Day 17 (Sun, Feb 27) - Bagan to Kalaw by Bus

Alarm went off at 2.30am and we were off at 3am. Taxi was parked by
reception with the driver asleep on the bench under the tree. The
hotel had packed breakfast for each of us in Styrofoam boxes. The
hotel 'gate' (two barriers) wasn't open yet, but someone was awake to
leap up and remove them as we approached. The streets were quiet and
we sped along in the taxi: a luxury sedan to our horse cart of
yesterday. Arrived Nyaung around 3.30am, not the metropolitan bus stop
I'd imagined but a quiet street lined with low one-grate shops. One
café was open and we launched the prata-making with our breakfast
order. The boy chef oiled the table and slapped down a round of dough;
flattened it with the heel of his hand then slapped it round with this
palm; spun it round while stretching it – like a pizza chef -- till he
had a rectangle which he framed up gently before laying it in the wok
of oil heating over the fire behind him. Fried for less than a minute,
the dough sheet is then cut with scissors into strips, and served with
some chickpeas and fried onions. Locals with their hoodies tied tight
around their faces and hats on drifted in (it was cold out), along
with one other Westerner (an older Frenchman in long shorts), most
ordering milky tea (or coffee?) and Chinese dough sticks. The Dep-Rma
match was playing on the flat-screen TV up by the ceiling.

Shortly before 4am an elderly man approached us and beckoned. We
followed him across the street to the store front just opened where a
woman bundled in a blanket-fleece longi and jacket sold us our bus
tickets. She already knew we had seat numbers 13 and 14. An old
rickety diesel bus pulled up but she assured us that was the bus to
Mandalay. Our bus to Kalaw/Inle Lake turned out to be a small rickety
diesel bus. It was already filled with 20-odd tourists who'd been
picked up at their hotels in Nyaung. Our designated seats were
half-way back, but Lello asked the ticket lady if we could have the
seats up front, and we moved. A blessing. The bus smelled of diesel
fumes but the passenger side window was open, and we could stretch our
legs out into the well between passenger and driver seat. A sweet
young girl and her father sat across the aisle from us; we smiled and
said hello; she was shy and curious, her father encouraging. She gave
us a packet of dried banana slices (slightly carmelized, yum), and we
passed her a marmalade sandwich from our hotel breakfast.

We stopped twice, once for breakfast about 5.30am at a place where the
dough maker was a cool dude in his early 20s and not as adept as the
bus stop chef, and at about 10am for lunch at a place with a toilet
complex painted in green and orange, with at least 10 stalls;
otherwise it was non-descript and the rice served with my green beans
and chicken leg in curry was dry. Lello talked with one of the
Westerners, who had somehow missed seeing the lacquer-ware making
process in Bagan. The Frenchman who got on with us when he sat down in
his seat asked the woman next to him to move over, complaining only
half his butt was on the chair and failing to notice she was equally
uncomfortable. Eh, these buses are equipped for slim people.

The road was mostly narrow and mostly variously paved: unpaved mixed
with paved mixed with crumbling pavement mixed with pavement under
construction; it was slow going and moderately to very bumpy.
Nonetheless, we dozed off intermittently.

The landscape was dry and flat with a mix of scrawny trees and robust
mango trees, and onions and peanuts and corn as around Bagan; then we
hit some water (a lake or reservoir) and more agriculture including
watermelon and tomato vendors; then through a large lumber yard that
went on for at least a kilometer; and finally the bus climbed and
climbed up switch backs into the mountains. We were stuck behind a
lumbering truck that our driver kept attempting to pass, but couldn't
since the pavement ran out at a car's width and he faced the danger of
tilting the bus over. He was a good driver; nerves of steel. And we
arrived in Kalaw about 1pm, 2hrs before we'd expected to.

It's warm and breezy in Kalaw at 1pm, a nice change from the baking
midday heat of Bagan. This was a British 'hill-station', where the
Brits would come to cool off. Kalaw is a small town built on the slope
of a gentle hill, two blocks on the incline and five blocks along it,
is the downtown. The streets are lined with tiny stores selling
everyday goods, and there's a largish central covered market with more
of the same as well as vegetables and dried fish and toffee and
spices, and some souvenir stalls. As we arrived a funeral procession
was leaving from the home of the old grandmother who'd passed, to the
cemetery. Monks led the way, the body was carried on a palanquin by
pall-bearers, scooters brought up the rear.

The trekking guide Zaw had recommended wasn't available so we washed
our clothes and lunched at a small café which served us rice with
vegetables in a Chinese sauce, and lime juice for 700K per glass.
Afterwards we walked the length and breadth of the town, and some
small girls gave us flowers which we put in our hair. We wandered to
the market and stopped at a jewelry and souvenir stall where I bought
a Shan silver-medal necklace and the man kindly attached a clasp to
Lello's Bagan bead necklace; then attached one to my Shan yarn as
well. Next we paused to test the chimes of some small bells, and the
man was loath to let us leave, wanting his 'good luck money', so we
ended up buying 3 for 10,000K. Then the man arranged money changing
for Lello at a rate of 830 K to the USD; not as good as Yangon or even
Inle, but all told probably it's a wash (in Yangon they gave a blended
rate based on the quality of the bills anyway).

Skipped climbing up to the temple on the hill to watch the sunset, and
photographed some beautiful porches on a back lane instead. Met Uzo
(like the Greek liquor), the uncle of Michel the guide who wasn't
available, on the porch of Dream Villa, and he will take us trekking.
He's a jolly older man, unlike the serious young Michel, so it's
probably just as well. We'll leave at 9am tomorrow, spend the first
night with a family and the second in a monastery, arriving at Inle
Lake around noon on the third day.