Myanmar’s a bit of an eye-opener. Everything is dirty: the roads, the streets, the buildings, the restaurants, including the kitchens, and the bathrooms, often horrifyingly so. Babies sometimes have cuts that are infected, and mothers let their babies crawl on the dirty sidewalks. The mother that did this looked guilty and confused when she saw us staring horrorifiedly at her and picked her baby back up. None of this can be held against anyone, since everyone is so poor.

Today we wanted to go to Mandalay. The first step was Bago, small but busy, noisy, and dirty little city. The “express” bus stopped frequently to let more and more people on until the aisle and area by the door (left open, of course), was packed. Upon arrival, some touts tried to steer us to the Emperor Hotel for bus tickets. We were annoyed and ignored them, and headed for the bus station. Desperate trishaw drivers followed us the whole way, and pleaded with us to come with them and warned it was the wrong bus station. We ignored them and walked 3 km in the hot sun to the wrong bus station, then walked back to the Emperor Hotel to buy tickets. The whole experience accomplished nothing. Resistance is futile.

While waiting for the bus we had tea and greasy snacks at a dirty teashop with a filthy kitchen. We boarded the bus at 7 pm for the epic 15-hour journey. The bus was packed with amazingly ugly middle-aged Norwegian tourists. It must have been the “Plastic Surgery Gone Horribly Wrong Myanmar Tour 2003.”

Busses honk their horns whenever they see another vehicle, bike, or pedestrian (basically, all the time). Unfortunately, their system is not foolproof, even with the pictures of the Buddha taped over the windshield, because the bikes don’t have lights or even reflectors, so they are invisible at night. So “crunch,” then we came to an abrupt stop. We hit a biker. His bike was ruined, but it looked like he only had a broken leg. The bus didn’t stay long, but a large crowd of onlookers had gathered. I wonder what ended up happening to him? Later on that night we almost hit a kid in the road.