Lashio, Myanmar

4am at Mandalay station. I feel exhausted. The first-class carriage has covers on the wooden benches! This was to be my home for the next 18 hours (320km), but at least I have a whole bench to myself. The train is quite empty, there's no other tourists here. As soon as the train whistles out of the station I curl up on the bench and grab three hours sleep. I'm woken up by hot beams of sunlight and general noise as the train pulls into a station. I get off the train and blunder about amongst the chaos looking for something to feed my western caffeine habit. There's school kids everywhere, laughing and running about. Food and drink sellers push away hungry dogs.

The long journey to school

One stop wasn't a station stop. I leaned out of the window to see what was happening and heard clunking and scraping noises. Shortly afterwards we started going backwards, and uphill. I noticed that we were leaving the other line we'd arrived on. Assuming this was a one-off I sat back down, but 10 minutes later we stopped, clunked and groaned and started going backwards (forwards), and again steep uphill. This zig-zag continued up the side of quite a large, steep hill! An hour later we plateaued and the view down the valley we'd climbed was magnificent! We continued on through countless villages with amazing names, dropping kids off as we went.

Me taking a picture of Chris taking a picture

My favourite station name, containing my favourite Burmese character

Monks and horse-cart taxis at Pyin Oo Lwin

The workhorse train - this thing is noisy

The train slowed right down to a crawl for ages. We were in a carved valley, barely wide enough for the train to fit through. Out of the window in the distance I could see two men down by the side of the tracks. As we got closer I could see that they were inspecting the tracks, as the train went over a ditch. I can only assume the old tracks were replaced and they were using us as a guinea pig! The train creaked and rocked safely over and the view opened up revealing an enormous gorge, spanned by the even more enormous Gokteik viaduct (the largest in the British empire when it was built in 1901). As we rounded the corner we passed a soldier (who refused to smile or wave) in a bunker, guarding the strategically important viaduct with a large fixed machine gun! The train once again slowed. Over the bridge everyone leaned out of the windows for a glimpse into the chasm! Far below is another track, possibly the old line before the viaduct was build - or a secret military line to somewhere unknown :)

Crossing a huge canyon

Zzz

Cutting through the bushes

We past many villages and got further and further east. The train was now cutting through jungle, if no train were to come I'm sure the tracks would be covered in weeks. Most of the foliage was coming into the car and landing at my feet. The train was also now rocking and jumping a LOT. At times you could leave your seat or get thrown into the wall - a couple of times I was convinced the train had left the track! We cruised into Lashio at 10pm and a tuk-tuk driver took us to Thi Da Aye (Cool water). The room was dirt cheap at $5 each. It was a tiny, dim room, in the basement of a posh business hotel. It was right next to a squat toilet! Completely tired we took the room and crashed.

Next day we wanted to hire motorbikes. Asking around it was clear that there was no tourist rental places (or indeed tourists). We asked some locals but they were reluctant to lend us their bikes. We were told that we would attract a lot of attention on bikes, and we wouldn't be able to go far as there were military checkpoints to the east on the road to China. We bailed that idea and went for a walk instead. Possibly every person we passed said hello and wanted to talk, or just looked on like we were two aliens fresh from Mars! There's not exactly much in the way of tourist attractions in Lashio, and we  noticed a sign for an amusement park!  Entering the park kids scattered into groups and laugh-whispered about us. There's was a tiny pirate ship, a large statue (which we climbed), an amusement arcade with some seriously old games in and a roller-skating rink!! We popped on some boots and prepared to break our legs, or arms, or both. The local kids were highly amused and raced us, winning every time of course. My boots were so old and worn that the wheels each wanted to go different directions, which meant I did also! Battered and bruised and extremely sweaty we got talking to a local student called Wai Yan Moe Tain (English name: Terry), who wanted to practice English and show us around his town. That afternoon he took us to some of his favourite food haunts.

My second travel mascot, Woody, was abducted by a little girl from a wedding - I didn't have the heart to take it back from her, she liked him so much.

The girl on the left - Woodys new owner

Next day I woke early - Chris wasn't in bed. I went to reception to see if he was there and the receptionist said he'd come in the middle of the night and wanted a room with toilet, the only one they had was a $30 room and he took it! I went up to see him. He was violently sick in the night, and had spent hours in the small dirty squat toilet next to our room before deciding to get an en-suite! He was still feeling rough so I got him some water and salt-powders. He slept most of the day, checking out of the $30 room at the last minute - any longer and he would've been charged another night. 

Conqueror

English name "Terry"

Lasho rollerskating park

Yan time Aung Pagoda