Rakhaing - two old friends in a journey of self discovery in Myanmar’s Rakhaing
Smashwords edition
Text by
Lorenzo Esse
eISBN 978-616-222-056-2
Published by www.bangkokbooks.com
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Chapter 1
The stationmaster, summoned to translate for those two tourists, had been very straightforward.
“There is only one bus to Rakhaing. This one.”
Rico and Pablo’s eyes moved from the malnourished face of the Burmese to what he was pointing at: the stereotype, or perhaps the mockery, of a WWII battered and rusty charabanc, a ramshackle good only to be sold for scrap. Painted in an improbable pea-soup green and without panels in the windows, it was a mechanic fossil, a relic of the colonial past of the country; but it was still in service, for the lack of anything else. Amazingly, it was being filled to the brim inside and loaded with goods also on the roof, like a Tibetan yak. Such a pathetic form of transportation was expected to climb the impervious mountain range called Rakhaing, travelling all night to reach the ocean on the opposite side in the morning.
Rico and Pablo inspected the bus without saying a word. Only a fool, or a lunatic, could have stuffed the inside with bags as big as donkeys, filling the floor and the space under the seats in that wicked way. It was not clear where the allotted place for passengers really was. Perhaps it was a truck disguised as a bus.
“It’ll never make it through the mountains. Let’s have a look around. There must be another one,” suggested Rico.
The ticket vendors were mildly confused. Did those two want to go to Rakhaing or not? There were just two tickets left. Either they took them, or they’d have to spend the night in town, as there wasn’t any other transportation bound to Rakhaing. And now, where were they going? Tourists were all weird people, regardless.
Rico walked around the parking lot, eyes low on the dusty ground, immersed in his thoughts, as he did anytime something didn’t quite fit with his travel plans. He had to find an alternative. For him, nothing in Asia was good on first offer. The initial price could never possibly be the real one, the first hotel room shown wasn’t the best available; in Asia, everything was merely a starting point to be further developed.
Without understanding in full what was going on, Pablo followed his old friend, both amused and worried by the local standards of public transportation. For him, just to be there, in that fabulous country previously called Burma and now Myanmar, was already a dream, an adventure in itself, a journey into a reality which was already more fascinating than anything he had imagined. Most importantly, he was finally able to see Rico, his best friend, in action, bound to fix any situation with his legendary perseverance and experience.
They checked all the buses out. All in all, none looked better than the first one. It seemed that, on an importance level, passengers always came after the goods. He asked everybody, including the wise-looking, useless hangers-on who dally in every Asian station, but the answer didn’t change. There was only one bus for Rakhaing: that little green one.
As he realized there was no alternative, Rico quickly bought the last two tickets for fifteen dollars each, a thievery which made him curse and put him in a dark mood.
“Good. Now we’ve got the tickets and we won’t be forced to spend the night in this shithole. What do we do now? Shall we go to eat? What do you think? Should we buy water and provisions for the trip? They will they stop sometimes, won’t they? These people must eat and go to the toilet too, right? I can hardly wait to start this journey. God only knows what will happen and where we’ll end up...”
Pablo was excited and in a jolly mood, but Rico barely smiled at him. He looked tired and not inclined to engage in any conversation.
“You are sick, aren’t you? Do you want a couple of pills? I have everything: against fatigue, flu, tropical diseases, all kinds of tropical bacteria; and against malaria, of course. What are your symptoms?”
Pablo, a male nurse with a couple of post-graduate specializations under his belt, truly loved his job. He had faith in medicines, in doctors and in prevention, all subjects Rico had ignored for all his adult life. He believed in curing himself, without doctors and drugs, like warriors and animals do. In his odd twenty years in Asia he had never experienced any sickness, even the so-common dysentery that always affected first-timers.
“No. I never take pills and I won’t start now. I just caught a cold last night, that’s it. A hot Chinese tea will fix me. I’d like a warm soup, though. I think I have a bit of fever…well, it’ll go by itself, as usual.”
In those rare occurrences when Rico was sick, he fixed himself by consuming liters of steaming hot green tea, sweating it out in his sleep. His normal diet was quite peculiar, too. He didn’t eat any kind of meat, but fed mainly on vegetables and seafood, plus the occasional snake, frog or fried insects; but only if they were of a kind he had never tried before or simply if there was nothing else available. He carried his own ideas on how to nurture his body and didn’t appreciate sharing or discussing them.
“This is nonsense. A couple of aspirins won’t hurt you. If one of us gets sick, our journey is ruined. And, by the way, if it’s you, what am I supposed to do here, in this absurd country? I don’t even know where we are on the map! You’re the leader, so you simply can’t get sick! Damn you!” said Pablo in a scolding tone.
“We’re in Pi-yai, two hundred eighty kilometers North-West of Yangon…right, I’ll have a hot tea with two aspirins, just to make you shut up. Now stop bothering me. I want to buy a blanket. If it’s cold on the mountains, I’ll be much sicker tomorrow. Shit, I didn’t expect this winter weather so soon.”
“What? Winter weather? It’s always over thirty-two Celsius! Thank God in the evening it’s a bit cooler. Look at me. I’m always in short sleeves. It’s you, my friend. You have become a tropical animal and even a cool breeze can screw you up. You are weak. Shall we go looking for a Loden overcoat?” laughed Pablo.
They walked to the market, located only a few minutes away from the bus station. The locals looked at them with a mix of surprise, curiosity and a bit of shyness, too. Youngsters, as usual, dared to shout their “hellos” just to run away laughing immediately after. Young women and teenage girls smiled at them, with sweet femininity, totally unaware of their peculiar, unmistakable charm.
“Did you see that student? The face! The eyes! Gorgeous!” Pablo was soon enchanted by the Burmese women. Rico smirked, feeling pleased. His best friend was already sensing the allure of Asian women, an unexplainable, indescribable aura that had bewitched him many, many years before and that never let him go.
