Uppity Bicyclists

November 16, 2019 to November 21, 2019

Pathein to Yangon to Mawlamyine

Uppity Bicyclists

Dear little friends,

When we finally arrived at our hotel in Pathein I was able to smile at the doorman, park my bike, take my panniers off and hand them to various fellows, and then we made our way to the elevator. My knees buckled, things went wonky, and I had to sit abruptly on the bottom step of a nearby stairway. The young Burmese men hauling our panniers probably looked very concerned. The elevator opened and I managed to stumble in and we went to the reception area on the third floor where I was handed a cold glass of juice.

You know what? It sucks and it’s totally stupid to be that debilitated by heat. I went on strike.

This makes it sound like I was the only one suffering, of course that’s not true, but usually it has been Bruce who gets heat stroke in a catastrophic fashion and I just sweat and complain a lot. And certainly it was apparent to both of us that there would be no more riding in this kind of heat, it is simply not worth it. But I was definitely the more emphatic about it this time.

We loved our room in Pathein and we loved our time there. There were two dramatic rainstorms (“Surely this will cool things off,'' said Little Miss Clueless) and a few days of mucking around until the hot time of day when we napped in the air conditioning. But it was getting time to leave and an a/c bus to Yangon was in order. I’m pretty proud that we were able to ride from Hinthada to Pathein despite the heat and bad road conditions, though. A friend commented that we are badass and I’m going with that.

The main highway to the Pathein bus station was hot and busy, so we were riding a back route and then sort of got lost. We are never really lost, it’s just that when we pull over to check Google maps and locate ourselves, there is always somebody there curiously watching and this time the guy was on a motorcycle and said, “Go that way and then turn left at garblegarblebirdsong.” We must have looked politely uncomprehending but we gamely went that way and he had second thoughts about our competence so very shortly he caught up with us and led us on a very pleasant back road to the bus station. He found us a bus, made sure the bikes and panniers were stowed properly, and then took his leave. Our red-toothed angel, one of a multitude of betel-chewing seraphim on this journey with us.

The bus company asked for our passports, that’s not typical but not unknown, either. They got handed to another red-toothed motorcycle guy and off he went with our passports dangling casually from his hand. Now that’s a queasy feeling, I tell ya. But it’s Myanmar and usually things turn out fine and of course he was back in two shakes with photocopies of our passports. If we’d known that we probably had some spares of those already but all’s well that ends well.

Leg 1 of this journey was a complete backtrack nearly to the edge of Athoke. The various stops and tea breaks we had several days ago whizzed by our bus window in blurry contrast to the lovely encounters we had there by bicycle but on the other hand I didn’t feel like dying on that cushy bus so there’s an upside to a trip with zero interactions.

Before long we were crossing the Irrawaddy on a long bridge. Then we were approaching Yangon and I watched our blue location dot move toward the bus station that was 8 miles from downtown. On Google Satellite View there are huge industrial blocks showing up surrounded by rice fields. In reality, perhaps a few years later than those satellite images, it’s something else. Like the industrial slums in Hiệp Phước, Vietnam where Bruce last had a full heatstroke episode, the rice fields were rapidly turning into factory worker housing but this housing made Hiệp Phước look like a garden paradise.

It went on for miles and was absolutely appalling, the worst living conditions I’ve ever seen in a country riddled with horrible living conditions. We don’t talk much about the utter poverty we see every day, houses with teak leaf roofs on stilts over mosquito-breeding stagnant water full of floating plastic garbage and human waste. Yep, it’s here and not at all photogenic and we don’t feel right about documenting it with photos, somehow. But the scale of this was beyond our imagination and had certainly not existed on previous trips.

Subdued, we entered the fray of the bus station and prepared for an urban bike ride. We weren’t feeling terribly apprehensive, after all, we’ve ridden in Hanoi. That’s what I tell anybody who asks us if we are afraid when we ride someplace gnarly. “We’ve ridden in Hanoi,” we answer smugly and they slink back in awe. Unfortunately our bus was a bit late because of road construction and Yangon’s ridiculous traffic (more on that later) and we didn’t relish riding in darkness, Hanoi cred or not, so after a pee stop we jumped to and got going.

