Day 38, February 25

There was half an hour left before our train arrived, and we drank tea in a café. Another young guy was traveling with us on the train, clearly not a Myanmar local; later it seemed that he was from Israel.

The trains here are quite decent, probably even better than our commuter trains. Only the toilet was very scary.

We stared out the window, passing mostly fields with palms and corn. In one of the little towns, different kinds of food were being sold on the platform.

Then I read a book and listened to music, and Volchiy tried to sleep. Overall, the trip took as long as 8 hours - the trains here are slow.

We arrived in Mandalay at 3 p.m. Our hotel is located not far from the station, so after shaking off the persistent taxi drivers, we walked there on foot.

For some reason, Mandalay does not have the same charm that Yangon did. It feels as though something is missing here, something elusive but important. That was our first impression while we were looking for our hotel.

We were put in a room with a window facing a wall — as a result, there was no view at all and very little sunlight, but overall the hotel is pleasant. We rested a bit and went aimlessly wandering around the city. We are staying in its central part. There are many hotels here, but somehow not many cafes — mostly shops selling clothes, electronics, and all sorts of strange odds and ends. We found a night market with food. The food in Myanmar is not very impressive. The local people, for example, really like these kinds of “skewers” made of pig ears, cartilage, and skin.

Honestly, I’m not joking. It all looks something like this. A low table in the center of which some liquid resembling broth is boiling. The Myanmar people sit around it, take pieces of ears skewered on sticks, dip them into the broth, then into some ketchup, and eat…. Such entertainment.

We tried to find a place more traditional in our understanding and have dinner there. We saw a café that looked decent, went in. For some reason, the prices there turned out to be higher than usual, but we were tired and very hungry, so we decided to eat there anyway.

Volchiy insisted that we needed to order a lot of food — we really hadn’t eaten anything decent today except cookies. As a result, we ordered soup, rice, and, we hoped, gravy for the rice. However, things turned out not quite as we expected. First they brought me the soup. There was a lot of it, just a very, very lot. Boiled cabbage was floating in it, which I absolutely hate. But besides that there was also vermicelli, and the broth itself was basically fine — so I started eating it. Then they brought white rice, and instead of gravy, another kind of vermicelli again with cabbage and chicken. We were a little stunned by such a huge amount of food — the portion of vermicelli was also enormous and very unexpected — either the waiter didn’t understand us, or we misunderstood the item on the menu… Well, fine, we had to eat it.

We realized that in Myanmar there isn’t much to eat — it all comes down to a few kinds of vermicelli, usually with vegetables (if you’re lucky) or just with cabbage like this time, and sometimes with chicken. And if you order soup, they just add broth to the same vermicelli…. That’s how it is. There’s also rice, but that doesn’t really save the situation. So we ate, more out of hunger than desire…. well, in principle, who promised that food should always be enjoyable. Sometimes it simply turns into a means of survival…..

What’s curious is that there were many locals sitting in this place, but none of them were eating. Everyone was drinking beer or local rum. Volchiy and I decided that they simply don’t know how to cook here — it’s a beer joint, not a café with food — which is why the food was not tasty and somehow soulless.