The Train. The Zoo.
It’s hard to come up with words to describe such a day, so I am relying on images to tell the tale.
The train was packed. It was nothing I could have imagined it would be. We were on the train for five hours.
I felt like passing out from the heat. I should have brought more water. I looked at the water from the vendors on the trains longingly, wishing I could drink just a couple of sips. It wasn’t bottled. I might get sick.
I ate watermelon, sucking the rind for all the water I could get. We got off between two stops, two hours from central Yangon. We walked down the tracks and saw a family. The kids were flying kites. A man beckoned us over.
There were people shouting, dancing, singing, sleeping, selling, and moving their household furniture.
“My cows! Good milk!” he said. He waved for us to come in. He wanted to show us his cows. Daniel and I walked into his stable, and watched him feed the cows. We smiled, nodded, signed.
“My son!” he said, grabbing a small child.
“Beautiful.” I said, and kissed the little boy. The man beamed. The Burmese are so proud of their children.
The zoo was unlike any zoo I’ve ever been to.
It was absolute chaos.
The elephants made love to each other, and begged for bananas from visitors.
One almost broke my fingers in its trunk.
People fed the bears bread, as they grunted and opened their mouths like lazy, over-sized and uncoordinated dogs, catching the bread in the air(or mostly missing it) as it dropped towards them.
The monkeys howled, while people howled back. And fed them potato chips.
The world’s most dangerous animal was hand fed like a labrador.
A bear in a neon-green dress danced to MC hammer’s Can’t Touch This and did somersaults across the stage (unfortunately, I was too gobsmacked to remember to take a photo).
A man force-fed a cobra.
Two young lovers sat on a bench, showing affection in the most modest ways: his hand on her hair, or their fingers interlocked, or his head on her lap.
Public affection is rare here, and if they notice you looking at them, they immediately distance themselves from each other.
But it’s cute, and innocent.
Pavlo and I sat for an hour under a tin roof at the zoo, listening to the pouring rain and sharing travel stories. I got back to my guesthouse, covered in sweat, exhausted. I washed my clothes in the sink, hung them on a line, and went to the front desk:
“Can I use some scissors please?”
“Yes. Haircut scissors!”
“Yes, exactly,” I said, “I want to cut my hair.”
“Oh no!! No, no!” she said. ”It’s beautiful! Please no!”
“I have to, it’s too hot.”
She refused to give me scissors. She looked in her drawers for a hair-tie.
“No, I need scissors. I will use a knife if I have to. Please.”
She gave me the scissors reluctantly. I put my hair in a ponytail and chopped it off. Much better.
I can’t quite find the words to describe this place just now. It’s just incredible. It’s like going back in time. You can’t tell from looking around what era we are in. There is no fashion, no sense of the outside world. The people are incredible. They look at foreigners and smile. They don’t ask for money. They won’t steal. They stand up on the train to give you their seat. They want you to take their photo. They are embarrassed if you try to help them. I met a man on the train yesterday:
“My name is John Paul. I am a Christian. Welcome to my country. What can I do for you.”
I will find words later to better describe it. I might still be in shock. I am leaving Yangon tomorrow and heading north to Bagan by bus.
Cheers, from Myanmar, the Golden Land.
