Escape From Myanmar/INLE LAKE

Now bound for Inle Lake, I arrange a taxi to the airport for 6,000 ks, a little less than a tenth of all the money I have left. Inle Lake is famous because it has a lake, and people live in and around the lake. You can take a tour of this lake, and see the people living in and around it. For some reason, this seemed really exciting at the time. Onboard the plane, an American girl across from me and I talk for a bit. She asks if I want to share a cab, so that's taken care of. Her name is Tiana, and she's from Santa Barbara. We share the taxi with a French-Canadian couple, one of whom is a screenwriter who is noteworthy because he is the only person I've ever met who's heard of the obscure Jay Baruchel film The Trotsky. He says he's been to Myanmar a dozen times, because it's good for writing. No distractions.

The dream.

He also jokes that he's graduated from backpacking into mid-range accommodations, and Tiana and I watch jealously as the couple is dropped off in front of their hotel, and greeted with glasses of cold lime juice. Meanwhile, we get dropped off at some dusty shit-heap that Lonely Planet claims has the cheapest roofed spaces that can qualify as rooms.

Turns out they're full. Across the street is Little Inn, which charges a whopping 12,000 ks a night (if you'll recall, I'm down to less than 30,000 at this point). They're still cleaning the rooms though, so after leaving our bags and "promising" to book a room, we have some time to look around. Tiana is somehow even more keen than I am to bargain hunt, and us two badasses of thrift set off on a price-checking expedition the likes of which this fucking town has never seen.

The search is confounding at first, because of the number of non-licensed guesthouses which aren't allowed to rent to foreigners. Of course, they don't tell you that. Instead, you'll walk ten minutes up the road to a place, hopeful and sweaty, only to be told at the desk, "It is not suitable for you." And while Lonely Planet's prices are wildly out of date, they do accurately predict we'll run into the aggressive owner of a certain Teakwood Guesthouse (teakwood! I know what that is now!). When checking out their establishment, this old pitbull of a lady comes out to give us the business. She makes a big show of reluctantly dropping her initial asking price from 15k to 12k, but no further! She is adamant. After we've pointed out some of the other quasi-lovely places we've looked at, she launches into the hard sell:

"We have hot shower! Powerful shower! Delicious breakfast! You like! Little Inn not good shower, not good breakfast!"

She stopped just short of cursing the ancestor's of Little Inn's proprietors for their contribution to a substandard lineage of hoteliers, but we were unswayed. Not literally unswayed, because this lady could really push you around, but we moved on to the next guesthouse down the road. They're called Joy, and their name gives happy coincidence when we find they have the lowest price yet: 8,000 ks. Tiana immediately has them hold a room for us, so we can go get our bags. But I'm not satisfied. Not quite yet. There's still one more entry in this Lonely Planet that sounds like they could be cheaper yet, and that's Gypsy Inn. Tiana is reluctant, but acquiesces. I can see there's a thirst for savings in her bones that can never be fully slaked.

Unfortunately, Gypsy Inn only matches the 8k offered by Joy. We start to walk off, but some people checking out ask us if we're planning to stay, and mention that they have complimentary pancakes with their breakfast. Well then, ladies and gentlemen. Show's over, doors are to your left, we do not validate parking.

Pancake Town, population: Hungry

Oh, and Tiana manages to talk them into giving us a room with an attached bathroom. That's cool, but it's no free and delicious breakfast staple. She also retrieves our bags from Little Inn and deals with the fallout of canceling the room they just prepared for us, because I am a pussy and my conflict radar is pinging like an internet utility testing the reachability of a destination network host. After the awkward-dust has settled, we grab lunch at Inle Pancake Kingdom, because synchronicity is important to me. Also, I keep seeing the signs, and I am an advertiser's wet dream. You know who buys every novelty "limited edition" candy bar, or fast food menu item? I am customer zero. I had a bowl of Oops! All Berries once, and am doomed to roam the Earth in search of a new marketing gimmick that can recapture that simple magic. Although, I do order a crepe at the Kingdom, so maybe there is hope for me yet.

After I take a nap, Tiana finds me and says she found a Polish couple to split the cost of the lake tour. Score! Although it occurs to me I'm basically vestigial to Tiana's backpacking adventure. This is confirmed when she tells me the next morning over breakfast that she's moving out of our room so she can get her own place. She says it's because she hasn't shared a room in a long time, and doesn't like the feeling (and I promise you, Dear Reader, I slept like a traumatized eunuch the whole night, curled up fetal on my edge of the bed like always). Apparently, she was worried about me hearing/seeing her tossing and turning the previous night. Could be, or it could have something to do with me that she doesn't like, but the astounding unlikeliness of that...Perish the thought. Insecure tosser-turner she is.

Tiana and I meet the Polish couple at the appointed pier. I don't recall their names, but the guy was alright. His girlfriend, on the other hand, was a furious hellion who has never in her life been privy to merriment or good cheer. This is not helped when, upon meeting our boat captain/tour guide, he asks where we're going.