You know what Hanoi has that Yangon doesn’t? Motorbikes, lots of them. We are comfortable riding with motorbikes, we flow with them on the slower edge of the street and it’s no problem. Yangon has banned motorbikes, bicycles, trishaws (although we did see several of those anyway) on their city streets. The cages rule, buses roar by, taxis roar by, private cars roar by, and they can’t believe the uppity bicycle taking 24 inches of THEIR lane. We were getting honked and harassed and buzzed right and left. The only motorbike we saw was a cop, and we waited for him to pull our illegal butts over but apparently he decided to leave us to our grim fate.

On the right side of this busy street is a bus stop. There is no crosswalk so people take their life in their hands to cross six lanes of speeding vehicles just to catch their bus.

Let’s just say this. We didn’t ride one more inch in Yangon once we got to our hotel at dusk. It’s really a shame too because Yangon is beautiful and tree-lined with wonderful narrow streets and lanes and old crazy architecture. Sidewalks have been trimmed down to less than half their previous widths to provide more car parking and the sidewalk remnants are precarious, in rotten shape, and really crowded because not everybody has the dough for a car. The automobile has eaten Yangon, and the shortsightedness of this is evident in the unceasing traffic jams and inhumane transportation conditions for the vast majority of its citizens. The buses have improved, however. They are mostly a/c now and are all one company instead of the dizzying array of companies and routes barked out by the bus jockeys at the various bus stops. Those guys are still out there barking, for some reason, I guess to feel useful?

An admirable statement but pretty ironic seeing as how auto parking has displaced and endangered street trees in downtown Yangon.

The original sidewalk extended out to the column supporting this building’s portico, so you can see how much pedestrian and small vendor space has been lost. You see people reclaiming this space, however, although, who knows, maybe this baby will get a ticket for doing that.

A small vendor of antiques has reclaimed a sliver of sidewalk space.

Yangon is still pretty cool though, I have to admit. Yes, there are some buildings that have been torn down and replaced by new ones such as our very nice hotel. But much of the dreamy/chaotic ambience can still be found. Coincidentally, a friend of ours was also in town and we attended a few events with their film crew and topped off that day with rooftop drinks with a view of the Shwedagon Pagoda. We waved at ol’ Shwe but weren’t planning a visit this time.

We attended a human rights forum and this man was describing his torture while imprisoned as a student protester in the late 80s.

Botahtaung Pagoda, on the banks of the Irrawaddy.

Yangon has hundreds of these beautiful old buildings literally getting eaten by the tropics. Restoring them would be insanely expensive and displace the people who live there. It would be terrible to lose them, though.

Entropy in action. The flag is the Buddhist flag, it is flown at temple gates and often on the hood of cars carrying monks.

In 2005 every other building in Yangon was painted this seafoam green, which I am very fond of. It’s good to see a few holdouts.

Some buildings are being restored, though.

This church has been completely spiffed up. I have a photo of it in 2008 with several of its steeple tiles torn off.

Why Chid Bank needs much of a city block is a mystery.

There is no question that as we walk in Yangon, between the constant vigilance of negotiating between betel spit pools and head-bumping overhangs we walk in memory of another Yangon. There was a wall, back in 2008, a cantaloupe-colored wall where I photographed two beautiful girls in colorful longyis walking under a bright pink umbrella. That wall should be right along… here? Where this metal fence indicates a construction site? That was the year that Cyclone Nargis had charged through the delta and had knocked down hundreds of beautiful old trees in Yangon. The sidewalks still extended 15 feet from the buildings and in the evening people sold produce and fresh fish illuminated by candles. Rolling blackouts were common (Mandalay had no electricity at ALL).

Cell phones were nonexistent, a sim card cost $1200, and on the sidewalks on every block were telephone tables. People called the telephone table on the block where their friend lived and the telephone guy sent a kid up four flights of stairs to get the friend to answer the phone down on the sidewalk. There were up to ten phones per table and every conversation was basically a party line.

The cords hanging from balconies are still there. They have clothespin clamp things on them to hold mail or bags of soup from the street vendors. And in the teashops people still make the kissing noise when they want the tea boys’ attention. The tea boys are still way too young to be working, but they are clean and wear matching polo shirts instead of the rags they used to wear.

There is a new pedestrian bridge by Bogyoke Market, or rather, they have gussied up the old one with an escalator and glass windows. I stood on that bridge in 2008 and took photos of a busy market street with kids playing chinlone and off in the distance, buildings with windows still blown out from the cyclone. That street is gone and is covered by a massive mall complex, we took a stroll through and enjoyed the air conditioning and the people shopping at unfamiliar chain stores and using clean public toilets. It’s not like I begrudge folks amenities that we take for granted in our own country. Why shouldn’t they have clean modern public toilets? They should! But the disparities between those who can afford to be in that mall and people living in the shrubbery mere blocks away are jolting, and they should be. We have this in the United States too and pretending it’s not there is stupid and hypocritical.

