Ten Days in Burma - Part 15
Saturday, September 27, 2008

The next morning it was pineapple again and we were off! We had hired a taxi to take us to Mount Popa, a monastery at the top of an old volcano. According to Lonely Planet, it was supposed to be a gorgeous hike with lush greenery and beautiful views.

Insteeeeeeeead it was a climb up approximately 500 stairs with tchochke souvenirs and lots of wild monkeys roaming. My favorite part was the "toilet for foreigners" where they asked us to pay to pee in a hole in the ground.

We took the taxi back into town to rent some more bikes. At this point my hunger was at levels I didn’t know existed. I told Burma Boy I was famished and needed to eat immediately. I guess immediately to him meant riding our bikes for 15 minutes to find someplace when there were restaurants RIGHT IN FRONT OF US. Why, you might ask, didn’t I say “I MEAN NOW!”? I don’t know. I just don’t know. I’ve actually asked myself that question on more than one occasion over the years as I’ve replayed this trip in my head. What was I afraid of? Why didn’t I throw down and say, “I’m NOT getting on a bike. I’m not going to look at something else. What part of ‘I AM FAMISHED’ do you not understand?” But…I didn’t.

After I had exerted every last ounce of energy left in my body, we finally found a restaurant and I made the HUGE mistake of deciding to order spaghetti pomodoro. I thought to myself, “How is it possible to screw up spaghetti and tomato sauce?” Well the answer is, we were in Burma. VERY EASY. When they brought out my noodles covered in red oil, I took one bite and literally almost threw up. Truly. Not like an expression “Oh my God, I’m going to throw up.” I actually gagged. It felt and tasted like I had worms crawling around my mouth. In truth, worms might have tasted better. Of course, Burma Boy tasted my lunch and insisted it wasn’t “that bad.” So when he offered me his veggie fried rice, I didn’t think twice. If it wasn’t that bad, HE could eat worms in red oil! Of course he made a point of ordering himself another veggie fried rice and he did indeed finish both his and mine - but I think he was just trying to prove how “not bad” the spaghetti was. The only point he proved to me was that he was stubborn. I ate a bit of veggie fried rice, but found it was becoming harder and harder for me to eat, no matter what the food tasted like.

With a small amount of energy in my system, we headed off on our adventure to find the cave temples. We rode our bikes at 1 PM in 110 degree weather. As we entered a small village off the main road, Burma Boy stopped to ask a local how to get to the caves. Standing in his boat, Mr. Local informed us the cave temples weren’t possible to get to by bike, but that he would be happy to give us a lift in his boat. Perfect! Sounded relaxing and lovely! And I wouldn’t have to exert any of the energy that I clearly needed to conserve. But guess what??? Shockingly, Burma Boy was convinced we were being duped by people who just wanted our money. So off on our bikes we went, even though we had JUST been told that the place we were going wasn’t accessible by bike. As I rode through goats and pigs and what felt like quicksand, I thought to myself, “No one, and I mean NO ONE, is going to believe me when I tell them I am doing this.” I mean, I’m an active girl, but goats? On vacation? Not so much. Oh yeah, I forgot, I wasn’t on vacation. I was in HELL!!!

We rode as far as possible, and then started to hike up the side of a hill. At the top of the hill, I looked down at my sweat-drenched, dirt covered body, and felt my heart pounding so hard, I was sure that it could be seen through my skin and my shirt. Now I know I can be dramatic, but I was seriously in danger of heatstroke. PLUS, we still had to ride our bikes back to the hotel since we had rented them for the next two days. I looked at the temple in the distance and told Burma Boy to go on without me because I'd rather see his pictures than attempt to go with him and have him have to carry me back. I made my way down the hill (which was feeling more like a mountain) and sat under a tree waiting for him.

I know it doesn't look far. It was. While I attempted to catch my breath I found myself wondering what I had truly expected from this trip. Do all girls create a movie in their minds? In my movie, Burma Boy would have doled out cash for a boat. In fact, he would have paid a local to grab a few beers to take with us on them. We would have enjoyed the river breeze and laughed and maybe even kissed a few times (which I was pretty sure we hadn’t done since I arrived). We would have pulled up on the bank and the boat would have waited for us as we frolicked in the cave temples and perhaps we would have even found a secluded place to – SCREEECH. I was jolted back to reality as Burma Boy descended down the hill from his adventure to the temple (which he admitted was underwhelming,) and we biked back to the hotel which took at least an hour. My legs were jello and the bicycle seat felt like it was situated UP my ass. But I started repeating to myself over and over, "Just keep going, just keep going, don't stop, don’t stop. Just keep going, just keep going, don’t stop, don’t stop…” I repeated my new mantra over and over and over and over, not yet realizing that it would carry me through this trip and many moments after. I didn’t think about anything else…and an hour later, I found myself back at the hotel. As I sat on the floor of the shower with the water running over my head, I thought to myself, “This is definitely NOT vacation.” Not only was I traveling, but I was traveling with a super athlete haggling man. Oy vey.

Posted byMeesh-elle my Belle at 5:37 PM  

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2 comments:

megabrooke said... September 28, 2008 at 9:29 AM  

this sounds like quite the "vacation." wow. i dont know how i would handle it all. id be interested to hear more about what your conversations with burma boy were like surrounding all of this? did you ever ask him why he seemed so... different, from his emails, from your time together before he left? were there some times during the trip where you felt hopeful that things with you and burma boy would go back to the way they had been? or had you fel the had completely changed?

hope you don't mind the questions!

Hillary said... September 29, 2008 at 12:17 PM  

I'm really enjoying this story. Thank you for taking the time to write it all out! I'm excited to find out how it ends but I also really don't want it to be finished.

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