Last Day in Yangon

Monday, Sept. 5

This may be the hottest, most humid day of my life. I spent all morning in my room with the air conditioner running, but I had to check out by noon. With plenty of time and nothing to do, I walked to the bus ticket office across from the train station wearing my backpack and rolling my suitcase. It had rained about 11, and it rained again about 12:50--just 10-15 minutes after I got here. My shirt was wet and clining to me when I arrived here. The only way to dry it was by using my hand fan. In fa ct, an hour later I am still fanning. My back has never dried, and My front only stays dry if I fan continuously.

It should be dryer in Mandalay. And it should be cooler in the mountains northwest of there. Who knows, I might head for the mountains and stay there! In the meantime, I have to deal with the trip to Mandalay and the fact that the bus station there is far from town. I've picked out two possible hotels only two blocks apart. I will take a taxi to one. If it doesn't meet expectations, I will walk to the other and check it. My other two choices for hotels are too far from there to walk. Maybe, however, I can make a deal with the taxi driver to take me to each for one price while I search to find one I like.

I use two safety pins to attach my secret pocket inside the back of my pants. As I switched the pocket from my shorts to my long pants today, one of the safety pins disappeared. It seems so impossible for it to completely go missing. But I looked in the sheets, in the blanket, inside my shorts and long pants, inside the pocket, etc. I even moved the bed. Determined to find it, I took off the blanket and shook it. Then I did the same with both sheets. Next, I removed the mattress. Then I removed a panel insert that supports the mattress. Finally, there inside the bed was my safetpen! I used to pack a couple of extra pins, but I don't know where they could be now.
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It's 4:35 p.m. After a horribly tight, hot, and bumpy (shot suspension) ride for an hour to get here, I am at the Yangon bus station which is far out on the edge of town. Fortunately, however, the bus to Mandalay is rather roomy and comfortable. I sat beside a large man coming to here, but I am hoping for a small person to sit beside me on the big bus. The a/cis on and seems to be functioning fine, and there seems to be enough leg room. Thank goodness!

The bus station is really a bunch of unpaved streets parallel to each other. Well, it's really cobblestone, but not formally done. Lots of misshaped, even pointy stones are set in sand. There is as much sandy surface as there is stone, or maybe even more. I dread arriving back here before my departure. Maybe there is a nearby town where I can spend my last night rather than going all the way into Yangon and coming back out this way to the airport.
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My luck didn't hold. A rather large woman sat beside me, and she also pushed a suitcase partially into my leg room. People in this part of the world squat when they pause to relax, and they do the same thing (especially if they are peasants) on buses. The woman took off her shoes and spread her legs in a modified squatting position with her feet in the seat. Of course, she couldn't do that only in her area of the seat; she took up 1/3 of my seat, too. There was no armrest to lower, so it was easy for her to claim the space she wanted. I doubt that she rested well, however. I shifted and bumped and stretched and pushed back all night. It was a miserable night with little rest due to her and the very rough and twisting road.

We stopped for dinner at 6:30. I had two types of chicken (one was vindaloo), stir-fried vegetables, rice, and soup. It was good. We stopped two more times--at midnight and at 5:30 a.m. I just stretched my legs and didn't eat again.

Hotel (3 Nights) $30.00
Bus 1000 kyat
Dinner 900 kyat
Total = $31.82