They entered the market. The ground was muddy, dotted with large, slimy puddles where cucumber skins, plastic bags and various garbage floated miserably. The sweetish stench of rotting fruits and vegetables pervaded the sunset air. Rico recognized it as the usual smell of many markets, all over Asia.
“This place is so dirty! I suppose you’ve seen many like this,” commented Pablo.
“Actually, it’s only here and in Cambodia that the markets are so messy. Everywhere else they’re much cleaner; at least they throw the garbage all in one place. Cambodia and Myanmar are the poorest countries of South East Asia and the most fucked-up; so you start your travelling experience with the worst. Those stalls over there sell blankets. Let’s go to check the prices. They’re going to rip my skin off, for sure.”
The few blankets available were all heavy and hairy, made in China with a strange mix of cheap synthetic materials. Rico thought of a similar item he had seen as a child. It had the colour of sewage rat fur. It was horribly rough and had a white star in the middle, revealing it was a gift from the U.S. Army to the Italian people who had just lost the war. That was an historic blanket, which reminded Rico of poverty, suffering and hardship; exactly like the one he had in his hand at the Pi-yai market.
While he blandly bargained its price, Pablo discovered a fedora. Quite elegant-looking and well-made, it was the hat of a country’s gentleman in the past. He admired himself in a small mirror, to the joy of the vendor, who was immensely amused.
“Rico! What do you think of it? How do I look?” asked Pablo enthusiastically.
“It fits you well. But you look like an old-fashioned poof. You remind me of those romantic travelling poets in the Victorian era, like Byron. You’ll be perfect for pictures, though...” commented Rico laconically.
“Why? I don’t think I look gay at all. Maybe I look a bit of a poser…it creates the traveller look, though. What do you think? Shall I buy it?”
“Give her one thousands Kyat, no more,” sentenced Rico, going back to his own bargaining.
At the end, he walked away with a red and white hairy blanket, costing four thousands Kyat, cursing his fever, his weakness and his need for warmth. Pablo followed, proudly wearing his new three-thousands Kyats hat, an abominable price for Rico. The vendors, seated side by side, chuckled and gossiped with their friends, all happy with those great deals made almost at the end of their working day.
The dusty main road of Pi-yai was very much alive at that time of the day. A large number of university students on bicycles swarmed in all directions, all looking delighted to be free from classes. Rico and Pablo reciprocated their greetings, shook a few hands with the guys and delivered their best smiles to the cutest girls, feeling a bit special.
“Here you’re always at the centre of attention, aren’t you? It’s kind of weird…you always feel like people are watching you. I don’t dislike it, though...” said Pablo, adjusting his hat.
“Yeah. But sometimes I’d rather pass unnoticed,” mumbled Rico mysteriously.
Back at the station, they sat at a table with uneven legs, in a small restaurant so dirty that the walls no longer had a base colour. Rico ordered a soup, of which he only slurped the warm water, carefully avoiding the chunks of fat and bones floating in it. Everywhere they looked, the scenery seemed depressing. Rico, still feeling feverish, felt it with his own pathos.
“Look around, Pablo. Look at Asia without tourism…the dirty, poor, rough Asia. There isn’t anything beautiful here. The station and the market are filled with garbage, it’s everywhere. Look at our pathetic bus, a fifty-years old wreck still in service because there isn’t anything else to replace it with. Look over there. Diseased dogs, looking more dead than alive, scavenging for food. You notice they exist only when someone kicks them and make them wail. And there is you and me, waiting in this squalid restaurant, sipping this broth under a ten Watts bulb hanging from the ceiling, which only shows how dirty this place is. Even the usually beautiful sunset is now clouded! Shall we take a picture? Let’s catch this decadent moment at the beginning of our journey, perhaps the presage of a nightmarish trip into the darkness of these cursed lands...” recited Rico dramatically, trying to sound like Edgar Allan Poe. Sometimes he felt like a poet. Pablo listened and smiled, enjoying his over-the-top acting. Even though they hadn’t met for several years, he was still used to the eccentricities of his best friend, which hadn’t diminished with time. Quite the contrary, actually.
They drank a couple of warm Myanma Beers because there was no fridge. Rico gulped his two tablets with an unhappy face. Then they shared the Cookie, an innocuous-looking biscuit, “baked with love” by Rico. It contained a blend of herbs and roots he defined as a “magic alchemy”. That was his new ritual, especially made for that journey, for the purpose of “awakening the perception”. Pablo wasn’t that sure about the effects of the biscuit, but he followed Rico in that bizarre ritual.
The bus was now surrounded by passengers ready to board. Among their fellow travellers they noticed a couple of guys “with attitude”, maybe due to the fact that they weren’t wearing the politically correct longyi, a sort of traditional loincloth, but fake Calvin Klein jeans made in Thailand. Sons of a powerful father, thought Rico.
Seated on a bench, a young, barefooted woman was cuddling an infant who sometimes screamed a sudden, loud cry. Her face expressed the austere, yet striking, beauty of a native Indian. Rico slowly observed her very slanted eyes, which had a toughened look and seemed deeper than average; and he couldn’t help noticing her perfectly shaped breast, on the small side but firm and hard. That was the ethnic beauty of the royal dancers he had seen represented in frescos at Bagan, the six hundred year old ancient kingdom of the North. And women like that still existed nowadays.
More passengers arrived, dressed all the same: blue or brown longyi fastened around the hips, plastic flip-flops, polyester shirt with a pen tucked in the pocket and almost no baggage. They didn’t seem surprised by the fact that the seats had disappeared under a layer of goods, baskets, bags, truck wheels and suspicious-looking military metal boxes with Chinese writing. Rico and Pablo took each other’s pictures in front of the bus, which seemed more of a joke than a real mean of transportation. That poor wreck was the only link to Rakhaing, a narrow state squeezed between mountains and ocean, a long, thin stretch of land going from the Bangladeshi border to the plains of the Irrawaddy delta, two thousands kilometers to the South. Half of it was off limits to foreigners, a fact that Rico had preferred not to mention to Pablo yet.