Towards the water, I reckon.

Never a great start to a tour in my experience, having to tell the tour guide where to go. After the Polish girl has screamed at him to the point where I start to feel sorry for the poor dumb guide, he takes us to a jewelry workshop.

We aren't long in the water before we see the one thing that makes this lake special- the local fishermen have a custom where they row the boat with their legs wrapped around the oar. It looks a little something like this:

Hell if I know if it's more effective, or even as effective, as any other kind of arm-centric rowing method, but it's kind of neat. Unfortunately, leg-rowing sets the bar a little too high for the rest of the lake. The jewelry workshop is pretty much like every other tourist trap in Thailand that a tuk-tuk driver will insist on taking you to before your destination, except that the building is on stilts. Because it's in a lake. So far, the 4,000 ks I paid for my seat on the boat may not have been the soundest investment.

Take it all in.

Our tour guide waits for us outside, playing a game on a beat-up wooden board. He takes us next to a textile workshop where the looms are worked by local indigenous people who have those neck rings that make them look like those aliens at the end of A.I., but poor and exploited. Although the tour guide says they are so happy to have jobs and be working, so what the fuck do I know.

Nothing, really.

Next on our docket is a massive blow-out from one female Polish passenger, upon learning that we are going to a market, but not the market she wants. Apparently there is a really big market that tours usually do, but it's only open on certain weekdays. Our guide insists that today is not one of those days, but she isn't about to let the concept of time dissuade her. No, our guide finally has to motor the boat over to where the big market normally is, so she can see that it is indeed closed before she'll relent.

The market we do go to is plenty big, though.

After passing aisle upon aisle of goods both tourist-centric and not, our group stumbles upon an area far from the entrance where a bit of shady gambling is taking place. Naturally, this is the coolest thing I've seen all day, so I snap a quick picture. The Polish guy makes the sensible/dumb mistake of asking if he can take picture, and immediately he's shut down and told what we're seeing is pretty illegal, and "The government maybe make problems."

I hereby declare this blog to be Fighting the Power.

The game drawing the most spectacle involves people placing bets on the six pictures you can see above, and then watching as three humongous dice, with those pictured animal graphics on their sides, are sent tumbling down a ramp. If your picture is face up, you win. It's fun to watch, fun to play, and the odds are almost certainly better than most Vegas games. Good on you, underground gambling ring.

There's talk of some nearby stupas that are supposed to be worth a look, so we go off in search of them with the help of some child monks. The stupas have been completely overgrown with green shrubbery, the white paint weather-beaten and exposing the brown clay brick underneath. A pretty good photo op.

The kids of course ask for some money afterwards, and it almost seems like this whole spiritually-superior enlightened monk thing is a crock of shit, and children will always be children and people are all the same everywhere. But then, that would imply that the backpacker quest for interesting people and exotic cultures carries with it an underlying racist fascination with the Other...Woof, best not to dwell on that too much. Check out this kid looking creepy as balls:

After that tiny peak of excitement, the tour slides again into tedium. There's a boat workshop...

And a weaving workshop...

And an iron workshop...

And a cigar workshop...

Although that last one wasn't so bad. They never pressured us into buying anything, gave out free leaf cigars, and watching these ladies roll actually made for an impressive show.

Before you start feeling like you just wasted precious minutes of your life reading about a kinda-disappointing boat tour, let me tell you the name of our final destination: The Jumping Cat Monastery. At least, that's what we heard it called at the time, but if it isn't their name then it should be. Clearly this monastery had been struggling to break away from the competition, and some young monk dynamo stepped up to the plate in a big way. Bet he was looking pretty pleased with himself come Christmas Bonus time. Or not, because asceticism.

What the fuck was I saying? Oh yeah, we go in, the head monk rings a bell, a woman comes out, and she holds a small hoop out for some cats to jump through.

This must be like gazing upon the face of God for some specific people.

And that was it. Not the most exciting tour, but definitely plenty of stops, some weird boat-rowing, some illegal gambling, some jumping cats...I've seen worse. But this Polish chick is not satisfied. She demands to see more, who knows what but she wants to see it dammit. Her persistence convinces the guide to take us to a coffee shop on the lake, and the whole time he seems as mystified as myself about why she is so keen on absorbing as much tourist trap bullshit as possible. She mutters to herself the whole way, and I learn that Polish swearing sounds very similar to Russian swearing. We drink some instant coffee, and the guide takes a nap. Tour over.

Still, these guys were pretty neat.

Back at the guesthouse, I wait for Tiana to come back, and try to think of ways I can convince her to stay, lest I be forced homeless since I can't cover the cost of the room by myself. Unfortunately, while pacing frantically around I notice that all of her stuff is already gone. I confirm with the front desk that she has indeed checked out. Panicking, I ask if they have any single rooms, and how much they cost. They tell me they understand my situation, and I can keep the room I'm already in, for the half cost that I'm already paying. Cool relief washes over me, and allow myself to relax for a few precious seconds. Now I need to find a share taxi to the airport for two days from now. Should be a piece of cake.

