carrying a bucket of rocks. Nothing made sense and the condition of the road was deteriorating quickly. Plus, it was getting really hot.
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A very large truck, semi size with an empty flatbed came by with the driver slowing and saying something to us out his window. Neither of us understood but figured he was offering us a ride. For some reason we turned him down. We looked down the long straight road in the heat and it didn’t look good. The shade trees, green rice fields, golden pagodas, even the singing birds had all vanished. We looked at our map and thought we could make it to the main road up ahead since it was only three miles and once on the main road everything would be fine: The trees and birds would return and the road would be smooth.
Wrong.
We could see the hills ahead that were next to the road we would get on. They had lush trees that would shade us, everything was going to be much better very very soon. I could hardly wait to be on that road. The sun was brighter than a thousand suns which may not be technically possible.
I’m not sure why we thought everything would be all right once we got on the main road. Apparently we had learned nothing after more than five weeks in Myanmar.
As soon as we came to the main road it was a mass of dirt and trucks and dust. There was no road but only one huge construction site of dirt that didn’t even resemble road work. We were just wandering behind big trucks because we thought they must know the way. The dust was so thick at times we couldn’t see very far. We thought that surely it was only a temporary predicament we were in and for some reason we still had optimism about the road ahead being in great condition because, well, because it was the main road; the main road to Thailand no less. Plus, on Satellite View on Google Maps the road to Kawkareik shows a beautiful divided highway! Surely the government wouldn’t destroy both lanes at once to upgrade. One lane is always used as a temporary while construction takes place on the other half.
Wrong.
The non existent road actually got worse, if that was possible. It was an absolute mess of dirt, rocks dumped here and there and major dust. We fought it for ten miles which took a great amount of time and effort. Our butts were sore from all the slamming down hard. I needed something like a soft drink. Finally I spotted a place that might have such a thing. I didn’t even look at the owners but went directly to the large plastic cooler to peer inside. I found a Sprite that was frozen to the side. Perfect. I needed something really really cold because it had gotten really really hot. Andrea got a similarly frozen Coke. I guzzled mine and then most of hers. We didn’t talk during my guzzling time. We just sat there exhausted and in disbelief, or rather, shock. We had never ridden on anything so awful ever!
We’ve seen this kind of dust in Myanmar before. The kind that is inches deep on the ground and coating trees so thoroughly that you wonder how people can live in it, that thick red dust. Yet live in and with it they do.
I laid down on the bench for a few minutes wondering why we had turned down a ride in the back of a huge truck. When I rose back up I told Andrea that I couldn’t do it any longer. She agreed. We walked out of that place and into the dust and the first small pickup truck that came into sight I flagged down. I said, “Kawkareik” to the driver and he immediately said, “OK.” I said, “Bicycles?” pointing at them. He hesitated for half a second and said, “OK.” He seemed to be in a hurry so I used that recently guzzled sugar to jump into high gear and throw all the panniers and bikes into the back of the truck as quickly as possible. Then both of us into the back as well.
Bruce does not throw in the towel easily. I often feel defeated but he rarely does so when he swigged one and a half cans of soda and put his head down like that I knew I was going to have to suggest hitching because I, simply, was done. Every single time I leave Myanmar it finds a way to give me an ass-kicking, this time literally and physically.
And we were off over the bumpiest road I have ever tried to hold on through. We hadn’t had time to take our helmets off and it was a good thing because I hit the top of the truck hard enough for mine to crack! We had to hold on for dear life. With great difficulty I strapped the bikes to the side of the truck with bungee cords and grabbed a pannier to sit on because my tail bone was not going to make it. I couldn’t think about what I might be crushing inside the pannier. I actually didn’t know if it was worse to be inside the truck or cycling in the dirt. At least we were getting to Kawkareik as quickly as possible. That was the only positive thing I could think of. It was nearly 20 miles to Kawkareik.
We rarely post videos on CycleBlaze but guess what? There is no way to describe this truck ride without one. Forgive the occasional impeding finger, I was holding onto my phone for dear life and also using my feet to keep the bikes stable.
On the outskirts of Kawkareik the driver stopped to let his passenger out. That’s when we told him we wanted to go to Honey Guest House. He took us directly there. We got everything out of his truck and in a heap on the sidewalk when the owner of Honey came out to tell us that we couldn’t stay in his guest house. What!!? That had been one of two places foreigners could stay at in Kawkareik. Our look of astonishment combined with a look of wondering what we were going to do made the driver take pity on us. More likely he felt responsible for delivering us to where we needed to go. I shoved some money into his hand for what he had already done and to grease the skids for what I was then going to ask him. Then I shoved the same amount of additional money into his hand and asked if he could take us to Myawaddy where there were several guest houses licensed to take foreigners. He was hesitant but then agreed. It was another 20 miles or more to Myawaddy but the road was good, just steep, winding through the mountains separating Myanmar from Thailand. Myawaddy is the border town across a river from Mae Sot in Thailand.
There are actually two guest houses in Kawkareik. Honey was the one that our friends Martina and Nigel had stayed at in May. We were astonished that we couldn’t stay there and asked about the other one, Smile Guesthouse. Nope. No smiling going on. No foreigners can stay in Kawkareik. What the actual hell. Bruce is right, the two men were giving each other very serious looks but secretly I thought to myself, “He doesn’t want to take us because we are covered in dust and it’ll mess up his guesthouse.” And I sort of wouldn’t blame him. It was going to take a firehose to get the dust off. But of course this was not the case at all.
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As I rolled around in the back of the truck on an incredibly smooth road this time, (Andrea took the passenger seat) I wondered about the look on the guy’s face at Honey Guest House. He wasn’t going to explain why he suddenly couldn’t accept foreigners anymore but he was quite adamant he couldn’t. It was odd because we had known of people who had stayed there recently. He had been nervous and wanted us to leave as quickly as possible. I noticed he had said a few sentences to our driver to explain succinctly and in the way the Burmese have dealt with sudden government edicts for many years, our driver silently understood that we needed to get going. We understood nothing but were very grateful to our driver that we were on our way to Myawaddy.
lovebruce
Today's ride: 38 miles (61 km)
Total: 311 miles (501 km)
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That's a day from Hell. Love your combined narrative .. and the video, Aaauuuugh!
So glad that guy with the truck was there to give you a ride, awful as it was to sit in the back of a truck through the rough construction zone. And relieved that he took you on to Myawaddy.
What a weird experience with the guest houses in Kawkareik ..
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