At seven o’clock sharp the captain swiftly climbed up to his seat and slammed the door, which sounded like a squeezed tin can. The engine started at the first try, rattling the whole of the all bus and choking out a cloud of dense, black smoke, which floated for a while in the cool evening air. The conductor spat out a massive blotch of betel, the reddish mixture of nuts and leaves that every Burmese chews all day. The driver refastened his longyi, and as he put it into first gear, the bus leaped forward, roaring and trembling and making weird noises. The trip had finally begun.
“Here we go! Yee-haa!” shouted Pablo, enthusiastic as usual; he knew he was entering a much bigger adventure he had bargained for, but he was happy, as he really needed an experience like that.
Rico smiled at him. He knew they were heading straight into a very, very tough night; an apotheosis of physical pain and discomfort, like many others he had gone through on the roughest roads of Asia. He was absolutely sure Pablo would toughen up, one way or another, and return home with a real adventure to tell his family and friends. The bus left the town in a hurry, shaking, rattling and bumping constantly, but nevertheless maintaining a decent speed. The driver seemed very determined to reach their destination as soon as possible, showing a no-nonsense attitude which impressed Rico from the very first minute. He felt relaxed, ready for whatever was going to happened. At last, he was in his own element, free, unreachable, a care-free wanderer on a night bus heading for nowhere. That was exactly what he needed, after eleven squalid months of daily routine, locked up in that shitty office where he played the role of a successful Marketing Manager.
Pablo started wriggling and wiggling to find an acceptable position for his legs. The floor was covered with bags, which created an uneven surface, that was mostly higher than the seats. Pablo watched the Burmese guy on his left side and imitated him, lying down in a surreal position, like a puppet thrown on a heap of garbage. Rico was compressed between Pablo and the front seat but had access to the open window on his right. That was a privilege and also a danger, as at every curve to the left he risked losing his balance and falling out. Considering his predicament, he pushed his thin legs down, like a tree inserting its roots deep into the ground. Slowly, he managed to anchor himself to the floor. They looked at each other and chuckled: they were only ten minutes into that journey and the discomfort was already unbearable. And being the last two passengers to buy the tickets, they had the worst places of all, at the rear, with a mountain of goods dangerously towering above their heads.
“Eh, Rico, I have to admit that I can’t stand this. It’s painful, eh?” shouted Pablo, to make himself heard above the noise of the engine.
“Horrendous. But when there isn’t another way, you have to take what is available and force yourself to like it…or at least try.”
“Sure. I agree. You know, nobody back home will believe that a bus like this still exists. These people have a very tough life. I feel sorry for them. How on earth can situations like this still happen in the twenty-first century? “
Rico smiled and said nothing. Pablo had always been quite sensitive to the problems of the underprivileged. He was a man of love, filled with empathy, always ready to help people, especially the needy, the disadvantaged and the weak. In a few words, he had a heart of gold, unlike himself.
The first hour passed quickly. They laughed a lot, remembering old stories and gossip about all those common friends Rico hadn’t seen in many years. And the Cookie’s ingredients were progressively making their way into their veins, taking them higher and higher in a slow crescendo.
“So you came here because you wanted adventures in Asia, eh? Now you wanna be a traveller like me, eh? Then here you have it, the fucking adventure: the little green bus!” laughed Rico, looking clearly wasted. “Imagine tonight, multiplied by months and months of travelling, and you’ll finally begin to comprehend the poetry behind my adventurous journeys in the past!”
“Mate, what I’ve understood so far is that my best friend is a total nutter. And a masochistic one, too. Don’t tell me you have been travelling around Asia this way for all those years? Going around in shitty buses like this and sleeping in dirty hotels filled with cockroaches and rats. Ah ah ah! I’d rather stay home, on my sofa, with my fat joints, my basic comforts and my lovely wife!” declared Pablo euphorically.
“That’s a real senior citizen’s lifestyle! You’re pathetic! You really aren’t a traveller at all! But I’ll make a man out of you, you clown!” laughed Rico.
They filled their time with jokes, laughs and happy idiocies, which occasionally attracted the sleepy attention of some other passenger. The Burmese endured the trip in a very composed and dignified way, seeming almost detached. They lay like dead soldiers on a battlefield, families mixed with single strangers, all seemingly asleep, sharing a common, tough destiny. But for Rico and Pablo it wasn’t yet time to sleep.
“Did you see the mother with the baby? Nice, eh?” pointed Pablo.
“Yeah, I was looking at her at the station. She’s gorgeous. One of those, you know...a bit primitive…the kind that walks in the fields barefooted…they plant rice, harvest it…she had probably married at sixteen, with a bull of a farmer that pumped her every evening because there is nothing else to do apart from procreating…and because they have no TV!” concluded Rico, with a porky look in his slightly hallucinated eyes.
“Good. I see you’ve already created a nice personal profile of her. Have you ever had women like this, during your vagabond years in Asia?”
“Of course. Many. The farmers are great women…but only when they’re very young. You know, they don’t have many issues: if they like you, they want you, there and then. They’re like…how to put it? More…natural. Maybe because they live in close contact with nature…you know, in the villages they still swim, bath and wash their clothes in the river and do plenty of physical work, too, from sunrise to sunset. That’s why they’re naturally slim and strong...they eat and live healthily, much more than the people who live in cities. Farmers’ houses always smell of straw…it’s a sweet, pleasant scent. In the evening they don’t have much to do, so they make love,” said Rico with dreamy eyes.
“But how did you communicate? And where did you find them?” insisted Pablo.