I check a dozen places, and none of them have an open spot in a taxi. There is no cake, and the bakery's been burned down by anti-cake fanatics. Teakwood mentions that a Dutch pair was looking, so I leave a note for them at the desk. While I'm wandering around town in silent hysterics, I run into the Polish couple. We have a nice, stressful dinner at a chapati joint where the Polish girl, who of course is vegetarian, thinks her food has meat and screams accusations for a much longer amount of time than you would think a person could physically be angry. When I get a beer at Gypsy after dinner, however, I'm given 100 ks extra in change. Maybe my luck is turning around.

The next morning I eat breakfast with a British photographer, and regale him with my tale of woe, the whole stolen backpack bit. He counters with a story about he too was robbed in Thailand: he lost $19k USD worth of camera equipment. No one likes a one-upper, guy. He says he'll come by later so we can rent bicycles together. He doesn't.

I did meet some people who would be my friends though.

After some more fruitless inquiring about taxis, I decide to just stay in. My new netbook with its bootleg copy of Windows has shockingly become corrupted, so I take two Xanax, ignore my hunger pangs, and lie in my mildewed bed finishing The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and listening to Aphex Twin. I feel like the coolest, hungriest motherfucker alive. For lunch, a side of Mandalay Rum. No food, need to conserve money. I think it was Matthew Lesko who let me in on that little trick.

Life-hack.

Somehow, I pass out and wake around 9:30, too late to do anything about a taxi now. Which I need tomorrow morning. I ask the Gypsy people, and they suggest getting my own for 15k. In fact, all I have left now is 15k, and I'll need 10k for taxis when I get back to Yangon. This will not do.

Also, I cracked my sunglasses. The seas are pretty rocky right now for the USS Jamie.

In the morning I resolve to keep my wits about me. Someone has to have a taxi, and everything will be fine. I will not be trapped in a third-world military dictatorship with no money or place to stay. You know, hopefully.

I take a shower to relax, but when I touch the hot water knob my arm spasms, and an intense pain rockets through my body. Confused, I touch it again, because I never played with wall sockets as a kid and learned that valuable lesson. I'm electrocuted again, and in my head I can hear Mathieu singing "Danger! High Voltage", mockingly. I wouldn't have expected that in a country with so little electricity to spare, that they would splurge some just to fuck with me on this particular morning.

My flight from Inle Lake back to Yangon is at 10:30 am, so I check out nice and early at 6. It takes about an hour to get there, so that gives me about 2 hours to find a ride and get to the airport before the check-in counter closes. Should be no sweat. Just don't think about what happens if you fail, Jamie. Dammit, you went and thought about it. Now just look at all this sweat.

The guesthouse gives me directions to a pick-up stop where I might be able to hop on a truck that's airport-bound. It's not a lot to go on, but it's something. On the way there, I see some guys outside of Teakwood loading into a taxi. The Dutch pair! I approach them as un-desperately as I possibly can and ask if their taxi's full. They say they only have 3 people, and can totally take a fourth. Finally seeing a ray of hope, I ask the driver if it's cool for me to jump in. He says no. The Dutch guys shrug their Dutch shoulders. "Sorry, mate," one of them says. I watch as they drive off, fourth seat completely empty. Sorry, mate. Sorry mate.

Spirits drop even lower when I get to the pick-up stop, ask which truck goes to the airport, and I'm told this is the wrong spot, and I need to walk up the street for the airport pick-up. No worries, I'm sure it totally exists. Let's go there now. About a half mile up the road there's another pick-up stop, and everyone here says there is no airport pick-up, because apparently I'm in a surrealist nightmare from which there is no escape. Completely out of leads, I'm left milling about and badgering these guys for a ride.It's now past 7, and I will fucking learn Burmese if I have to, but I am getting out of this goddamn country.

A couple of the touts say they'll take me, for 10k. It's difficult to describe how utterly void of fucks I was at this moment. Like...a celibate black hole. That's the look I gave these guys. I tell them I have five thousand, and I would like to go to the airport for five thousand. They say eight thousand.

Maybe I can just knock one of them out and steal his motorcycle. I say five. They say seven.

If I am stuck here, I am going to make a throne out of all of your femurs and sup wine from your hollowed-out skull, for I will crown myself BattleLord of this infernal place and fight you very violently. I say five. They say six.

Oh god, what am I thinking, I'm going to die here. I say five again, ready to beg on my knees. One of them must sense my last shred of humanity about to slip, and directs me across the street to where a scooter driver will do it for five. I find this fabled gentleman, and miracle of miracles, he says he'll do it. We just need to go to his house for an extra helmet. Okay. Okay. Okay. We can do that. Let's get a helmet, and then my heart will stop exploding.