American-themed idiomatic word salad will sell me a burger every time.

Bogyoke Market is more our speed. It’s full of family-owned silver, textiles, and other handicrafts vendors.

Bogyoke Market has little avenues of smoothly worn brick.

Puppets for sale, these are for the tourist market, nothing like the complex ones used in the theaters, but still pretty charming.

Sunday is nun day, apparently. While in Bogyoke Market we were besieged by dozens of little flocks of nuns out getting alms.

So we walk the streets of Yangon in a kind of thoughtful, sweaty haze. Who are we to be nostalgic about the dreamy glow of candles on a tray of delicate arranged silvery fish when it meant that people lived much of their days in darkness?

The bikes cooled their Schwalbes in the hotel basement guarded by a smiling security guy and various napping employees while we walked for miles. There is a beautiful old church near the Sule Pagoda we had never seen the inside of and our peek turned into a guy ushering us into a front pew just as a Karen Baptist church service was getting the warmup music going. Not unusual for us while traveling we had forgotten it was Sunday. Apparently this Baptist church has services in 9 different languages and the downstairs chapel had an equally rockin’ Kachin service going on at the same time. The music was great but we weren’t up for an entire Baptist service here, there, or anywhere. As usual in Myanmar, the hosts were gracious about us skipping out and smiled and thanked us for coming. I’m glad we peeked in and one of their songs is still running through my head. I don’t speak Karen but I know the general gist.

Somewhere along the line Bruce had contracted a slight case of the runs so additional social events with the film crew folks had to be skipped and we got him back to normal by the time we were ready to leave Yangon. This time we had to catch a bus to Mawlamyine, from a different bus station, this one 13 miles from downtown. We got up at zero dark thirty, piled bikes and panniers and Bruce into the back of another of those Volvo-like-Toyota wagons and tore through the dawn city to wait for our 8:30 am bus for Mawlamyine. We had plenty of time to practice pronouncing Mawlamyine since nobody had recognized our version of it while arranging bus tickets. We were still calling it the old British name, Moulmein, which makes people chuckle patiently when they finally figure out what we are trying to say.

We also had time to eat the “breakfast” that our hotel had packed for us. Some oily noodles and a banana all together in their styro clamshells with a set of chopsticks. Mmm. We ate the bananas and left the noodles for those less fortunate and boarded the VIP bus bound for someplace completely new once again. This hopscotching of cycling and other transport is not what we wanted but was also not unexpected for this portion of our trip.

“Boarding for Moulmein, I mean, Mawlamyine, at Gate 7, Min Mandalar Bus Company, VIP seating.” Or we think that’s what we heard. Somebody always takes pity on us and escorts us onto the bus.

The landscape went from city to rice field to rumpled mountains covered in bamboo forest. The long bridge over the Thanlyin (Salween) River pointed us at a lot of spires and pagodas and old crumbling buildings and then a three minute ride from the bus station to the Pinlon Pann Motel. Boys with matching thanaka ran here and there with our panniers. The missus cooked up some Shan noodles and fried rice for us and we ate in the dark courtyard. Yangon was great but we love these smaller cities and dammit, we love the motorbikes and fewer cars here. The owner is coaching us on how to pronounce Mawlamyine and soon we’ll sound like we were born here.

Today's ride: 13 miles (21 km)
Total: 235 miles (378 km)

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Rachael AndersonSorry you had an episode with heat stroke. Maybe someone much younger than us would cope with it but I know that Scott and I would have issues too so don’t be too hard on yourselves. You endured it much longer than I would have! Sorry to hear Yangon has changed so much from your prior experience. It’s sad when that happens. Take care of yourselves!
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5 years ago

Andrea BrownTo Rachael AndersonFortunately I did not have heat stroke, which is far more serious than the overheating of mine that was quickly abated by a cool shower, lots of water, and an air conditioned room. Bruce’s episodes of heat stroke were classic. He stopped sweating, was feverish but felt chilled, and became a little agitated and unreasonable. It’s really frightening and can result in organ failure or death. Now we know to give electrolytes and Tylenol to reduce the fever, besides slowly cooling him down.
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5 years ago

Andrea BrownTo Andrea BrownAnd, yes, we are too old for that nonsense.
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5 years ago

