Quick tour of Burma

We are told that traffic is worse in India, and traffic is impossible in Ghana, but Burma must be getting us ready for those countries. 

The “motor mile” in Burma is at the port, where lines of used buses wait for government inspection before being allowed into the country.  If they look beat up, it’s because they have lived out their useful lives elsewhere.  About half of them are right hand drive, although Burmese drive on the right side of the road.  One result of this is that you can’t predict very well what your commuter bus will look like, or even what side of the bus to jump on. 

This does not deter people, of course, and the buses are jammed with people.  Our ship docked in the deep sea port about ten miles out of town, which is a one-hour commute.  On two different days, we went in at rush hour, seeing the roads lined with people waiting to stuff themselves into those trucks and buses.  

There are two different kinds of buses.  The traditional city bus has 40 or so seats and the “light truck” has an extended bed and bench seats along each side.  I think it holds 40 people.  It’s impossible to count them.  There are no official stops; people run up and jump on.  Sometimes, they fall off.  I have no idea how they pay for their rides.

You see these vehicles everywhere.  They are the minivan of Burma.  They cart people and goods, privately and publicly.  I find them most fascinating from a distance.

There are almost no motorbikes.  Motorbikes inside Rangoon are limited to the police and the postal service.  The story I heard was the mayor was involved in an accident with a motorbike (presumably not driving one) and banned them.  The streets must have been chaos with them, because they are truly awful even without them.

The day we docked in Burma, some combination of tides, dredging, and immigration kept us on the ship until 5 PM.  Shortly after, I headed into town with a tour group to see Shwedagon, the famous pagoda, at sunset.  The roads were crowded with people heading to a local pagoda festival, which is like any small town festival:  rides, games of chance, fair food, music, and dancing.  When we passed an oxcart laden with a local family, our guide stopped the bus so we could jump out and take pictures.  You know, in that way that tourists blend in seamlessly with the locals.

The great advantage of organized tours is that someone else has to find a parking place.  All of our tours include a guide, a driver, and a helper.  The helper is in charge of holding the bus step in place, handing out wet wipes, rounding up people—an extra pair of eyes and hands.  He (they are always he) never says anything, but he is doing as much people watching as we are.

Another advantage, we found on our last day, is that with the right connections, you can blast through traffic.  I was leading a tour to the local markets, an ill-conceived tour of three markets, set to arrive back at the ship at the last minute. 

The advantage of this kind of tour is that you can make the most of your last day and not be penalized if you come in late.  Usually, we leave port at 8 PM, and our on-ship time in 6 PM.  But if everyone plans to get on ship at 6 PM, most of us will be late.  Getting on the ship—even if you’re living there—is like getting on an airplane.  Our bags go through a scanner, some of us get scanned or patted down, 

contraband (fruit, bottles of water) gets seized.  In Singapore, it took half an hour just to get through Singapore customs before we ever arrived at the ship.  So it’s a big advantage to have that “free pass”:  no matter how late you are, the ship won’t sail without you and you don’t get dock time for being late.  (Dock time means you’re stuck on ship when everyone else is cleared to leave.  A few minutes late translates into hours of dock time.)

The original plan for Burma did not include transportation from the dock to the town, so people signed up for the SAS tours, which included the bus.  Then a shuttle was offered for $18 for the week.  Then the shuttle was changed to a $10 fee for everyone, which made a great deal of sense if it had started out as the plan, but as a change penalized those of us who had bought SAS tours and didn’t need the shuttle. (Grumble) 

In order to make the trip into town feel like a tour (and be worth the charge), the plan was to go to three markets—a local produce market, the famous Scott Market, and Chinatown.  We left at 7 AM.

There was, of course, nothing we could buy in the local market.  Fruits, vegetables, flowers, meats, seafood are all banned from the ship.  I did see a young lady selling religious items for a nearby temple while wearing a shirt that said, “Put your lips on my butt, 5¢.”  Such a temptress!  I never found anyone who would take one dollar bills, much less a nickel.

I wandered down a quieter street of shops and found myself in a temple that was empty of the usual tourist crowd.  It had a neighborhood feel, with people stopping in to say a few prayers before they got started with their day.

Scott Market, now renamed the General Aung San Market, doesn’t officially open until 10:30, so a 9-10 stop there allowed us to see a lot of stores setting up shop.  Most of us had little money left, further complicating shopping. People either had none or had way too much, it turned out, but we did not realize this until too late to make adjustments.  The guidebooks (and the State Department info) all say that Burmese merchants accept pristine $1 bills, but I found they did not.  The smallest the money changers will take is a $20, and the slightest crease gives you a lower exchange rate. 

This is after you manage to find someone who changes money in the first place.  Money changing consumed a lot of time in Burma:  the ATM is rare, the banks aren’t open, the line is too long, the excuse is in Burmese, untranslated.

It is difficult to boost the local economy when someone will not take your money.  Nevertheless, we plowed on.  Leaving the market, we were scheduled for Chinatown, and our guide was clearly rattled.  She had planned a time in a local tea shop, a walk through Chinatown, and a return to the ship by 1, and she was trying to figure out how to fit it all in.  Sitting in the front of the bus, I saw we were weaving in and out of traffic, driving on the wrong side of the road, following a police officer on a motorbike.  This is not a foolproof way of resolving traffic issues—there is a surprisingly large group of vehicles that ignores cops and will play chicken with a bus—but it is a thrilling way to drive through a city.

Two of the girls on the bus told me the officer had been exiting the bus when they got on at the market, and that their cameras had been switched.  They concluded that he was looking at their photos.  Our field office, however, assures me that our police escort was part of the VIP treatment our tour agency arranged to fit an impossible itinerary into our last day.

Whatever the explanation, we did make it back to the ship on time.  Our flustered tour guide practically threw wet wipes and bottles of water at us.  (I think she forgot and didn’t want anyone to find out she hadn’t provided them earlier.)  She also managed to scare up $190 for people who wanted to change money, including $60 of her own money. 

The job of the tour guide is never done.  As we pulled away from the port, a line of guides from Cruise Asia twirled red parasols and waved us off.  Goodbye, Burma!