As an added bonus, he gets me to the airport in half the time it's supposed to take. What was I so worried about? I read until the Air Mandalay counter opens, whereupon I'm actually patted down in security for the first time in this country. After everything it took to get here, these banal airport procedures are somehow immensely comforting.

I manage to share a taxi from the airport in Yangon with an old woman, maintaining my $5 limit. At Sakura, I pack up the various things I left with Madoka while she watches a DVD of Cider House Rules. She's making sushi for a potluck and gives me a couple pieces to try, an almost cruel gesture since all I've had to eat all day are some stale chocolate cookies in the airport. Soon, though, I'll be living a life (night) of 5-star luxury. Like I deserve. At 5 pm I leave to catch my 7 pm flight, using my last 5 dollars.

This is all I have left. Two unusable shit-bills totaling 40 cents USD. Clearly, planning is for wusses.

It should come as no surprise by now, that this is the first flight of my entire trip that gets delayed. The plane finally departs around 8:30 pm, but this being Air Asia, I'm given nothing to eat or drink, and have no money to buy anything. Water in the airport costs 500 ks, so I'm nearly as thirsty as I am hungry. Seated next to me on the flight is a gentleman who was smart enough to buy a meal with his ticket, so I get to spend the entire flight watching him noisily slurp instant noodles through betel-stained teeth, which I'm pretty sure is the 2nd or 3rd circle of Dante's hell.

Of course, the flight takes longer than estimated, and we finally arrive in Kuala Lumpur around 1 am. Not great, but still early enough for a good night's sleep before check-out. I am finally able to withdraw some precious, wonderful cash from an ATM, with which I buy a bus ticket to the Golden Triangle, KL's main shopping and nightlife district, and where my hotel is located. Unfortunately, the bus from the airport doesn't leave for another half hour, and I drastically underestimated how long the bus ride would take. And the subsequent transfer to another shuttle.

All told, the shuttle finally pulls up to the lavish entrance of the Shangri-La Hotel at 3 am. The reception is waiting for me and oh-so-happy to help me with my bags, and oh we're so sorry to hear about your flight delay, yessir we can absolutely offer you a late checkout at 4 pm. That French-Canadian was right, it feels damn fine to graduate from backpacking accommodations.

They give you fresh fruit in your room! Like I'm some kind of Apple Royalty or...a Kiwi King.

Just look at all this stuff I found in the closet! And none of it's covered in lice or semen! Yet.

Now I have a choice: stay up using the first decent internet I've had in weeks to masturbate in relaxed luxury, or sleep in this bed that feels better than taking a shit on ecstasy, and be fully rested for the free gourmet breakfast buffet that ends at 10 am.

You read that right. Better than a shit on ecstasy.

I ain't no fancy man. I masturbate and sleep for 3 hours so I can make the free buffet. It is rapidly occurring to my hungry, sleep-deprived mind that this whole 5-star thing may be wasted on me. Still, it's nice to pretend, if just for a night, that I am a Kiwi King.

Minds Your Head/BAGAN

I wear my Moustache Brothers shirt to the airport in the morning, just to see if something happens. Maybe 'cause I haven't done anything reckless and stupid in too long, and I had a blog to write. I'm looking out for you guys. Unfortunately (?), nothing happened. I very coolly unclenched my buttocks and took my unassigned seat on the plane. Emergency exit seat again, as luck would have it. That has to be about one out of every three flights on this trip, not that it's foreshadowing anything. Really, it's not. Where was I? Oh yeah, right before this dude Chekhov let me hold his gun. But before that...

A taxi from the Bagan airport into Nyaung-U costs 5,000 ks, which leaves me with less than 100,000, or a little over 100 USD, for the next six days. Which should be fine, it's not like Myanmar doesn't have ATMs or any other way to get...oh. Time to hit the shoestring section of Lonely Planet harder than a silverback gorilla playing whack-a-mole in a middling New Yorker cartoon.

I price shop hostels like a person who is responsible with money, and still end up paying 7 USD, which is a little heftier than the $3 quoted in Lonely Planet. On the bright side, I meet a French couple who let me borrow their battery charger. It's for a different model, but if I shove it in haphazardly I can get the metal contacts to touch. On the non-bright side, I get all this done just in time for the electricity to be turned off for the afternoon. Which means no camera for the temples of Bagan, one of the most amazing sights in the world (maybe? doubtless with my luck). Something out there really just does not want me using consumer electronics.

Regardless, I'm going to use photos from when my camera did start working, just to break up this wall of text. If you're a dude who has "verisimilitude" tattooed across your chest in Olde Englishe font then I apologize, for this and a lot of things in general.

So you don't have to wait to look at this.

