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.
Map Of Burma And India Photo Gallery
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.
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