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We got up at 7am to get the bus to Kyaiktiyo to spend the night before visiting the Golden Rock. We were all anxious of what awaited us as we waited for our 6 hour bus; we had all seen the pickup trucks crammed with 30 roasting locals, we had all experienced the taxis and actually seen firsthand a large clumsy traffic collision right outside our guesthouse.
The bus actually wasn’t too bad. Still about 30 years old, but it did have seats fixed firmly to the still-intact floor panels. It wasn’t the worst thing I have experienced, but I didn’t enjoy it. While the scenery from my seat was spectacularly gorgeous, I missed the roof racks of the Philippines to be honest! 6 sweaty hours later we arrived in the dusty, sleepy village of Kyiaktiyo.
After the typical search for the cheapest and cleanest rooms around, we settled on a nice place, with the nicest room bargained down from $22 to $10 and decided to go for a walk in the local village.
We had become a huge local attraction. Burma does not receive many visitors at the best of times, and these being the hottest and
driest months, we have the constant knowledge that we have the country to ourselves.
After a close encounter with an extremely rabid looking dog, we had another interesting moment with a witch doctor who offered us glasses of snake and lizard blood.
The burning heat was had us quickly searching for a cold drink, so Anette and I slipped off to a local restaurant and found relief in the shade. I was really great to just sit and talk for a few hours. After dark we met up with Russ and Elan and decided to try to find some dinner.
This proved very difficult. Most tourists don’t get as far out as this, and even if they did, I get the feeling this is to be a common situation; Every restaurant/bar/temple/public transport ticket office, has prices jacked up for foreigners. Even though in relative terms, $5 for a 5 hour bus is not much at all to us, the locals are paying less than 10 cents.
After our substandard dinner, tempers began to fray at the site of our $10 bill. Russ flipped out when one woman tried to charge me $1 for a can of
coke, which in all fairness, is the same price as back in the UK. We eventually agreed on $7 and left it at that. If this carries on we will all be out of money very quickly! After another, much needed shower, we all fell asleep by 10pm, in preparation for our 5am start to the Golden Rock.
After our breakfast, we went off to catch our 6am pickup-truck part way up the mountain, where the gold plated rock is balanced on a cliff face.
We were on our truck on time, but we quickly discovered that it would not leave until it had 45 passengers! Being the only tourists in the area for years, we worried how long it would take before it was deemed fit to leave. Also slightly concerned how 45 people would fit in an average sized pickup truck, we began to enquire for other options. We soon found out that the several other trucks we had seen take off towards the peak were only for local people. I have still not worked out the situation here; we were all dressed suitably (long skirts, boys included, and no shoes in accordance with Buddhist monuments),
we were already paying ten times what the locals paid for the shitty truck, we were also going exactly the same route, except for the fact that we were being dropped off a few kilometres from the peak and the rock, a hike none of us wanted to do at 7am in 40 degrees! No one would answer our calls for a seat on the immediately departing trucks, or give us any explanation. So disappointingly, we waited 2 hours for the pickup to be full. During this time, to make matters a little bit more uncomfortable, Russ and Elan pointed out the local sitting between us and an infestation of lice in his hair and was scratching them all out.
Delightful.
The walk was really tough. It only took 1.5 hours but it was severely hard work in the heat. This was actually the point I lost my temper for the first time in the months I have been travelling Asia. Some local lads, carrying a Sudan chair had offered to carry me up the mountain for $10 when they had seen me stumbling and gasping for air. I was extremely tempted to take it, however, the steep
price and derogatory manner made me uncomfortable and I declined politely. They decided to latch on to me, pushing the carry-chair into my legs every few minutes. On the 15th-20th request from them, I barked a sharp ‘no, I told you, I am walking, no money!’ Within 5 seconds they were back again and I just lost it, tired, and sweating uncontrollably, I not-so-politely told them to fuck off and leave me alone, which thank god, they did before anyone got hurt.
When we arrived at the gates to the monastery, we all looked as if we had all been swimming in a pool of sweat for days! Again, we were upset to find we were being charged $14 for entry and another $2 for camera privileges. I don’t mind paying a little more, but Burma is certainly pricing itself out of backpacker tourism, which is a shame for such a beautiful and friendly country.
We strolled around the serene grounds to the magnificent gold-leaf plated boulder, complete with spire, balanced precariously on the edge of the cliff face. The views were astounding. On one side, clouds drifted beneath us, on the other, the forest covered cliff faces
arched with the long green planes stretched out between the gaps.
Anette and I soon found out that as women, we were not privileged enough to walk across the bridge to the rock, so we settled on sitting in the shade, taking photos and talking with the locals. On the equally challenging walk back down, we began to get even more frustrated at the locals verses foreigner situation, but instead of getting angry about stuff I can’t change, I decided to focus on how soon I would be eating and sitting down!
After a quick lunch of noodles and veggies, we jumped on the pick-up bound for the town. It had all the attributes of the worst journey ever, although, thank god it was relatively short. We were the last ones on (although we were the first ones to ‘queue’ for it!) there was no room for our big western asses; the narrow wooden planks that spanned the width of the beaten up old truck were loose and rattled as we drove. They were so close together that none of us Westerners could sit with our knees in front, but the number of other passengers meant that we
had to sit with grown men on our laps. The truck also kept up with what we are now discovering is typical Burmese tradition, and stopped in the middle of the journey for half an hour for no logical reason, but thankfully we were back in town again within 2 hours.
After a quick and very pointless shower we were on the bus heading back to Yangon, this time we would be getting off after 3 hours in town called Bago as we all knew we could get to up north from here, but exactly where we would go was anybody’s guess! We’ll see what the ‘timetable’ has in store for us!
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