“Oh, they find you. If you travel alone from one village to another, mingling with the locals, without any hurry to go anywhere, as it has always been my style, they’ll notice you. Did you read ‘Knulp’, by Herman Hesse? No? What a pity. He describes the situation perfectly. Women seem to be attracted by the free spirit, the young, handsome vagabond…I’m joking! In reality, you always end up eating at some open-air restaurant, or at the local market; and the first people you meet, the ones that smile and try to communicate with you, are women. Not men. Men are usually the first who try to cheat you out of your money. Generally, Asian women are smart, very switched-on and willing to help, especially if you are alone and look a bit lost. Asian women love to joke, much more than Western women. Often, after a few minutes they treat you like they’ve known you for years. They’re not shy at all, even though they may seem so at the beginning…but it’s just politeness. So it’s easy to break the ice, if you speak just a little of their language. Then...things may develop into something…more attractive. Many years ago, in Laos, I used to go to a village, I don’t even remember its name…it was about two hours by bus from Vientiane...a bus like this one, by the way. I usually arrived at midday, ate rice and fish at the same food stall, right in front of the vendor’s home. One very hot day she invited me in for a shower…to take the dust off my hair, she said. You can imagine…I ended up going there for one week solid, eat rice and fish, take a shower and make love with her - hard - until four o’clock, in time to catch the last bus of the day to Vientiane. Good ol’ times…”
“Why didn’t you stay there for the night?”
“Because at the time the government was still hard-core Communism, so it was forbidden for us foreigners to spend the night in a Laotian’s home. I guess they were afraid of anti-communist propaganda. Foreigners could only stay in registered hotels. So I went to see her during the day. Sometimes she took me to a hut in the middle of the fields…I remember the rustle of the rice outside when we were making love…and the oppressive heat of the early afternoon. Those were really special moments that will never come again. I wouldn’t mind living the life of a farmer for a month or two: eat and drink well, smoke weed all day and pump my woman as often as possible. I’d help her to plant the rice, too, if she’d teach me,” smiled Rico.
“You’ve really had a good life, my friend.”
“I agree. Those were the best years of my life, I told you. I was away six months at the time, from November to April. Always travelling alone, avoiding the tribes of backpackers and tourists. I was always with the locals, learning from them as much as I could. Great years.”
Rico remained absorbed in his thoughts for a while. Then he took a light cotton scarf out of his pocket, red and white, similar to the kafia worn by Palestinian militants, and wrapped it around his head, like an Afghan turban.
“What are you doing? You look like a Taliban! Are you wearing a turban now? What’s wrong with you, mate? Too many cookies?” laughed Pablo.
“Shut up. Do you think you’re cool with that white fedora? Don’t remind me how much you paid for that straw, you fool.”
“It’s a proper hat for a man of the world and for a distinguished traveller. Like a Panama, it’s a symbol of distinction. But please, tell me, what’s that red cloth you have around your head?”
“It’s a Cambodian krama. Every Khmer farmer has one. It protects from dust, dirt, et cetera when you travel on Cambodia’s hellish roads. You can use it as a bandanna, as a light scarf, or wrap it around your head like a Tuareg. Also, you can use it to collect fruits or other things you may find in the jungle. It serves many needs. When I travel, I always take it with me, as a lucky charm. It’s useful. Can you see how much shit is coming in from the door?”
Moving his eyes up towards the dim, greenish lights of the ceiling, Pablo could see an oily smoke coming from the engine getting mixed in mid-air with copious amounts of dust from the road. The two Burmese seated near the entrance were in the best position to absorb both nuisances, but they didn’t complain, as they were sound asleep on each other’s shoulder, like brothers.
Rico and Pablo tried again to snooze, without much success, but for an hour or so they didn’t talk.
“Ehi Rico, are you still alive? You look a bit wasted.”
“Wasted? Of course I’m wasted!” mumbled Rico. “Actually, I feel like I’m hallucinating. Your aspirins and the Cookie are a bad mix. I feel like I did when we took downers with wine. Do you remember?”
“No, because those were experiments you shared with other guys, not with me. I didn’t enjoy that kind of shit.”
“Anyway, I’m pretty melted. I feel tired, feverish, cold and stoned. These fucking medicines you gave me, you damn witch doctor. I’m stuffed with all this crap. Do I have the right to be hallucinating, or not?”
“C’mon Rico, I only gave you two tiny aspirins!”
“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe those were real aspirins. Anyway, it’s all right, after all, to be in this green wreck, so decrepit, and feeling exactly like it: on the verge of a total collapse. Reality is already quite weird and hallucinating makes it a lot like a movie, sometimes funny, sometimes grotesque...and decadent, too. Like a Fellini’s movie. And this time I’m not the only main character. It has never happened before, you know. We’re together again, after a lifetime, on this adventure. We haven’t been like this since we went to Amsterdam, when we were eighteen, right? And now, after all these years, you’re in Asia. My home. You will live these two weeks as I did during those years. A free spirit, wandering around exotic places, in buses like this and on legendary nights like this.” Rico was becoming emotional.
“For me everything is already so unreal. Everything seems to be extreme in this country. Can it get worse than this?” asked Pablo.
“I don’t think so…”
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’ll follow you. Because we’re two travellers! Ye-haah!!” joked Pablo raising his voice.
“Right! That’s the spirit. Never give up and be always in a good mood, no matter what! Anyway, from a man who has seen many crappy buses in his life, be informed that it’s difficult to find anything worse than this. Only in Tibet, Cambodia and Vietnam I’ve been on more amazing wrecks. However, this is already pretty shameful,” laughed Rico.
“Good! It looks like I’m beginning with a journey for “toughs only”, eh? Good. But I can’t help feeling sorry for these people. For us it’s just an adventure, but for them this is real everyday life. They’re really screwed up badly, by those fucking dictators.”
The scent of the hills and the forest entered through the open windows, together with the occasional moth, bringing a subtle aroma of fresh mushrooms and grass. Outside, everything was pitch-black, as in a night of a dark moon. There were no stars and no lights to be seen anywhere. The humidity, typical of all jungles at night, slowly became a damp chill. The front lights of the trucks coming very rarely from the opposite direction illuminated only bushes and grass, right at the side of the road; behind, there was a wall of mysterious blackness. The forest had to be there, invisible and lost in a darkness thicker than the night itself.
Another two hours passed sluggishly. Pablo tried everything to get to sleep, but without success.
