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| The aging Yangon station... |
Before we begin, I am obliged to come clean with a Fan-Boy disclaimer: I love trains. More than that, I love old, slow trains. The clickity-clack rhythm of an ancient rail coach being pulled by a decades old diesel locomotive? That's the ticket, Jake! The open-windowed wagons wallow along over absurd narrow-gauge track dating from colonial times. We are talking train cars that rock from side-to-side like a woman of questionable morals in a David Bromberg song. Yes Sir, I admit it: I love me some old trains. Sri Lanka, India, Thailand; bring them on. Now we could add Myanmar to the list.
The smiling man behind the barred window pushed his hands out, fingers splayed wide: "Upper Class all booked. All Booked!" We would be riding Ordinary Class from Yangon to Bago. The queue for tickets is a scrum, a polite but firm pushing match. The object is to maintain position and at the same time block out the steady, fleshy pressure of a longhi-clad Auntie forcing her way past like a slow and slippery eel. A young-old guy with the purple-stained teeth of a Betel-chewer leans against the railing, asks us the ubiquitous question:
"Where you go?"
"Bago," say we, trying to nicely ignore the guy. I'm concentrating on the scrum. My one is guarding the bags outside the steel railings that hold in the queue.
"Two people, two passports please."
Now there are three prime forces in play, all pressing in on me. There is the force of the scrum, and Auntie Eel trying to slip under my elbow. There is the force of the prime directive: Never Give Up the Passport! And there is the force of me wanting to know what the scam is.
My Heart shrugs at me, standing outside the press, and we hand this purple-smiling guy our passports. He immediately launches himself over the scrum, looking like a body-surfer in a mosh pit. His hand swoops through the bars of the ticket counter, landing our passports in front of the ticket guy. Our guy flashes us the crimson teeth and disappears into the crowd; there was no scam. I look up to see a dusty sign overhead: "Be helpful and courteous to Foreign Tourists."
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| The Beginnings of the Magenta Smile... |
Crimson teeth? Purple smile? I can hear you asking: "What the hell are you talking about, Marco?" Yes, it is time for the Betel Nut Aside:
You know that Yangon is a Buddhist town, a peaceful town, yet there are splashes of crimson at nearly every curb, every lamp-post. The red splatters that you see are not blood, but rather the expectorate of betel chewers. There are Kun-Ya stands on almost every block in Yangon. These tiny kiosks supply the chewing needs of the people, and many, many people have the need. Paan, or Kun-Ya, is a quid made from areca nut, betel leaves, dried tobacco leaves, and slaked lime paste. The quid sellers spread the lime paste (calcium hydroxide) on the betel leaf and sprinkle the tobacco and powdered areca nut on top before neatly folding the leaf into a small, square packet ready for chewing. A fix of betel chew costs the equivalent of $0.13 for four to six servings.
Betel quid acts as a mild stimulant, while staining the chewers teeth a violent magenta. Articles I have read suggest that 50-60% of Myanmar men chew Kun-Ya, and 40% of the women as well. It takes practice to avoid staring when a betel chewer flashes you the purple smile.
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| Another Scrum... |
Meanwhile, back at the station, the ticket man examined our passports, hand-wrote and stamped our tickets, gave the back of the tickets a few stamps for good measure, then handed the things over. The fare from Yangon to Bago was about $0.80 per person. Here in Vienna, eighty cents won't get you on anything, even if you are a senior citizen with two canes. In Myanmar, that same worthless eighty cents is going to entertain you for a good, long time.
It is about ninety-one kilometers, or fifty-seven miles, between the Yangon station and Bago. The train time between the two is two-and-a-half-hours. I'll even do the math for you. That means our speedy train is hurtling along at an average speed of 36.4 kilometers per hour, or 22.8 mph. Yes Sir, our train is a slow train, a train worthy of Flanders and Swann, or Bobbie Dylan.
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| Rolling Stock from Another Era... |
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| My One on the Green Train... |
The conductor led us to our Ordinary Class coach, making sure we had the correct seats. The plastic seats are hard and slippery, replacements for the older wood-slat benches. The gimbal-mounted overhead fan is exactly the same model as trains in India, Sri Lanka, etc. It is a brilliant old piece of engineering, a heavy thing that oscillates and maintains a tilted angle at the same time.
The train car begins to fill with locals. Folks settle in, stashing their bundles and bags. Finally, not far off the scheduled departure time, the train whistle echoes down the platform. The cars lurch, squealing in protest, and we chug out of the station.
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| Train Buddy... |
Traveling out of a city by train is to see the unvarnished, the sights and smells that are hidden from the road. It is not necessarily the prettiest view of a city, but it is often the most real. This has been my experience across the globe, whether coming into the South Side of Chicago, or the teeming shanty-towns on the outskirts of Bangkok.
Along the periphery of Yangon, the less-than-lovely pass by: piles of plastic trash, ditches of fetid water, clusters of shacks that are home to entire families. These are the visions not captured on the travel sites, not hawked as picture postcards.
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| The World Passing Slowly... |
Once out of the city, our train lumbers across impossibly green fields. The wet season is sputtering to and end, leaving the entire land soggy and fecund. Ponds and irrigation canals are full to the brim, the surface of the water backed up to within a few feet of rickety houses on teak stilts. The water table lies just below the surface. A few strokes with a shovel will strike water.
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| Time Moving Slowly... |
I love these slow train rides because the train becomes the journey. The destination is not the point. Nor is it wise to concentrate on the end point. The trip may take a lot longer than one thinks. We are only going to Bago, but our speedy little train will go all the way to Mandalay, fifteen to eighteen hours up the track, depending on the whims of the Travel Gods.
We stop in small stations, where passengers and sacks of freight are loaded onto the train. Vendors pile on as well, or walk past the open windows. They are selling fruit, sweets, quids of Kun-Ya, anything you can imagine and many things that you cannot. Sometimes we stop in the middle of nowhere, for no apparent reason. Through the open windows, I see rice paddies stretching away as far as the eye can see. Snowy white egrets are reflected in the still waters. Then the train whistle blows, the wagons lurch and groan, and we lumber off.
Finally, as the shadows are growing long, our train crawls into Bago. As with every other place in Myanmar, there are many names for this town. It is also called Pegu, for the Pegu river that flows through it. It was once part of the Pagan and Hanthawaddy Kingdoms, dating back to somewhere in the sixth to eleventh century CE. It is a famous site for Buddhist pilgrims, with pagodas and Buddhas scattered across the river plain.
We dodged off the first two shills that pounced us outside the train station. There was the usual strange smattering of stilted, formal English.
"I am a guide, Sir. Will you not take advantage of my knowledge. We have taxis here. Have you booked a room?"
Shouldering our packs, we left the shills behind. A block further on, we found two moto-taxis and negotiated the fare to our guesthouse. There was some discussion as to where it might be, some puzzling over the screen shot of a map, then we were off into the evening traffic. You are a big Farang with a backpack, perched on the back of a tiny scooter. Hang on, keep your knees in, and hope for the best.
Riding out into the river flats, I figured the scooter guys would either take us to a dark rice paddy and murder us, or eventually find the guesthouse. It was full dark by the time we arrived at our guesthouse. I tipped our guys for not choosing option number one, and sent them on their way happy. The Travel Gods had smiled on us. Another day of journey was safely done.
Sources on Betel Quid:
Myanmar Health
by Mratt Kyaw Thu,
Yangon, Myanmar
Or perhaps
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