On the train

• Chaskemp's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Moulmein

  Moulmein, Myanmar
Tuesday, May 29, 2007

I'm skipping an entire entry - more later on this. And still apologizing for no photos because oh man, I think I've gotten some good ones. Also, sorry to not be responding to messages. It's really a challenge here to get on internet. Thank you to all who have written. Leslie is doing the gmail part of things and I'm doing the travelogue part. I'll put her emails into travelogue when we get to Bangkok. We're looking forward to rendezvous with Vanida in Phnom Penh. I know you were a grace to the Bru in Thailand - same as to people in Dallas.

I'm a little out of time (as in outside of) and would be more so if not for my grounding influence if you know who I mean and I think you do. Still in Moulmein - up at 4am and outside at 5. Bats flittering all around. It rained earlier and the river is beautiful. Burmese family checking in to the GH. Leslie tells me she shooed off a mouse that came by to check out my pack. Thanks, darlin'.

To the train station where a man helps us find our (upper class) car and seats. One seat is stuck in the reclining position and trays (made of pink 1/4 inch steel mounted on green 1/2" pipes) won't stay up. People getting on, getting settled, milling around, buying things from the vendors outside the windows. I hang out on the platform, train brakes going shhhhh and whistle blowing and I get back on the train. Whistle blows and slowly, slowly we pull out of the station on the high track so we're looking straight at or down on the palms. Back up on the ridge that runs through this town golden pagodas shining in the early morning sun. Clack - clack, clack - clack across a long bridge across the Thanlwin river ...

Past misty mountains to the east, hooches below, like Vietnam in the 1960s. Electric wires running alongside the tracks, but not to the hooches. Little girl sitting in a doorway, unsmiling, watching the train rolling on by. Children running up paths to wave at the train ("Someday, I'll be on that train," I think they're saying to themselves.).

When David was little, back when the Sante Fe train ran on the Santa Fe tracks near our home we would hear the whistle blow and run jump into the car and race to the tracks to stand there waving at the engineer (Once one of the engineers threw a bottle of water to us and said "Hello little boy" - David told Leslie the man said "Hello little bow.") and then watching the freight cars go by, one after another. Often David and I would go early early Saturday or Sunday morning to the train yard sitting in the truck, watching the men work. My grandfather was a railroad man. He was killed in a switchyard accident in Cleburne - crushed between two cars - when my mother was 2. My grandmother raised my Mom and her sister, Eloise working as secretary of First Baptist Church in Cleburne ... on a hill, far away ... Heavy work around the house was done by "Old Black Jim." I remember him standing out by her tumble down garage, smelling pretty strong - a good smell to me.

I remember going out to the edge of town to visit Jake and Ella King in their little wood house where I played under the porch. I don't remember much about Jake, but I remember Ella was beautiful and had lovely dark skin. They were really old. Thay had been slaves when they were young and picked cotton since then. When they died, my Mom inherited 4 hand-painted plates and a camphor bottle, all of which we have, except I gave one plate to Rosie Taylor (fairly heavy karma holding on to those plates).

It's raining now and we're passing through padi fields where everyone keeps on working in the rain - seining (for the little crustaceans that live in the padi), plowing, planting, herding ducks/cows/goats - some people with blue plastic over their shoulders and some, like the men plowing, not stopping to put the plastic over themselves.

The rain passes and the windows go back up - despite the fact that there is aircon on the car. Children standing beside the track, waving - out here in the country clothes tattered, mostly, children barefoot, mostly - solemn faces with yellow on cheeks, forehead. Huge clumps of thick bamboo, then endless padi fields. Rubber trees, row upon row upon row (I was in a firefight among rubber trees once). Here comes a little boy pounding up the path toward the train with a baby on his back waving, waving waving. Water buffalo wallowing in the muddy water and we've passed 50-60 misty mountains (these mist-covered mountains ... baptisms of fire). Girl in the seat in front of me asleep, long black hair misting over her brown skin arm.

What is a hooch? It's a house with walls made of thatch or plaited bamboo. Maybe it has a dirt floor or maybe a platform made of split bamboo. If the latter, probably pigs or chickens living underneath. Out here, near the track, these seem about evenly divided.

Passing through undeveloped watery countryside now. I'll bet there are some big cobras here (Did you know they are at home in the water and dry land?).

Now a forested area, more houses. Look, a pony! Another one!

Some kind of brick structure, left over from from the British Empire, crumbling, mossy, deserted. A woman walks through our car wearing a sarong exactly like the one hanging over the window in our front room at home. The train has never picked up any speed, still clack - clacking along.

10:45am - a brief stop. Right outside our window they have rice wrapped in a banana leaf and newspapers. When people order food the vendors unwrap the bundle and add your choice of curry (several kinds available), boiled egg, onion, chilis, different vegetables, whole fried fish (not like Long John Silver, no), then wrap it back up. There is a dog asleep under the table. By the time you get it, at least 3 people have had a hand in it - at this stage - don't know about earlier.

CK: "May I have a stick of gum?" LK: "Yes, but you can't have a whole stick."

Periodically the tray (the 1/4" steel one) falls - Bong - on my knee. I have to remember to keep my knees up. Leslie's bag is invaded by about a billion ants - that's an exaggeration - it's really only about a million. Boys playing soccer in a very muddy field (about 1/4 of the field is a giant mud puddle). One of the boys falls on his back and slides 4-5 feet, laughing, so of course, another one takes a dive, too.

We're getting close to Rangoon (or Yangon, as it's called now - colonialist that I am, I prefer Rangoon). Girl in the seat in front of me combs her long black fair, puts lipstick on, and freshens her thanaka.

167 miles in just under 10 hours. It was hot all the way except during the rain. A wonderful trip.