everything and nothing to say

so, you know how sometimes they have those tiny clown cars at the circus and holy crap! do they ever fit a lot of clowns in there!!! all the clowns tumble out and then everyone cheers and laughs. hilarious!!! now imagine that instead of clowns, those are people from myanmar and the clown car is actually a bus from the 1940s that breaks down with predictable but surprisingly lower than you would think frequency considering the way it looks/sounds/smells. next, imagine that this act lasts not a few mere minutes but rather 8-16 excrutiating hours (don't worry, it's only 6 hours longer than you were told it would be). of course, you will also have to imagine that throughout the act you have been holding your urine for 2-3 hours and you're most likely not sitting on a seat- perhaps a geranium plant or a sack of gravel instead? o, and picture this- there's no big top, just endless series of potholes around which pockets of "road" can be found. the bus struuuuuggggles strrruuuggles up hill and then whooooooooooosh i hope the brakes work downhill but i'm not counting on it! ok- last of all, imagine seeing this not from the perspective of a whiney foreign tourist girl but from the eyes of those myanmar people who accept this as all as part of their lives, a comedy of errors largely born out of poverty and a history of oppression. not so funny. no one's laughing anymore.

so we've returned from myanmar and i have no idea what to tell you. myanmar is fantastically beautiful and interesting for travellers. people there are very curious and friendly, not to mention often quite attractive (especially the Indian ladies who still wear saris, or burmese girls walking and swayswayswaying as they carry excessively heavy things on their heads). tea shops with miniature furniture are ever present and lovely in all ways. ok- so the food is often hard to locate beneath a greasy veneer but it's manageable (although my bowels might tell you a little different story)... flickering lights and candles making it all so rustic and romantic, too bad it's because the power supply is touch and go. people live near their family members in seemingly tight-knit groups-but how can they leave even if they want to? many people we spoke to don't have enough money to even visit places far from home. we only met 3 people who had ever left the country. try telling these people that you've been to singapore, malaysia and thailand and plan to carry on to india. also, perhaps mention that you haven't seen your family and loved ones in months... people riding bicycles swarm the streets of mandalay, great from our ecofriendly perspective but the reality is so far away from from that kind of intellectualisation. fact: cars are expensive, petrol is scarce and strictly regulated by the government. so. so. so.

who knows what is actually going on in myanmar. you can't travel outside of a designated foreigner-friendly area and who's gonna mess with the guys with big guns? not me. you get snippets of unrest, whispered conversations in the dark, a few harsh words that slip out about things. but people for the most part keep quiet. they carry on.

i think the government dreams of making myanmar the next thailand. they want their share of the south-east asia tourist dollars. they've got an easy job in many ways because myanmar's a fantastic place. it's scary though. i'm hesitant to voice any opinion on the matter, but for the moment i think that perhaps myanmar is not ready for that influx of foreign influence. here in thailand it's already gone so far that it feels like there' not a lot left to lose, culture wise. i think that myanmar has a lot to lose.

for the last week or so we've been bumped around in various metal tubes being propelled through time and space and which have eventually spit us out in the tourist armpit of the world, khaosan road, bangkok. feeling a little heartsick, a little homesick and a little intestine sick.

tomorrow we will be arriving in kolkatta, india.

love y'all.