I’ve visited Burma twice, once in 2015 and again in 2019, and both times I made notes about the people I met and the places I went. Back home, I tried to turn these notes into something I could share and found it helped to organise them around objects. But I lost my nerve (how could I ever communicate what this country means to me?) and a handful of half-finished, stream-of-consciousness Word docs languished on my laptop. I’m now trying to resurrect them, having tackled ice, tea and gold in previous instalments. And with the military coup having entered its third year, it feels more important than ever to keep celebrating its people and places.
Sign up to Burma Campaign for actions you can take and updates – I found this recent one particularly useful – and check out Stuart McDonald’s excellent Travelfish for a weekly round-up of news from across SE Asia – the latest newsletter also features a great pic of Yangon’s train ticket office, which is several streets away from Yangon’s train station, of course.
Three hours out of Yangon and the man sitting opposite hands me his wife’s pink plastic fan. He looks concerned. I’m sweating a lot and, like an over-excited puppy, have had my head stuck out the window for most of the journey. Dust has collected in creases and crow’s feet that I usually pretend don’t exist and two brown smears – like an American footballer’s war paint – have formed where my glasses slip-slide against my cheeks. I’m a mess, and the day has only just begun.
When the train departed it was barely light, the station bathed in cool gloom, but now the sun has risen and the heat in our carriage is suffocating. Even with the metal shutters wedged open, there’s hardly a breeze. Ceiling fans lazily rotate, failing to stir a single hair. In the aisles and between seats, families roll out mats and sink into a tangled sleep, bodies draped over their belongings. A monk hitches up his saffron robe and rests his legs on a window frame, acknowledging every gold-topped stupa we pass with a nod of his head.
I can’t imagine being in Burma and not travelling by train. A journey starts with a carriage full of strangers, but shy smiles eventually turn into shared meals. There are handfuls of peanuts poured into cupped hands; discarded shells scattered beneath our feet. Children dare each other to edge closer, their courage building as they try on our sunglasses and gather around our camera screen – each portrait provoking shrieks of laughter. Finally, their small bodies leaned against ours, inhibitions gone, rocking in unison as the train bumps and bounces towards its destination. A journey ends with us watching the sky turn from orange to pink to purple. Shaking hands, waving goodbye, going our separate ways after sharing the same space for so many hours.
Yangon Circular Railway
From the second I climbed onboard, I was hooked. Stopping at 39 stations, the 30-mile loop takes several hours to complete its circuit and I ride it every time we’re in the city. I love the constant momentum. The coming and going, the loading and unloading. People leaning out the open door, ready to jump when the train gets close to where they want to be. Slices of watermelon passed from platform to passenger, a few crumpled notes hastily handed over before the train trundles on.
I love seeing snacks being prepared and served on the spot, no matter how wildly the carriage is swaying from side to side. Food vendors crouched on wooden stools, wide metal trays balanced on their knees. Salad ingredients – chickpea tofu, crispy fried garlic, chopped tomato and green chilli – arranged in plastic tubs ready to be mixed by hand and finished with a splash of fish sauce and a sprinkle of toasted peanuts. Fried sweetcorn fritters scooped from spitting oil by a large wire strainer and rested on newspaper, before being snipped with scissors and steaming up thin plastic bags. Tamarind dipping sauce spooned into a packet that’s spun in the air and secured with an elastic band.
Outside, a constantly changing landscape. A line of stopped scooters waiting at a railway crossing, satellite dishes gazing skywards, balconies strung with washing. That’s before the concrete is replaced by vegetable patches, tumbledown shacks topped with rusty corrugated iron, chickens pecking at dust and debris.
It all starts with a ticket
It’s not just the time spent on the train – buying a ticket is an equally fascinating experience. Because for foreign travellers, this simple transaction is spun out into a lengthy performance. One that calls on a huge cast of players – the station master, his deputies and a Greek chorus of onlookers.
First act: say the name of where you want to go several times while someone repeats it back to you. You will try and fail to pronounce it correctly for the whole of this interaction, and probably for the rest of the trip. You’ll point to it in your guidebook and find it written on the chalkboard timetable, but people will generally react as though your request is highly unusual.
Some stations will sell you a ticket a day in advance, others will tell you to come back a couple of hours before the train departs. If you’re in Yangon, you’ll eventually realise you can’t buy tickets from the station and trudge to the booking office situated opposite a defunct cinema and try to convince someone at one of the many counters to secure you a seat before they close at 3pm.
Once everyone’s happy with your chosen destination, a series of times are scrawled on the page of a school exercise book. You pick one and nod enthusiastically. You’ll be ushered into a small office and told to sit on a heavy wooden bench. This is excellent progress.