“Imagine you have to take this bus to go to see an important client upcountry, with the fear of being late to the meeting!” Rico said unexpectedly.
Pablo opened one of his tired eyes. He had the typical expression Rico knew too well, even though he hadn’t seen it in years: the puffy, reddish eyes and a big nose above the unmistakable idiotic smile. That was Pablo the stoner’s usual smirk.
“You are totally wasted, Pablo! The Cookie worked for you as well!”
“I think you’re no better. But after what you’ve taken, I’ll understand if you start drooling on me.”
Pablo confessed the truth between spastic fits of laughter. To ensure Rico’s health, priceless on that journey, he had given him two tablets of very powerful antibiotics, whose side effects included an acute drowsiness similar to morphine-based pain-killers. The mix with warm Myanma Beers and the mysterious magic biscuits had kept Rico awake and in a dream-like limbo, where he could only feel it was a night already made of the stuff of legends. When the bus halted abruptly, with a screeching noise of clanking gears, Rico thought that they were arrived at destination at some ungodly, pre-dawn hour.
“Ehi! He stopped! Rico! What’s going on?” Pablo was excited again. Rico noticed for the first time that his legs, firmly inserted among the bags beneath him, had gone totally numb.
All passengers slowly resuscitated, looking around drowsy and confused. They repeatedly passed their fingers through their hair and on their faces to wake themselves up. Wiggling around and holding their flip-flops in one hand, everybody reached the door and disembarked. Rico pondered for a while, studying the options, then decided that to jump out of his window would be the best solution. He landed heavily on one leg, without any grace, wondering if the Burmese could notice that he was massively wasted. Pablo sat in Rico’s place and rolled a cigarette, hanging his legs out of the window and smiling smugly at the locals, all ambling around like somnambulists. Unlike the Thais, always curious and playful, their fellow passengers didn’t socialize at all. Every now and then they threw a glance at them, occasionally smiled, but nothing more. Even though they were surely intrigued by those two Westerners, they didn’t make the first step to communicate with them. Rico recalled that ten years before people were different. Almost everyone was fluent in English and enjoyed engaging the rare tourist in intelligent and polite conversations and never attempted to scrounge anything, as the Thais always did. Actually, he even had to argue to be able to pay his restaurant bills, as there was always someone willing to show Burmese hospitality in that civilized manner. But then the dictators felt there was too much opening towards Western influences and ordered all schools of foreign languages to close, with the result that few people now could speak English. And it was also equally evident that they were much more afraid than before to mingle with foreigners. Rico felt for those unfortunate people, who had always treated him with sincere benevolence. They probably were the world’s most devoted Buddhists, together with the similarly oppressed Tibetans. Burma was the only place where he had seen a ragged mendicant give a few Kyat to a crippled beggar, the extremely poor making a good deed to someone with a karma worse than his own, in a true spirit of compassion.
Two thin dark legs, like two sticks of mahogany, ending with two dirty vulgar feet, stuck out under the belly of the bus. The driver sat at the side holding a small torch to facilitate the repairing process. Almost all passengers squatted on their calves, Asian style, as if about to lay an egg, and observed absent-mindedly the procedure. All smoked and spitted betel; and even among themselves they didn’t talk too much.
“This is the first failure in four hours and a half. Not too bad,” commented Rico, when he saw Pablo approaching.
“Ah! And they fix it like that? With a screwdriver and a hammer? Jesus!”
It took a full hour to repair whatever was broken. It was a pleasant pause, which gave back to Rico the functionality of his legs and an opportunity to rest his bones. Pablo sat on a stone and smoked, looking around. Rico walked everywhere in a radius of one hundred meters, exploring the total darkness.
“Chon yoi!”
“Ehi Rico! What is he saying?”
“I don’t speak Burmese. But it looks like we’re good to go.”
The locals slowly proceeded back to their seats, without showing any enthusiasm and actually looking rather resigned. Rico and Pablo clumsily climbed up through the window, laughing at each other’s lack of agility. And the journey continued. The little green bus that had served the British Raj in its heydays stoically climbed the tortuous mountain road towards Rakhaing, occasionally belching puffs of black smoke and roaring loudly, like a metallic elephant in pain. The dim lights on the ceiling were always on and gave a weird green haze, like a hallucination. Rico felt that something hard and pointed pierced the back of his neck.
“Look at the tower behind us!” he said to himself trying to move the protruding angle of a metal box.
“Yeah, imagine if the guy slams hard on the breaks.” said Pablo casually.
“Well, all this mountain of goods will fall right on our heads. And we will be buried alive under tons of dry fish and God-only-knows-what!”
“I pray to St. Christopher and the Virgin Mary to help us. I can’t end my first adventure in Asia buried by heaps of dry fish! It’s gross!”
“Don’t worry, this wreck doesn’t even have brakes,” laughed Rico.
After another hour, the driver parked in front of an open-air restaurant in the middle of nowhere and everybody resuscitated again.
“Oh, the lady with the baby just smiled at me,” said Rico.
“Of course she did. You keep on staring at her with that stoned, silly face. She’s either amused, or scared!”
“Do you think you look any better, bozo?”
“Definitely, yes. I see a shop selling drinks. Shall we go for a couple of warm Myanma Beer?”
The place looked like a typical countryside restaurant, no walls, a dozen tables under a tin roof and an attached kitchen. The driver, served first, promptly started wolfing on rice and an assortment of oily curries. Pablo looked at the dishes on the tables, looking skeptical. Rico knew he still hadn’t overcome the natural repulsion for Asian foods ingrained in every European on his first trip to the East.
Sitting at a table a bit detached from everybody, Rico and Pablo quietly sipped their warm beers and swallowed another piece of the Cookie.
“Have you noticed how the Burmese assume the shape of the bags under them and quickly fall asleep? How do they do it?” asked Pablo.
“I don’t know. Thais are the same. They sleep on each other’s shoulder and are not bothered by it. I think they’re a bit like kids: half an hour in a car and they fall asleep. And, like kids, often they suffer travel sickness and vomit throughout the trip. Either someone vomits on you, or puts his big, heavy head on your shoulder.”