I'm late for a horse cart I arranged to meet earlier, but as I walk around looking for a new one, his brother stops and picks me up. We talk mostly about Korean movies and Korean girls. He thinks Korean girls are the hottest. Not a bad stance. I'm still curious about those Uzbeks, though.

Bagan is stunning. More than 2200 temples, monasteries, and pagodas crowd the dusty, clay-red landscape. Climbing to the tops of certain pagodas offers some of the most incredible views I've ever seen. And it's all barely regulated. Whereas similar sites in the world would have UNESCO crews fixing up everything, and barring entry in half the temples, the closed government here means you practically have free reign in the 13 x 8 km plains. Clambering through narrow, claustrophobic stone staircases and all over massive, decrepit stupas is the shit, and that same oppressive government meant I had all of it more or less to myself. There were touts outside all the major temples selling postcards and paintings and lacquerware, but other tourists were few and extremely far between. The entire experience can be boiled down to this: Feeling like Indiana Goddamn Jones. Few things get better than that.

Fuck lacquerware, the market here is wide open for fedoras and bullwhips.

One of the big stops on the horse cart circuit is Shwezigon Pagoda. Some women and children immediately beeline towards me an insist on giving me a tour, but I'm onto their game. I keep trying to split off before I'm pestered for money, but they're persistent, so I give in. They want to give me a tour, let's go. What's that, another Buddha? Careful, I'm not sure my heart can take much more excitement. They half-follow me and I half-follow them around the place, the women occasionally clucking and warning, "Minds your head!" They show me how to wash the Buddha heads, and rub the Buddha tummies. The cutest little girl pins a tiny paper butterfly to my shirt. Once they're done showing me around, the women ask for a "present". I tell 'em I've got nothing for 'em, and they see I mean business. They all stomp off, muttering angrily. The little girl unpins the paper butterfly from my shirt with great efficiency and solemnity, like I've just been dishonorably discharged from her adorable army. I'd be lying if I said it didn't sting a little.

Before breaking for lunch, we knock out a couple more temples, I see more Buddhas than Siddartha's mirror, and I disappoint even more vendors and touts.

Do you think they call Christmas lights "Buddha lights" here?

Regardless, they still all insist "Minds your head". I'm not sure if this means anything, but the one time someone tells me to minds my head without trying to sell me anything, next thing I do is bash my head in an especially narrow staircase. Probably doesn't mean anything.

This place does look like it's lousy with curses.

The horse driver takes me eat at a vegetarian restaurant called Be Kind of Animals, which pretty much nails the point. I get some tomato curry and tamarind juice, and an elderly Swiss gentleman at the next table orders orange sodas for his horse cart driver, before chatting me up. My first thought is he must be a rich prick, but it turns out he's a retiree building schools in rural Myanmar.

"I always come out to Bagan every few weeks, just to have a shower and an aircon. There is no electricity in the village I stay in. It takes eight hours for me to walk from the village to the road where taxis are, so I cannot come too often."

Fuck me. After he shows me some pictures of the school he's currently building, I mention my stuff stolen in Ko Tao so that I can futilely try to keep up in the hardship game. He insists that Burmese people could not have stolen my things, and it must've been the Thais. Apparently he regularly leaves around a bag of all his cash, thousands upon thousands of dollars, and even though all the villagers know where it is, none of them touch it, nor would they even think of touching it. I don't really know how to respond, so I ask what it is he used to do, and he tells me his work was mainly around Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Middle East. He says he built textile factories, but that's exactly what the world's most charming retired arms dealer would say. He goes on to say that he's been to the USA 50-60 times, and every state but Hawaii.  I ask if he's been to Seattle. He loved the fish tossing at Pike Place. Before he leaves, he regales me with a tale about his favorite place in America.

"I love Las Vegas! Do you play poker?" I reply that I know of Texas Hold 'Em, and that's about it.

"Texas Hold 'Em, that is poker for babies! I play Omaha Poker. It is the most difficult. One time I was in Las Vegas playing Omaha, and I was playing with the world champion, the 3rd best in the world, the 7th best, and 3 others. It was my greatest game. I was up 50,000 dollars, and I took it and walked away. I knew it would get no better, so I walked away. It was a good day."

No sir, I wouldn't mind being that guy for a a few years to a lifetime, even if he does remind me for some reason of one of those old Nazi war criminals who escaped to South America. But that's just me being an asshole, and why I'll never be that guy. Bummer.

Just as we finish the tour it starts to rain, so we start to head back to the guesthouse. Along the way, I run into Mathieu, and I'm a little surprised to actually see him. I know we said we might meet up, but it's still a pleasant event when it actually happens. Probably something to do with my insecurities. He's with Kim, a Dutch girl who was also at the Moustache Brothers show. We eat dinner together, and hear that tonight is the Full Moon Festival. According to Lonely Planet, this means a lot of drunken revelry. According to the horse cart driver, it means absolutely no drunken revelry, because it celebrates the day Buddha became...Buddha. And I guess he didn't like the sauce. We spy a parade cruising by, and it leads us to a local volleyball match next to a pagoda. We sit on a wall to watch, and are immediately beset by a mob of children asking our names, asking for money, asking for food, water, candy, high-fives, handshakes, photos, to be picked up, to be swung around...I play jankenpo and do some clapping games with some, while other children keep trying to smell and kiss my hands. One of the children is wearing a Nazi shirt. Kim takes a boatload of photos, and finally the volleyball match ends with a fight. We promise the children we'll come back the next day, which was a lie.