Bruce LellmanTo Rachael AndersonJust so others are warned..... heat stroke is really serious for anyone at any age. In fact, it is the leading cause of death for athletes in high school. Coaches push them too far during football preseason practice in August when it's way too hot. The percentage who die from heat stroke is quite high and every precaution should be taken to avoid getting it such as taking electrolytes.
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5 years ago

Frank RoettgenWhile opening your journal this morning it all the sudden occured to me you have already had 40 days in Myanmar (or at least 30+). One thing that has stopped me from cycling in Myanmar so far was the impression that you do not get more than 28 days on any visit. I may have overread your comment on that but what sort of visa are you on?
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5 years ago

Kristen ArnimGlad you guys are taking care of yourselves! And I am really enjoying your insightful look at the country. Love!
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5 years ago

Bruce LellmanTo Frank RoettgenFrank,
This whole visa thing is confusing in Myanmar so don't feel like you are the only one! You get 28 days on your visa. Americans pay $50. We got an "e-visa" this time. When you enter the country, even if you enter first thing in the morning they don't count that first day. So, you have to count 28 days from the next day. Myanmar allows 14 days of over-stay @ $3 per day per person over-stay charge when you leave the country. It's the only country in S.E. Asia that allows this and it gives really nice leeway because one never knows if something will delay you in your departure. I'll bet anything the money goes directly into the general's pockets. That's the downside.
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5 years ago

Andrea BrownTo Frank RoettgenFrankie, it’s been the case for many years that you can overstay up to two weeks with a $3/day charge. We just left last night and paid $24 each. We’ll write about why it took two hours to exit Myanmar (hint: very poor math skills and attitudes from Immigration officials).
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5 years ago

Frank RoettgenTo Andrea BrownGood to hear you weren´t facing any problems, apart from some small delay. Please let me know the number if you should purchase a Thai sim-card.....And: Welcome to Thailand!
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5 years ago

Andrea BrownTo Frank RoettgenAny suggestions/insight on which sim to get? I was leaning toward a 30 day AIS card, but haven’t found a dealer yet.
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5 years ago

Frank RoettgenThey are all pretty much the same, Andrea. I personally favour dtac (called Tourist sim) in my phone. I got the basic sim for 49 Baht, then downloaded the app and usually go for the 7.5 gb / 30 days at 350 Baht. But there are many options for various packages, best and easiest to do it through the app.
For my netbook I have true card and a corresponding usb-stick as I like streaming some movies, news and sports programmes while stationary in Trang. Through their website I can get 5 gb / 7 days for 100 Baht but I have got no idea what the package is called. My friends here got it for me in a True shop.
Anyways, if you are here only for a short time I guess it is almost irrelevant as you will do most of your internet through the guesthouse wifi anyway. I still believe the dtac tourist sim packages are probably the best
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5 years ago

Frank Roettgenhttp://www.dtac.co.th/en/prepaid/products/tourist-sim.html
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5 years ago

Frank RoettgenTo Frank RoettgenHave a look at their very good internet site vis the link above. Lists all available packages, probably there is one that meets your demands precisely. As I said I went for the basic one on the very right and add the monthly packages (and top-ups) through the app. Their 00400- option allows for very cheap interbational calls too
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5 years ago

Victa CalvoTo Kristen ArnimI second Kristen's comment: it's good to see you guys are looking after yourselves in that heat. Like Bruce, I cooked myself there a few years ago and it was not pretty!!
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5 years ago

Andrea BrownTo Victa CalvoOur crossing into Thailand three days ago coincided with a steep drop in regional temperatures. We are delighted to be out and about during the day without misery. It was 95 F or above every single day we were in Myanmar, so as you can imagine 82 feels delicious. I hope we don’t see temps like that again on this trip.
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5 years ago

Jen RahnYou two truly are badasses (or is 'badass' a proper adjective?)

Anyways, from enduring a long stretch of heat to cycling in a city that has been eaten by the automobile, you've seen your fair share of adversity!

And then you bounce back and explore and appreciate and enjoy all that you can .. sharing incredible insightful and descriptive observations about your experiences and the changes you see.

It's moving to read about how you take in the suffering that you see .. but aren't overwhelmed by it. These well-balanced stories are so valuable!
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5 years ago

Bruce LellmanTo Jen RahnThanks for your insightful comments and support, Jen. You get the most avid reader award. You understand what we are trying to get across exactly right.
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5 years ago