“Well, if the beautiful mother would like to rest on my shoulder, I wouldn’t object. Unfortunately the person sitting next to me is that skinny man over there, do you see him? He keeps on chewing and spitting that shit...and maybe he has louses, too…” said Pablo pensive.
“C’mon, now you sound like a British colonialist. We’re all brothers on this planet, isn’t that true?” said Rico only half- joking.
After twenty minutes the driver honked three times and everybody rushed aboard. But after one hour of uneventful journey, it stopped again.
“What? Another breakdown?” asked Pablo, raising himself from his twisted sleeping posture.
“I don’t think so. It looks like a check-point,” said Rico, leaning out of his window.
Everybody went down at once. Inside a small sentry post, identical to the ones at every railway level crossing, stood a bored-looking officer in a blue uniform.
“You! Passport! You! You! Passport!” shouted the conductor, so agitated to seem almost aggressive. Pablo stared at him blankly.
“What do you think? Shall we trust him with our passports?”
“Sure, let him do his job. He’ll give us the passports later on, after all the check-points. Probably the Police register the movements of the people inside the country. This is the only road, with the only bus, so it’s a normal procedure,” reassured him Rico.
“Why checking? What do they fear?”
“Everything and everybody. All dictatorships are the same. Full of check-points, spies, paranoia. We see only a tiny portion of what these people are forced to endure. Remember that we had to take this road because the other two are forbidden to foreigners? And why is it so? Because they don’t want us to see those poor bastards that break stones with hammers and pierce mountains to make new roads. Those are not convicts on hard-labour, but poor farmers and normal citizens recruited against their will and forced to work for months like slaves, with no pay, no explanation, nothing. Slavery here is not a thing of the past. Lovely country, isn’t it?”
The policeman was checking a pile of IDs, scribbling everybody’s name meticulously on a large, old fashioned register. Raising his eyes, he met Pablo’s smile and went back to his job, without showing any sign of acknowledgement.
“He didn’t give a shit about you, eh?” hissed Rico, who disliked uniforms since he was a teenager.
“Never mind! I’m a friendly guy, with everybody. Even with the cops. But did you notice his face? Surely he must have had smallpox. Don’t they have vaccines here? They’re stuck in the Eighteenth century, for God’s sake!”
“Then why don’t you volunteer? A good foreign doctor is always useful.”
“I’m a male nurse, not a doctor. You still haven’t grasped the difference, have you?”
Half an hour later, the conductor started to call out loudly all the passengers’ names.
“Chu U Saw…Cho Cho U…Min Tan Shoe…”
The called stepped forward, picked up their ID and climbed back to the bus, like robots. Rico and Pablo were the last two to be called and climbed up their rear window when the bus was already moving.
“That cop alone, in the middle of nowhere, isolated in that post…wicked! We haven’t seen a village, or a town, in hours. There was nothing, apart from the night itself. I wonder how these mountains look during the day,” said Pablo.
“Maybe the government prefers we travel at night, to hide its military posts,” suggested Rico, going back to his favourite resting position.
For another hour they remained silent. Pablo managed to sleep, resting his head on his neighbour’s arm. Rico stayed awake, following the chain of his own thoughts and emotions. He loved the feeling of being on a night bus, utterly unreachable and un-contactable, where nobody knew where he was. He loved to go to places so far away that the journey itself would change its nature, from a mere movement in space to a leap in time. How many journeys like that he had in his life? And each one had been different and he had discovered something new about himself. He was sure that experience would help Pablo, too. He was his truest friend, perhaps the only one who could still read him as an open book, even after so many years. Pablo had married young, had raised a family and had withstood all that he had rejected: a daily routine, the narrow-mindedness of the people in town, the lack of an exciting lifestyle. Pablo had been fighting for all those years against everything he himself had simply avoided. When Pablo started at the hospital, emptying piss-pots, wiping geriatrics’ asses and at the same time studying at the university, sleeping four hours per night, he gallivanted for six months a year around Thailand, living out his fantasies. And in the past ten years he had settled in Bangkok, trying to attain that financial stability all his friends, Pablo included, had reached already many years before. When Rico longed for an office job, a good girlfriend and some money in his bank account, things hadn’t happened as quickly as he had wished. Those had been very tough years, without joy, that nobody knew much about. He had taken odd jobs and been involved in shady businesses. He had had highs and lows, but the lows were very low and he was alone. He had experienced life as a poor Asian, in a country torn by a financial crisis where nobody smiled the famous Thai smile anymore. But he had managed to come out of the tunnel stronger and financially well-off, at least by Asian standards. He had laughed last. Now he had a good career, climbing fast up the corporate ladder. And they were together again now, to compare their own lives. Pablo was there seeking answers; and Rico knew he would analyze, test, debate and criticize his answers, his beliefs and his lifestyle, as that had always been the character of their friendship.
“Oh, Rico, how are you? Are you asleep?” whispered Pablo.
“No, I’m immersed in my hallucinations. What about you?”
“I can’t feel my right leg. But apart from that, I’m OK.”
“You must suffer, you sissy. You wanted the adventure, eh? Then enjoy the trip and shut up!” joked Rico.
“I’ve never been so uncomfortable and for so long in all my life.”
“What a perfectly appropriate definition for this trip. I congratulate you on your verbal skills.”
“Shit. I don’t know where to put this leg,” said Pablo, wiggling like a spastic.
“Try one on the bag and one bended, like when you do stretching.”
“Now I’ll try to, oops! Sorry! Sorry! Rico, I just elbowed the guy on the head. Do you think is he going to be angry?”
“No, don’t worry. Just smile at him and he’ll be happy. Shall we have another bite of the Cookie?”