Feeling dusty and filthy, we split up to take showers. The shower stall at the guesthouse has a red lightbulb, for that special gas chamber ambiance that you want. Our night ends with a puppet show at Pyiwa, that just consists of a lot of manic puppet dancing. It's not bad. Kim is leaving the next day, so I arrange with Mathieu to move into the room they're sharing.

In the morning, I give back the camera battery charger I've borrowed, psyched to finally rent a bicycle and get some pictures of those temples. Of course, it's raining. After breakfast, I use a squatter toilet for the first time, IN MY LIFE. My thighs felt like hot, quivering jelly that had just lost a fight to a much stronger alpha-jelly. No wonder you see old Asian people wandering around parks at night, doing their little exercises. Gotta get shredded if you wanna poop.

The rain finally stops around 1pm, so I try to check out of my guesthouse. There's no one at the front desk, only a boy outside asleep. I wake him, but he doesn't speak English or know what "checkout" means. I point to my money, my bags, and my room key, but he's still clueless. He calls in some old guy, who notices that I'm supposed to stay 2 nights. He fucks me on the exchange rate from kyat to USD, but there's not a lot I can do about that.

At the other guesthouse, Golden Village, I ask for Mathieu's room. "What country?" "France." "Room 202." He greets me in the room and we meet Kim at a restaurant. There, I find out that Mathieu is into punk music. I ask him what bands he likes. "Rancid, Dead Kennedys, The Clash, Choking Victim..." It's like he's reading the handmade liner notes of one of my high school mix CDs.

Way too eagerly, I ask him, "Oh my god, 'Crack Rock Steady'?!"

"Are you ready to stop / The rotten blue menace, let's go kill us a cop!" Mathieu sings back.

In unison, we belt out the chorus: "Crack rock steady! Are you ready?! Living above the law!"

Kim looks on with what a fancy man might call "abject horror". I don't give a shit. I just found a new best friend for the day.

Before Kim leaves, she the two of us sign a friend journal that she keeps, which strikes me as a fantastic idea for traveling. We both write a little note in the book about meeting her and jot down some contact info, and read some of the notes other people have also left her. Then she packed her bags and took off, and it was just me and my new punk buddy.

It's now around 1pm, so we've got a decent amount of time to still hit the temples. We rent bicycles, and set out on a road picked at random, singing "500 Channels", "Ca Plane Pour Moi", "Danger! High Voltage", and anything else that has a dumb chorus you can sing loud enough to spook the locals.

It should come as no surprise when I say this, but the pictures I finally managed to take did not match the initial wonder I felt the day before.

Total bullshit.

The lighting was poorer, and the temples we saw a bit less magnificent. Yet...I was having immensely more fun. And it was all thanks to the music, because music matters to me. If I may, a moment about music:

I think most people would agree that good music feels like the greatest, coolest, most fun guy you'll ever meet. You love hanging out with him, can't wait to introduce him to all your friends, invite him around everywhere you go, get really excited when he shows up at the bar. He's life of the party. For me, I was a socially awkward kid for most of my life. I found I could protect myself and deflect attention with a pair of headphones. When I had few friends, or none at all, music was there for me. Music was love. For me, that great cool fun guy that everyone wants to hang out with, I had a not-so-secret crush on him. I was, and continue to be, enraptured by him. I want to know all about his friends, his parents, his children. I want to live inside him, have him always around, have him never leave my side. I want to introduce him to my girlfriend, and see where things go. I want to know his other lovers, and bicker and rejoice over his being.

Hence why having any sort of mp3 player on my trip at all times feels so vital. Hence why I nitpick over the songs that go on said mp3 player, and waste time at slow-as-molasses internet cafes downloading new ones. When I'm traveling, access to music can be more important than my passport. For me, singing punk songs with an agreeable Frenchman while biking through a rust-colored mythscape could be considered a transformative experience. A+, highly recommended, would bike again.

It could just be the sugarcane juice talking, though. I drank a lot of sugarcane juice.

Apparently these new, box-looking pagodas are built by all those corrupt government officials trying to buy their way into nirvana.

A guy on motorcycle stops and says he can "show good sunset". We take him at his word, and of course when we get there he turns out to be a painter and wants us to take a look at his paintings. Mathieu buys a small one of a monk. Still, he told no lie. It good sunset.

