We had an early start 4:30am to get to the Hsipaw bound bus. But it wasn't a very happy day in Asia for poor old Matt, ie. His tummy was quite upset. But we headed for the bus anyway, and were surprised at even that hour of the morning there were trishaw drivers on the streets. We were greeted by a pickup truck that would take us to the bus terminal to meet our bus.
Our bus had definitely seen better days, it was really old and no-air but it was the only choice we had. Inside, there were dickie seats up the aisle, which you had to climb over to get to the back, and under all the seats the bus was loaded with produce; tomatoes, potatoes, rice etc. We had heard stories about these buses, and now we were on one, then the Burmese pop music started blaring, boy this was going to be fun.
The journey was only about 200km if that, but was to take 6hr. The bus wasn't crowded with people, so at least we were able to spread out and have a row to ourselves, and try to get some rest. We pulled into the 1st stop about 1/3 of the way in, and as I had been sitting down the back, I hadn't realized how much Matt was struggling. Not feeling well, and not keen to be on the bus any longer, we decided to stay put where we were. A nice lady on the bus organized a taxi for us, a horse and cart, and we were off in no time to a hotel.
Matt got to see the inside of the room and that's about it for the next 2 days, luckily we had a telly, and satellite (that was when there was power). The rain prevented me exploring too far, but I made it into town a couple of times, and even found a great little American owned coffee shop, which was my savior. We had been promised hot water, so when we had none, Matt went to see the hotel lady - she took him out the back and showed him the boiler, a tank with a fire underneath...saying that was the best they could do, needless to say he came back feeling a bit bad and reminded about where we were.
We decided against going all the way to Hsipaw, as the weather wasn't great, and we had the urge to move on, so when Matt was feeling a bit better, we took a share taxi down to Mandalay. The ride was a bit hairy at times in the fog and rain, monks would appear through the fog walking on the side of the road which was a cool sight, and we made it to Mandalay in no time.
Mandalay though was flooding, the main street was covered in about 30cm of water. But the place seemed to be business as usual, just a few more broken down cars around the place. We got flights organized for Bagan that afternoon. As we needed to get out to the airport, there were no taxis in sight. We were forced to go with a little Nissan ute in the back, Matt haggled till he was blue in the face for the fare to the airport, and once we settled - the blokes car wouldn't start.....So, we had to go through the whole saga again. Finally we were on our way, on the seemingly never ending airport road, with everyone else overtaking us cause we were so slow. We also had to go through water a couple of times, and we were doubting whether we would make it or not.
The airport was a ghost town, and check-in consisted of the staff ticking us off on a piece of paper. The turbo prop flight to Bagan took just 30mins, shorter than our journey to the airport which is ironic. And we got some great views of the flooded river as we arrived.
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