The Answer to the Question You've Been Wondering About All Your Life

Our last stop of the day was at U Bein Bridge, which is famous for being the longest teak bridge in the world (what, you didn’t know that? C’mon, everybody knows that!)

We happened upon a party.  The place was packed with Myanmarinians (you thought I was out of words to make up!) and tourists.  The Burmese folks come to picnic and watch the sunset, while the tourists come to drink champagne and watch the sunset.

We were told not to walk on the bridge, because it is quite rickety, so instead we clambered into rickety boats, which the boatmen expertly loaded.  Mrs. Iron Tourist hates the boat boarding/unloading process, but this went pretty smoothly.  Our boatman expertly rowed, rowed, rowed our boat gently down the stream (actually, it’s a huge lake).

There were people having picnics on both sides of the lake, and there were even a massive number of lounge chairs on the bank of the lake for people to sit in.  There was also a steady stream of people walking across the very long bridge, but, since Aaron Rodgers isn’t in the Super Bowl (again), I suppose they got the discount double check and saved money on their insurance (yes Trevor, that shot is aimed at you – we’ll find out if you read this!).

Drs. Michelle and Valerie were in the boat with us, and Michelle got some incredible video (she showed us the day after) with her Go Pro and steady stick.

Our boatman, using one long wooden paddle, steered us under the bridge, where we had a great look at a massively tall and wide dead tree with the setting sun behind it. We then doubled back under the bridge and took our place in line with the other boats to watch the sun go down.

The disquieting part is that our boatman then proceeded to bail out the boat – at length.   A fair amount of water had collected right behind us in a groove.  He spent nearly the entire time bailing, which frankly did not inspire confidence in the four of us.  It turns out a couple in another boat had to be rescued, as their boat was sinking fast (I didn’t actually see that, so no fun pictures!).

It was all made better when a boat pulled up alongside of us and delivered four glasses of champagne.  That took our minds off the fact that we were slowly sinking.  In a way I suppose you could say the champagne bailed us out (man I crack myself up sometimes).  At one point the sun was the same level as the bridge, so as people crossed the bridge it looked like they were walking across the sun (if the sun were much smaller and not as hot than it actually is).

We headed back in to the jumble of unloading boats.  By the way, when I just entered “second longest teak bridge in the world” Google literally broke – although it is possible that it happened at the same time internet dropped, which is making uploading photos to the blog quite difficult.  You win a hearty thank you if you can add comment naming the second longest teak bridge in the world.