After we've headed back to our guesthouse, Mathieu asks if I've heard of the band Morning Glory. I say no, and he says the most French thing I've ever heard: "Tonight, you will fall in love." He may even have kissed his fingers "muah". They're a crust-punk band similar to Choking Victim, and he plays me their song "Gimme Heroin". I do fall in love, and in return turn him onto Aesop Rock and Dead Prez.

Mathieu also brings up something I said earlier about running out of money, and offers to loan me some money. I balk, but in time accept $25 from him. I need it. All in all, I've got about 64,000 KS (66 USD) now, and a heart that would put the post-holiday-terrorism Grinch to shame. My situation's still rough, but a little less blowjobs-in-the-near-future grim.

Temple Tour Tribulations/MANDALAY

I meet my driver, Boma, after breakfast around 8:30, or "late" as he calls it. He gives me a lot of guff for sleeping in, especially for a guy showing me around on my dime. You'd think he'd be happy to spend less on gas, but I guess punctuality is more important to some folks. He takes me to Kuthodaw Pagoda, where they have "the world's largest book": the Tipitaka, the entirety of Therevada Buddhism's scriptures, written across 729 marble tablets housed inside as many white stupas. It looks like this:

There's a lot of these things.

Here's one of the things in the thing.

You could probably crush a couple of these on a long plane ride.  729 long plane rides.

There's just so many...

...It's...stupa-ndous.

Sorry. Here's some stupa puppies.

In fact, some eagle-eyed readers may remember seeing it from above, in one of my pictures atop Mandalay Hill:

Hemingway probably would've snipped a few lines here and there.

As I'm walking around the "book", I hear a young girl say "hello". I whirl around trying to place the noise, but it takes awhile to realize she's above, on top of a stupa. Curiously, the place is lousy with people picking something in the trees planted around the pagoda. People are just...vertical in this place. I don't know. An old man with one eye is sweeping and must have seen my confusion. "Piss?" he asks, and gestures towards a gate. Gives new meaning to the term "bathroom reader"!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA laughed the trees.

Once I've had enough, which is fairly quickly because what am I gonna do, read?, Boma whisks me to a couple of other tourist spots. However, I've refused to buy the $10 Archaeological Zone ticket necessary to see these sights, 'cause it supports the corrupt government and I'm socially conscious 'n shit, so I see 'em all from the gate. I feel smug as all hell.

Who needs to see the inside of another goddamn temple when you've got oodles of self-righteousness to occupy your time.

I'm actually able to go inside Mahamuni Pagoda, also known as "the Shwedagon of Mandalay", which I'm sure is an impressive and meaningful statement to some people. The big thing here is the Mahamuni Buddha image, supposedly one of only five images of the Buddha created during his lifetime. According to Wikipedia he also breathed on it and "imbued it with his essence", which sounds like something you shouldn't be doing in public, spiritual leader or not.

I find a spot were people are praying in front of the Buddha, and after kneeling for a minute a monk comes up and tells me that I'm in the women's section.

Typical feminazis, hogging all the best views.

He leads me to a government dude who rents me a longyi for 1,000 kyat (about a dollar), infomring that it's the dress code of the temple. After all my efforts, the government got me to pay up for something in the end. Somehow, I always knew when I finally gave in to The Man, it'd be while wearing a dress.

And color-clashing like a motherfucker.

Mr. Monk proceeds to take me on a whirlwind tour of the temple, including the Buddha chamber. He shows off the gorgeous mosaics and decorations, and also asks me how to say "velociraptor" in English, because I am wearing a t-shirt depicting a bandito riding such. We're both learning a lot, I guess is what I'm saying.

Worshipers are allowed to reverently affix gold leaf to the Mahamuni Image, as long as you don't have gross girl hands.

The temple has some pretty extensive grounds in addition to the Buddha pagoda, with a museum and a pond full of fish and turtles that are fed rice cakes by passing visitors. The museum is a bit rundown and covered in dust, but does contain some impressively ancient relics from across the country.

Also this lobster.

Throughout the temple my main man monk was able to explain the little rituals going on around us, things I had seen before but I had no idea about. I mean, it was all the usual "luck/wealth/prosperity/tradition" in the end, but still, it was nice to understand the protocol of the devotions.

Wettin' heads

Rubbin' tummies

He also gave me a quick rundown on some of the early stories from the religion, but none of them compared to what was depicted in this one painting:

Whoa, no one told me Buddhism was metal as fuck.

All in all, Mahamuni was a good time. Travel writing: Nailed It.

Place got some moves.

Mon monk ami curtly ends our tour near the entrance, and I prepare to bid adieu. Unfortunately, he's got a different idea. Turns out he doesn't agree that this is one of those free good-time tours that I keep thinking exist for some reason. Instead, he informs me I should give him 50-100 dollars USD. "For English books in the classroom," he says. Bad, bad monk. I tell him I don't have that much.

"40 is okay," he says. I pull out all the USD I have and show it to him. It's 7 dollars.

