The Town Drunk on the Road to Mandalay

Thursday morning we flew to the 10 year old Mandalay International Airport.  Like Dulles or Denver International, it was built pretty far from the city – an hour to be exact.  Unlike IAD or DIA however, Mandalay International has not attracted many flights or office buildings between the airport and the city.  Alas, investment is not flooding in yet.

We hopped on a small bus, and headed to the small village of Sagarmyay (pronounced as – well, heck, I have no idea).  We got off in the village, and walked through.  Despite being harangued by the town drunk, the village was quite interesting.  It’s a one lane dirt road, although they were in the process of paving it, using hand crushed rocks and tar heated and spread by hand.  This used to be the main road from Mandalay to the capital, until a new superhighway was built.  (I don’t know if it is actually super – maybe just pretty good).

The village was full of stray dogs, and the shops and houses were right next to the street.  It had a beautiful new brick pagoda, a small, run-down gold pagoda that looked on the brink of falling apart, and some other Buddhist shrines.

We walked down the street, going from house to shop.  We watched a woman make a traditional breakfast of Mohinga that she sells for 1000 khat ($1.31-$1.35 depending on the exchange rate).  Then we watched a man make Betel, which is basically the chewing tobacco of Myanmar – it has a mix of Betelnut pieces, the Betelnut leaf, a paste made with lime, herbs like cloves or cinnamon, and sometimes tobacco.  It is folded over in the leaf, placed in the mouth, and slowly sucked on.  As it dissolves, it becomes a soft mush, and they spit out this red mush juice that looks a bit like blood.  Imagine a tobacco chewer without a bottle to spit his Skoal juice into, instead spitting onto the street – even opening a car door to so – and that’s pretty much what it’s like.

We also stopped at a convenience store, with packets of powdered milk, detergent, cereal, and other items hanging in the store.

The most fascinating part, however, was watching the vehicular traffic zoom at varying speeds up and down the dirt road.  Some were old trucks hauling everything from firewood to hay.  The hay truck was small, but, with the way the hay was piled high up top and on the side, it looked like a truck with an 1970s afro.  There were oxen pulling carts, crapping on the road when they weren’t whizzing.  And, of course, there were motorscooters with one, two, or even three people (the third was usually a baby being held by the passenger).  Some wore helmets, others did not.  Crossing the street was an adventure, as usually no one was driving/ox carting/scootering until we needed to cross the street, and suddenly it was a flood.

The homes were a bit ramshackle, with many openings.  I’m not sure how they deal with the invariable dusk rise of the mosquitos.

It was a neat experience to visit a small town and have Ye Ye explain what is going on at each location.  We really enjoyed it.  Even the town drunk harassing us was amusing – he was louder than Otis in Mayberry.