The bus stopped almost regularly for about one hour every forty minutes, to be fixed in the usual rudimental manner. The same scenario repeated itself throughout the night. Horrible clanks erupted from the bus belly. The driver cursed, stopped the engine and popped a new betel ball in his mouth, and the conductor jumped out with a screwdriver in his hand. But all the stops made the trip almost tolerable, one hour of internal suffering matched by one hour of open-air frolicking wasn’t a bad bargain, considering that nobody was in any hurry to reach the destination. Pablo rolled his cigarettes silently, showing an unexpected resistance to fatigue, while Rico became progressively too groggy and sleepy to walk around as usual. At about three, at the seventh stop, he laid his blanket on the grass by the side of the road and fell asleep, hobo-style. Pablo’s laughter, mixed with comments from the amused locals, didn’t bother him. At four forty-seven the bus stopped at yet another check-point, this time manned by soldiers. Everybody ambled around looking like shit. Rico and Pablo didn’t look any better, with dirty, greasy hair, tense faces and crusty, swollen eyes. While the ritual of the documents checking was slowly being performed, Rico went to lay his blanket in a quiet spot. An elderly man advised him not to do it, looking at him with a very serious face and uttering only three words, “Army. No good.”
“He said it’s better not to show the soldiers how fucked–up you are, eh?” laughed Pablo, who never missed anything. “You’re always a bad example, even here.”
“Maybe they want to see us all there, in front of the lights. All Burmese are on display there, then I’m going to sleep in front of the soldiers, too. Sleeping is not a crime, especially after eleven hours of this shit,” stated Rico, without bothering to cover his evident bad mood. He laid the blanket on the thin asphalt, rested his head against the front wheel of the bus and fell unconscious immediately, as if he’d been hit on the head. Pablo was about to take a picture, but a pretty agitated passenger, gesticulating wildly, pleaded with him not to. It seemed that the locals lived in fear of the army and to have two unpredictable foreigners messing around made them even more tense. Pablo didn’t know, but ten years before Rico had been caught in a black zone, an area not yet opened to tourists, while travelling with a group of students also going to the sacred Kyatkyo Pagoda. The plain-clothed cop had threatened to arrest the students, not Rico, should he have had any idea of not following his orders. The unwritten, vile policy was that for every mistake made by a foreigner, a local culprit had to be found and punished.
“Rico! Rico! Are you sleeping?”
“What the fuck do you want?” barked Rico, opening one blood-shot eye and throwing him an evil look.
“Fold the blanket. We’re done. You know? Everybody came to have a look and a laugh at you, even the soldiers.”
“I don’t give a rusty fuck.”
And the journey continued. Shortly before sunrise, when the coolness of the night had become cold and the sky was almost imperceptibly changing tone to the East, passing from pitch-black to navy blue, the bus slowed down and stopped one more time. Oddly, nobody got off, but the conductor ordered them to follow him. Pablo was suddenly alarmed.
“Rico, the guy is talking to us. Rico! Wake up! Do something! What is he saying?”
Rico groaned, visibly pissed off. His offish behavior in such situations was completely unconceivable for Pablo.
“They want to make sure we’re not journalists or spies. Let’s go to have a look. Let me do the talking.”
He jumped out of his window like a cat, landed badly and slightly limping went to see what the fuss was all about.
The officer spoke excellent English and showed equally good manners. He asked the usual questions and Rico answered politely, while Pablo kept smiling. After studying the passports for a while, he wished them a pleasant trip, without the slightest trace of irony.
“Checked by the cops, like in the good old times, eh? Even here in Myanmar,” mumbled Rico climbing back in through his window.
“Yeah, because you always look like a junkie. Same old story. You should look at yourself in a mirror right now, my friend,” teased Pablo.
“I’m beautiful inside.”
At first light the temperature went up a few degrees and Rico got rid of his blanket. The night was finally over and, with it, the worse part of the trip. The officer had said that they would arrive at Taunggok at about nine o’clock. From there, supposedly it was about another three hours to reach Ngapali on another bus.
Pablo observed the landscape. They had crossed the mountain ridge known as Rakhaing at some point during the night and now they were descending, travelling over hills covered by a thick jungle and probably uninhabited. Just a few meters from the side of the road grew an impenetrable, tangled, natural barrier made of thorny bushes, plants of all sorts and shapes, both alive and rotting, and occasional tall trees, all embraced by a layer of ivies. He looked at Rico. In the morning light, he looked ten years older.
“Rico, you really look in bad shape.”
“Really? In truth, I feel like shit. “
“Tough night, eh, old man?”
“Tough indeed. But the nightmare is over. We’re in Rakhaing now. I can’t wait to see the ocean. As soon as we arrive in Ngapali, I want to wash out the grime of this trip with a good swim. By the way, do you smell something like burnt rubber?”
“Yes. I think it’s coming from the brakes, overheating.”
“No. It’s the wheel, this one, beneath my seat. I think that sometimes it touches the guard…hence the friction and the smell. It’s too loaded on the rear, that’s why.” said Rico, taking out its Cambodian krama and wrapping it around his face. The acrid smell of burnt rubber was becoming intolerable.
“If he keeps on going like this, we’ll have to stop again, this time to change the wheel. Do you think they have a spare one?” asked Pablo.
“I think so. Anyway, I was thinking about something last night. Care to know my thoughts?”
“Sure. Let me know your nocturnal philosophies. Finally the guru speaks.”
“First of all, fuck all the gurus! Anyway, here it is. In this journey, each and every stop has been just normal, scheduled even, not something unpredictable that has happened many times, as we may think. Every time this little green bus goes to Rakhaing, it’ll stop eight or nine times. It’s a basic component of the trip itself. The same break-downs appear regularly, at every hour or so, and get fixed for the next sixty minutes afterwards. By repeating the process, the guys manage to push this wreck to its destination. I’d say this is the main difference between a journey and an adventure. One is a…”
The bus tensed and soon snapped, as if something had hooked it on the back. At the following curve to the left, it jerked again. Rico and Pablo remained speechless. Rico understood first. The right rear wheel, just under his bum, was acting as a rubber brake, blocking the entire bus once it steered to the left. After a second, there was a sharp, cracking noise and in horror he realized he was staring at the wheel, still attached to its semi-axe, rolling fast towards the bushes.