Second act: administrative tasks. There’s pencil sharpening, flipping through forms secured to a tatty cardboard clipboard, turning pages in ledgers, inking rubber stamps and a frustratingly slow search for carbon paper. Yes, carbon paper. Those crinkly blue sheets used to make multiple copies of documents. Patented by Mr Ralph Wedgwood in 1806 and still alive and well in train stations across Burma today.
You produce your passport and wait patiently for everything – and I mean everything – to be painstakingly copied onto your ticket in bold biro capitals.
I know computers could overhaul this whole process and make people’s lives easier, but then you’d lose the theatre. Sitting on the other side of the ticket counter or waiting in the station master’s office means you get to witness the inner workings of the railways. And let me tell you, it’s a real treat.
A miniature grandfather clock, safes secured with big brass locks, a paint-chipped microphone stand, signal boxes that look like they’re used to tap out Morse code messages. Relics of another era sitting alongside a remote control wrapped in protective plastic, the names and numbers of a few TV channels pencilled on the wall.
Third act: After an unspecified amount of time, a ticket is torn from its book and presented to you. Success!
Or so you think… some station masters might decide you aren’t to be trusted and will tuck the ticket into their shirt pocket for safekeeping, to be handed over only when you’re sitting in your assigned seat.
When a delayed overnight train to Shwebo finally arrived at 3am, we were grateful to the guard who ejected the people sleeping on the benches we’d booked. But, more often than not, this special treatment is a little over the top. Departing Katha, for example, was always going to be a drama. Its station sits on a branch line, which means it’s much quicker to drive to Naba, about 30 minutes by road, and join the main Mandalay-Myitkyina line from there.
We’d bought our tickets earlier that day, and the station master said he’d be there that evening to help us. The pick-up to Naba is packed. Passengers face each other, feet resting on plastic sacks filled with garlic, knees knocking as the driver struggles to navigate the potholed route in the dark. A few times, sharp drops see us splashing through streams. (Thankfully it’s dry season and when we do this journey again four years later, bridges have been built and the track has been transformed into a bitumen road.)
We arrive with minutes to spare, but (who would have guessed?) the train’s delayed due to a carriage that’s come off the tracks. I’m not sure if it’s our train that’s been partially derailed or another train that’s thrown out the timetable. Either way, our friendly station master is keen to ensure we wait in comfort and ushers us towards a patch of platform surrounded by a white picket fence. Inside, there are two garden benches – one for us, one for our bags. Everyone else is on the ground. Sitting on sacks, shrouded in rugs and blankets. It was a kind gesture, but we’d rather try to blend in.
Then again, there’s nothing like an afternoon Frisbee game to draw attention to yourself. We start slow. Casually throwing it between us, stepping between the sleepers so the distance between us increases. Aiming it (gently!) towards the feet of onlookers usually encourages a few participants and, before you know it, two teams are on the tracks – kids scrambling to retrieve the Frisbee whenever someone throws it askew. For a few happy minutes, we’re all united by a piece of red plastic.
Then a high-pitched whistle, a metallic gear change, the screech of a lever being released and the game dissolves. We find our seats and, as the train picks up speed, the sweat slowly dries on our skin. Outside, soaring palm trees are silhouetted against the lilac dusk and water-filled rice paddies catch the last light. Insects hurl themselves at the lightbulbs above with increasing frequency and the sound of shutters clatters along the length of the train as we all settle in for the journey.
Currently reading: Happiness, as Such by Natalia Ginzburg. I’d say 90% of the books I read come from charity shops and searching for those by independent publishers is usually the best assurance that it’s going to be good. This is from Daunt Books with an introduction by Claire-Louise Bennett (loved both Pond and Checkout 19) and it’s a story that’s told through letters. It’s funny – characters don’t shy away from telling each other how it is and there’s a kind of charming unhingedness to many of them – but it’s also deeply moving as a mother tries to reconnect with her absent son.
Talking of mothers, I enjoyed the anger and ambition captured by Tate Britain’s Women In Revolt exhibition, especially the screening of Sue Crockford’s A Woman’s Place – which you can watch on Vimeo for free by creating an account – but it’s this zine’s cover art that has uneasily stayed with me ever since:
Burma… by plane! We had a fantastic time flying from Myitkyina to Mandalay (being weighed – yes, us and our baggage – at check-in, wooden crates stacked with vegetables being loaded into the cargo hold, sitting next to the propellers, cabin crew removing their shoes to serve monks) and I’ll write about it sometime, in the meantime, read this.
And for your next train trip, I urge you to listen to songs that sound like an (old-school) train. Can’t really explain it, but suggest this and this: