Asia 2016

Day 45, March 3

Memyo - Mandalay

Asia 2016

Itinerary

At 7:30, as agreed, we got into a tuk-tuk and went to the station. There were lots of people crowded at the station, and surprisingly many tourists — it was interesting where they had all been hiding, because we hadn’t met a single one anywhere, neither in the city nor in the botanical garden.

It turned out that our train was delayed and, instead of 7:30, departure was scheduled for 11 a.m. After some time, another piece of news appeared on the agenda — there were no seats left on the train.

Here it is probably worth making a small digression and saying that the ticketing system in Myanmar is very unusual. They do not have any shared electronic database of tickets. You can only buy a ticket from the station where you are. That is, you cannot, for example, buy a ticket from Mandalay to Bagan while being in Yangon. They record seat assignments and ticket purchases in logbooks. All tickets are also written out by hand. During all the time we were there, we managed to buy a ticket in advance only once, and that was in Bagan. Every other time we bought tickets half an hour before the train departed — they don’t sell them earlier. That’s the situation. Of course, it’s not very convenient.

Many people looked puzzled. Standing for 7 hours on a train is quite an adventure. I told Volchy that I wasn’t going to travel standing up.
Next to us stood a very cheerful girl; you rarely meet such cheerful people. I asked whether she had a ticket, and she said no and that she wanted to travel standing up, because it seemed like an unforgettable adventure to her…

Memeo Station

However, even after the news that there were no seats available, everyone kept waiting for something; we hoped that, by some miracle, seats would appear. Probably everyone else hoped so too. Around 10:30, they started selling tickets. A crowd formed near the ticket windows, but the ticket seller confirmed that yes, there were no seats, and the only way to travel was standing.

Some tourists bought standing tickets. The Myanmar people were buying tickets too. We decided not to go and return to Mandalay. While we were sitting there thinking over our plans, a guy came up to us and offered to go to Mandalay with him and his girlfriend by taxi, just like we had come here.

We liked the idea. The guys had mobile internet, thanks to which we booked a hotel in Mandalay (the same one where we had stayed before).

First, we took a tuk-tuk from the station to the taxi stand. There were five of us, because the guys found another lone girl who also wanted to get to Mandalay. The girl agreed to ride in the trunk of the car (the trunk was quite large), and the four of us got into the taxi and headed to Mandalay.

The guys turned out to be from Switzerland, and they told us many interesting things about their country. They had both quit their jobs and set off to travel for a year. They said that in Switzerland it is quite risky to do that — afterward it can be hard to find a job. But they were a bit confused and not sure how they wanted to live, so they decided to leave for now. They also said that their country is currently having pension problems; that is hard to believe, of course, but it seems every country in the world has its own problems — just at different levels.

In Mandalay, we rested and did nothing. Toward evening, we rented bicycles at the hotel and went to the station to ask about tickets. I had an idea to get to Inle Lake by train. The first train we needed was from Mandalay to the town of Thazi.

At the station, we were told (which did not surprise us at all) that they could not sell us tickets for tomorrow’s train — “come tomorrow,” said the friendly Myanmar man.

We returned to the hotel in complete darkness. There were a lot of cars, and it was difficult to ride a bicycle.

For dinner, we went to our rooftop restaurant and, for the first time on the whole trip, tried Myanmar beer. It turned out to be very tasty, slightly sweet.