Monday 25 March 2013

Sule Pagoda or Arnie's Last Stand?

Caught the bus from Inle Lake to Yangon last night. This was our longest journey in Myanmar and took 12 hours. Our bus was lovely with spacious seats, but it suffered from the same problem as all overnight buses in SE Asia - the aircon is set to below zero so it is impossible to keep warm. At least we are more used to the cold, but it was annoying as the temperature outside was over 30 degrees Celsius. On our last bus the local ladies next to us turned up in thick duffle coats and hats specially for the journey.
We set off just before 7pm, stopped for dinner break just before 8pm and then again just after midnight. I assumed that this must be the toilet stop so got to the conductor at the door. He said to me 'peeeeesssss only', I said 'fine where is the ladies? ' he looked startled and said it again and looking around I realised we were in the middle of nowhere and all the men were just lined up against a hedge. I was not pleased at this lack of facilities, but what can you do? Eventually got to a real 'lady toilet' at about 3.30am.
Arrived at our hotel about 8ish, dropped off our bags and went out for a quick wander where we were faced with a dilemma - do we go and see another pagoda or should we watch Arnold Schwarzennegar at the pictures? Both cultural in their own ways, we plumped for Arnie.
The film was in English with no subtitles and there was a man eating the crunchiest peanuts in the world nearby who only stopped to answer his mobile phone very loudly. However our seats were good - a passerby had told us which price to pay and where to sit - and the sound system excellent.
The plot had many believability issues and as Darren said 'I can't believe after all these years he has never learned to act'.

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