Day 20 – 22 – Yangon Again

(Nothing but random pics this week [except the last pic]. Sorry.)

One of the things I’ve found with holidays is that no matter how much time I’m allotted, I always have 20% too much time. This happens whether I have 2 weeks or 2 years of holidays.

And so it was, with 3 days remaining of our holiday, that we were ready to return home, which of course meant returning to Yangon. After our adventure on the train, we decided to fly back, despite the rather appalling safety record of the Myanmar airlines.

The taxi ride to the airport was memorable. I noticed that the taxi we were in actually had a radio, one of the few that hadn’t been ripped out in the whole of Myanmar. I remarked upon this to the driver, who was so proud that he showed us how well it worked. Myanmar music is basically stolen tunes from western music and dubbed over with Myanmar singers. After 15 minutes of screechy “Time after time”, the driver obviously noticed our pained expressions and informed us that he had an English tape.

Unfortunately, this mysterious English tape turned out to be Aqua; a whole Aqua album. Obviously some tourist had bought it in a drunken stupor in 1997 and had been trying to offload it on some unsuspecting local ever since.

The airport arrived none too soon. The single proviso my sister, who hates flying, put upon this trip was that it had to be a direct flight. The woman who booked the flight for us assured us it was direct. However, upon arriving at the airport, we learned that the flight was being directed to Myanmar’s new capital, a government city built in the middle of nowhere, so Tang Shwe could avoid assassination attempts. We were being redirected to pick up some VIPs. My sister was so upset by this that I didn’t have the heart to show our airplane, which was a very small, dodgy looking propeller driven craft, or to point out the hulk of an obviously crashed plane at the end of the runway.

Still, we made it to Yangon okay, to find out that it had been raining for three days straight. And it continued to rain for tree days straight after we arrived. The problem with this is that the drainage system in Yangon doesn’t really work. The full extent of this problem became apparent on our last day.

We had been invited to a party at the American embassy. Taking a taxi in was a joy in the pouring rain, especially as the roof had peeled back above where I was sitting. However, at 3am, after a heavy night of beer and tequila, there were no taxis to be had and the only available transport was with Christine’s Burmese friend, Christina.

Soaked and inebriated we got into the jeep with Christina. This turned out to be rather a large mistake. Not only was Christina only marginally more sober than we were, she was only a marginally better driver than a one legged albatross. With chronic myopia.

Not that it mattered anyway. By this time, there was so much water on the road that Michael Schumacher would have struggled. A boat would have been more suitable than our jeep, which aquaplaned from curb to curb like an oversized, rusty pinball.

Eventually, we decided that driving with Christina was too terrifying, even for our alcohol sodden minds, and we jumped out the back to walk. Except it wasn’t really walking. At this stage, the water in the middle of the road was up over our knees and on the sides it was closer to hip height.

I forged on down the middle of the road, while my sister and Christine set of on the banks. Of course, the main problem with all the water was that you couldn’t see under foot and my sister managed to fall down a hole that should covered by a concrete slab which had long since split in two. Fortunately, I was just in time… to turn around and laugh my arse off as her head disappeared under the water line. Christine did the same and promptly leapt over the drain…. to immediately disappear down the next drain.

At this stage I was in danger of drowning, as I was doubled over with laughter, my head perilously close to the water. However, my laughter was short lived when my sister revealed that she had lost one of her flip flops down the drain, and both girls forced e to put my hand in and try to find it, not a pleasant activity in the dark.

Unfortunately, the only thing I was able to find was an acute case of cholera. After what must have been close to an hour struggling through the water, a jeep pulled up next to us. It was Christina again. It turned out that in close to an hour, we had managed to walk around 100 metres. This time, we were willing to stay in the car for the entire journey despite the perils, figuring that it was slightly less perilous than walking.

Arriving at Christine’s, I peeled of my clothes and collapsed into bed. In the morning the full extent of the damage we had wreaked became apparent. Despite losing a shoe, we ended up all square in the clothing department, as Christine had stolen a t-shirt from the embassy. More searches revealed drink cards and a key to the toilets, where we had been taking pictures, as it was supposed to be forbidden to have a camera on the embassy grounds. So much for security!

That afternoon, hung over and tired, we boarded our flight back to Australia. I had two days at home to get ready for my return to Japan….

Next week, back to the Japan stories!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 6:14 am and is filed under Outside Tokyo, Way, Way Outside Tokyo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.