"15 is okay," he intones, ever so graciously. I repeat that I don't have that much, just 7 dollars. He tells me kyat is also okay. Just to humor him, I pull out all the kyat I have, about 900 in small bills. I hand it over plus the USD, an amount by which he is visibly displeased.

"Normally people give me 100 or 200, and I give them big blessing. But since you give so little, I give you little blessing." He gives me his "little blessing" and fucks off back inside the temple like the dick he is. Of course, I find out later that real monks will never ask for alms or donations, and I was scammed totes for real. For about 8 bucks, but it's the principle of the thing. I may not have many principles left, but a flimflam monk taking me for a boner ride is definitely against them. If only there was some way I could have known...

Maybe the fact that he looks like a goddamn Skeletor could have been a clue.

Next stop on our tour is Inwa, the ancient capital of Burma from the 14th to 19th centuries. If I ever seem strangely knowledgeable or well-read about this sort of stuff, rest assured I'm looking up about half of it after the fact. While traveling, I'm pretty much a dum-dum. If you want to know where the nearest caipirinha happy hour special is, though, I'm fucking Arthur Frommer. You know, the dude at the end of Euro Trip.

We eat lunch, and I futilely try to charge my camera. We drive over a bridge that Lonely Planet tells me is forbidden to take pictures of, so I take a picture of it.

I mean, come on.

A ferry takes me across a river to where I can get a horse cart to see yet more government ticket monasteries from the outside.

Vroom!

Just a whole bunch more of this junk.

Burma, I hate to judge anyone for their hobby, and clearly building pagodas is your thing, but like, board games are going through kind of a renaissance right now. Maybe shake it up a bit, is all I'm saying.

Maybe it's because I've been reading a lot of Lovecraft at night during thunderstorms, but I'll eat my hat if this isn't a tomb of something unfathomable that slithers in the darkness of men's dreams.

Yeah, I'm just about over all this.

But I'm not over dogs! This one's got a LEAF. Yes you do! Yes you do!

After seeing Namyin watchtower (that's right, the Namyin Watchtower)...

This one.

It's got a Forbidden View of the Forbidden Bridge.

Travel Tip: To avoid touts, wait for their AI routine to finish and eventually their sleep animation will activate. Now you are free to stealth past.

...I take a break for lunch. This being the main tourist circuit, some Canadians from my hostel are in the same restaurant. We chat awhile, and they tell me that seeing the monks eat breakfast in the morning was lame. The monks, probably tired of being watched by tourists, would take their lunches back to their rooms, because they are in fact people and not idealized automatons of Western mysticism. And after all the shit Boma gave me for being late and missing it, one would expect at least...fucking Yoga Flames from Street Fighter or something, I dunno.

The bike doesn't make it much farther before blowing a tire, which Boma gets patched at a small shop on the way. These things happen, etc. We limp along to Sagaing, where I climb Sagaing Hill.

You know what kinda hill I'm talking 'bout.

Travel Wrong: Nice Views and Pleasant Vistas

Wonder what's up these stairs?!

WHOA SO UNEXPECTED WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN IS THAT LIKE A GUY OR SOMETHING?!

Our last stop is sunset at U Bein Bridge, the oldest and longest teakwood bridge in the world. I didn't really know teakwood was a thing before this, but count me suitably impressed. A gathering of people from the Moustache Brothers show are also here, and a couple of Myanmar beers later we get on a boat together to watch the sunset. Of course, my camera continues to have no battery left. If you've ever been to Mandalay, rest assured the view is exactly the same as all the paintings everyone is always trying to sell outside temples. Families, monks, and the guys who sell souvenir images of the the aforementioned all walk its teaky length home, silhouetted against the last purple-pink light of the day.

One of the Moustache Brothers folks, Mathieu, mentions that he's taking a bus to Bagan tomorrow. He's the kind of backpacker (French) who's been traveling for seven months, spends a month in each country, sees everything, probably lacks intermediate math skills because too cool for school, etc. We make vague pronouncements about seeing each other in Bagan.

On the way back to the hostel, Boma's bike gets another flat, which he patches. Can't help it, etc. Then it goes flat again. Geez, Boma. I don't want to tell you your job or nothing, but maybe...new tire? I'm not even mad, really. I walk most of the last few blocks, until some guy gives Boma a trishaw, and we ride that the last block or so. We settle up, and I give Boma 10,000 ks. He is not happy about it, and insists I should help him pay for his busted bike. I do not consider it. In fact, my brain shuts down the neurons that might have even attempted to fire up a thought that would weigh the possibility of considering it. Also, that mountebank monk is still pissing me off. Sooo...no deal. Sorry, Boma and Boma's Bike. I ask the staff of Royal Guesthouse about sharing a taxi the next day, but all the ride shares are full. Getting my own is going to cost 12,000 ks. Woof. Sleep is getting uneasy again.