“Pablo! We’ve lost the wheel! Look!”
Pablo saw the very last second of the drama. The wheel jumped a few times on the grass, parallel to the bus, and plunged into the thick jungle, down the hill. The bus continued without even slowing down; then it gently began to bend down on Rico’s side.
“Shit! We are going to overturn!” Rico pushed himself towards Pablo, who grabbed him tightly. They looked at each other, wide-eyed and embraced like two lovers, waiting for the fall. A loud screeching, clanking noise exploded in the air in unison with the screams of some passengers. Clawing the asphalt for a few meters, the bus quickly slowed down and got stuck, dangerously inclined on its right side. The mountain of goods towering above Rico and Pablo’s heads swayed perilously a few times, but remained in place.
“Rico! We’ve lost the wheel! Fuck, this is absurd! The whole trip is a fucking absurdity ah ah ah!” laughed Pablo hysterically.
“Let’s get out of here!” Rico jumped out of the window to be the first to assess the damage. The axe was truncated in the middle and was bleeding a smelly, blackish oil. Rico and Pablo laughed loudly, mocking the incident as it often happens after a big fright, surrounded by the puzzled passengers.
“Not only did the idiot managed to lose a wheel, which is already an impressive result, but it went down the fucking mountain! Ah ah ah! And now he’s gonna go after it in the bushes! Ah ah ah! What a dumb-ass!”
“Now I want to see how he’ll fix that! With a screwdriver and a rubber band?”
That trip had been an absurdity from the very beginning. And the loss of a wheel was the icing on the cake.
“Nobody will believe me when I tell this story, that’s for sure. Losing a wheel,” said Pablo, calming down.
“Sometimes reality beats imagination. Let’s take a picture of this great travelling moment.”
“I think I’ll have to mention this accident to your mother and tell her how you really like to travel, and the kind of buses you select. Actually, she had warned me about going on an adventure trip with you. She said I should keep an eye on you.”
“You wanted an adventure trip, didn’t you? Is this adventurous enough?” asked Rico, shooting pictures.
“In all your journeys, did something like this ever happen?”
“No, but I’ve had worse accidents than this. Anyway, you’ll have a great story for Marian, whom I promised I would bring you back home safe and all in one piece. And, as usual, we’ve been lucky,” concluded Rico, now in a jovial mood. The accident had completely swept away all their fatigue, pumping their veins with adrenaline.
“By the way, what do we do now? Any idea where we are?”
“Not too far from Taunggok, I’d say.”
“Right, and how do we get there?”
“Like everybody else. We walk! See? Even the beautiful mommy with the kid is walking down the hill. I think it’s pretty normal here!”
“Yeah! Considering they are barefooted, too,” observed Pablo.
He climbed in the window, with greater difficulty now that there was no wheel to support his foot. With extreme care, he managed to recover both backpacks from beneath the goods behind their seats and to pass them out to Rico. And they followed the flow of stranded passengers, walking down the road.
“Do you know, Rico? I can’t understand why, but it has been so long since I felt like this. I don’t know, I just feel so free, so light-hearted. I don’t understand it. I should be worrying, shouldn’t I? I mean we’ve just escaped an accident that could have been much worse and we’re on foot on a deserted road in the middle of Rakhaing, many kilometers away from our destination. And I feel happy, serene. But why?”
“Because now you really are free. Free from your usual self. Free from your false sense of security. Western society guarantees a certain degree of safety, stability and normalcy in life, right? You belong to your society and you have its rules inside you. But in this country, the structure of beliefs that has been inculcated in you has now collapsed, due to the accident, so now you can see how futile and useless it was. Now you’re light. There is only you, here, and nothing else matters. I’m sure that for someone else, such a loss of orientation, of security, would be a great distress. A shock, actually. But not everyone reacts in the same way. For you it’s a blessing, because you got rid of that mental garbage that here not only is useless, but also harmful, as it disconnects you from the local reality. Now you are nearer to your true self and more aware of the world around you. And thus more inclined to accept it for what it simply is. Buddhists reach this stage through meditation and by rightful thinking, but an accident or a moment of mental clarity, when you start asking yourself some important questions, serve the same purpose,” answered Rico, unexpectedly loquacious.
“Interesting point. I started to ask myself such questions a couple of years ago. And now I’m here to find the answers,” continued Pablo.
“I know. But don’t be in a hurry. Everything will come at the right time. Meanwhile, ponder on this. We’re walking on a country road, you and I, two good old friends finally reunited after so many years. The sun is finally warming our bones and the hallucinations of last night are over. I’m smelling scents of forest and tropical flowers. We’re in good health. We’re at the beginning of a trip, already legendary after the loss of the wheel. What else could you ask for? Is there anything you can do to change the situation? No. So focus on enjoying these moments, because they won’t be back again. Carpe diem. Don’t think of what could have happened, don’t think how to get out of here, or how to reach Ngapali. This is the journey. Enjoy it. Be happy now, because now, this precise moment, is the only thing you can control and understand. So live it at its best.”
“Finally you come up with interesting answers.”
“Give me time. We will have plenty of time to discuss your questions on Ngapali’s beach, if we ever reach it. And if we won’t, who gives a shit, anyway?” concluded Rico with a laugh.
About half an hour later an old truck appeared from behind, slowing down with a loud screeching noise. The driver shouted something and Rico, without wasting a second, jumped on the back, followed suit by Pablo. He noticed a familiar face smiling at him. The beautiful mother he had erotically fantasized about in his hallucinated drowsiness was already there too, picked-up along the way with many other familiar faces.
“Ah! Look who’s here! The cute mommy! And she’s smiling at you, too. What a pity you look like a hobo,” joked Pablo.
“Do I really look that bad? Shit, give me a mirror and a comb.”
“Ah ah ah! She’s not interested in you, mate. And now that we’re on the road again, what about a magic biscuit, to celebrate our narrow escape?” offered Pablo.