Collecting Moments

When they don't carry stones or do some other extremely hard work, children in Myanmar are happy, playful and eternally grateful.

A local of Nawnghkio: “This road is dangerous, not peaceful. Some towns are closed to foreigners.” We still insisted on hitchhiking out of town southwards. “So you see this road on your map? It's rare used. Only by the army and private trucks. No taxis, no buses.” - said another senior resident of Nawnghkio when he saw us trying to hitch. “We want a truck then.” “Wait a minute, I'll try to get you a truck”. Ten minutes after we were driving in a motorbike taxi (paid by that man) to the offices of an Indian transportation company owned by his friend. The owners and workers were gathered there waiting for the next lorry. We decided to share the huge watermelon gifted to us by our previous hitch driver. Soon a girl appeared speaking good English and explained to us that we could reach a village half way to Taunggyi (our destination) with a truck and then continue the next day. We were introduced to the truck driver and his wife and told they would offer us somewhere to sleep

In the banks of Myanmar you can see happy people walking out with bags literally full of cash. Imagine big supermarket plastic bags full of kyats! I've never seen anything like that in my life. Even in the Soviet Union where I grew up nobody could imagine having so much money on their hands. The smell of money stays in the air in the Burmese banks. Workers with nose masks sit the whole day in front of the tables with piles of banknotes and count them diligently. You can hear the sound of leafing through those small dirty papers.

Hsipaw was a great example of the closeness between beauty and ugliness, life and death. On our way to the beautiful Namtok waterfall we first had to pass through a burning noxious field of rubbish. The road to the refreshing hot springs started at an expanse of cemeteries representing the different faiths living in town. Children were playing and bathing in the river just next to the smoking crematorium...

Today we took a 4am train from Mandalay all the way up into the mountainous Shan State which borders with China and Thailand. We chose ordinary class ($1.50 a ticket) to Hsipaw, the ride was twelve hours, and was very bouncy on the wooden benches and breezy through the open windows. Only local people usually travel by this class, it was packed with sacks of vegetables and fruits, baskets and bags. Our morning sleep was constantly interrupted by a cock which was apparently hiding from a conductor somewhere under the bench nearby. The upper class looks like this: All the Myanmar railways were built by the British in the XIXth century. The carriages are old and from China, they are large for the narrow gauge, causing the bounciness. A key landmark on the journey is the Gokteik Viduct built at an early point of the XXth century. Its silver legs extend deep into the gorge as it bridges the two sides of a dramatic canyon. We've witnessed a lot of beautiful moments during the trip: people

We took a local bus from the Mandalay market to Anamapura. And joined herds of tourists at U Bein's Bridge – an incredibly long teak bridge.

Somehow we managed to get a kind of VIP bus back from Mrauk-U to Mandalay for the same price of 25000 kyats ($20). The ride took 20 hours but was much more comfortable than the previous one. The chairs were softer and the air-conditioning worked all the way. We got snacks and a meal included in the cost of the ticket. The engine often caused smells of burning rubber though and the stuff kept checking it further adding to the fumes in the passenger compartment. The road winded through the mountains with a large part of sheer drop from one side. We saw a bus broken and abandoned, before coming across a fuel tanker jackknifed into the rock-face and blocking most of the road. We passed gingerly on the cliff edge side! Once we left the mountains the remainder of the journey was quite quick on the flat planes towards Mandalay.