Ok, so here's the bus trip from hell. We started off in Bagan and got a minibus to Magway in Burma's central west en route to Sittwe on the Bay of Bengal. That was four hours of discomfort, but nothing compared to what followed.
In Magway, Western tourists are a rare species and the locals reacted accordingly- laughing at us, trying to be helpful, touting for our business, etc. We had to wait there for a further three hours before our 'luxury sleeper bus' arrived, also presumably from Magway. So we ate curries and drank the marvelous local stout (8.1%) called Black Shield.
Then the shit started.
We'd no sooner gotten on the bus and started moving when the driver suddenly stopped and he and a small group of other blokes crawled underneath it and emerged with some kind of sealed, cylindrical engine part. They then dissected it and replaced the O-ring on the disc of a large plunger. By the look of the part, and the red auto-transmission fluid which drained from it, I guessed either it was the power-steering or the brake booster unit. It was concerning, but I wasn't freaking out... not yet.
By the time they'd got it back together and re-installed, we were running three hours late.
About an hour and a half up the road, this time at a remote restaurant/beer station in the dead of night, we stopped again. Again the driver and his crew removed the same part and proceeded to operate. My mate, Paul and I couldn't sleep for anxiety and frustration, so we watched the repair this time, and drank cups of the crappy '3-in-one' coffee powder mixed with lukewarm water. Another two hours elapsed before the booster unit was reinstalled.
Then one of the 'mechanics' proceeded to wrap himself around the rear wheels and bark instructions at the driver to activate and release the brakes. So now we knew. We’d definitely had a problem with the braking system- they were bleeding the brakes- in the dark. Great.
The driver then did a quick series of brake tests, backward and forward, jamming the brakes on and throwing the passengers around inside. If they weren't awake, they sure were now.
Finally, at about 2.30am, we were back on the road. Paul and I couldn't sleep for fear for our lives. And, with good reason. Within 30 minutes we were crossing a mountain range that divides central Burma from its west coast. The single-lane road was treacherous; steep climbs were followed by precipitous drops into mulitiple hair-pin bends. At numerous points, the road was either still under construction or under repair. Evidence of landslides from the previous wet season was abundant. Two vehicles couldn't pass, so one had to give way to the other, or back up out of the way. It took six hours to emerge from the tallest ridges onto a relatively gentler series of foothills, and a further five hours to descend to the flatlands on the other side of the range. I remember then thinking that the bus driver must be totally fucking exhausted.
Aside from a mildly amusing war being waged between Paul and the boxes of goods badly stacked up at the rear of the bus which kept falling on his head, we thought we'd survived the worst of it. I lapsed into a light sleep. Then suddenly the unmistakeable sound of a road accident and the bus halted abruptly. I was fully awake now. people were yelling and standing up, a little panic ensued as passengers realized that the front door had been stoved in by the impact, and the only egress was through the side windows.
We threw our luggage out first to locals who had quickly gathered at the site, then clumsily alighted on the ground, six feet below.
Only then did it it become clear what had happened. We had collided with another bus coming from the opposite direction, and then had veered to the right, slamming into the corner of a bridge guardrail. Had it not been there, we would have then plunged five meters into a trickling creek.
Local villagers swarmed the scene and helped everyone disembark from both buses. Miraculously, there were no injuries- on either bus. I started taking photos and thought originally the other bus was at fault. But then I saw the skid marks from the other bus. There were none from ours. It appears as though our bus driver had either A: fallen asleep at the wheel, or B: had hit the brakes, which then failed, possibly due to the original fault which he'd tried to fix for a total of five hours.
The pictures in the documentary and street section tell the story, anyways.
The drama hadn't quite finished yet. The buses weren't going anywhere, and had blocked the road. The cops eventually arrived and forbade anyone from leaving the 'crime scene'. We had to present our passports before we were allowed to make arrangemnets to continue our journey. We had thoughts of staying the night in the village. Eventually, we were released and hired a 3-wheeled tuk-tuk to Mrauk U, the site of an ancient city and the next nearest town. Mrauk U was 40km down the road, but about 20 minutes into the journey, we passed another accident. Two villagers on a motorbike had collided with another tuk-tuk. Both were face down on the roadside, the man was motionless, unconscious or perhaps dead, the woman with her longyi hoiked up over her waist, exposing her bare backside was at least breathing. I wanted to cover her up- there was no dignity here.
We sped past, and I felt guilt at not demanding that the driver stop and let us render assistance. There were others already at the scene, and what could I do anyways. Haaaiiizz. It made me reflect on the trivial nature of existence, the cheapness of life, and all of that. Haaaizzz.
We got into Mrauk U at dusk and did the usual running around looking for a suitable guesthouse. We found a primitive $10/night affair, but it could have been The Park Hyatt. It felt so good to be horizontal, alive, and asleep.
The next day we took a private riverboat from Mrauk U to Sittwe, where we discovered that we had risked our lives to visit a nondescript backwater, with nothing to commend it as a tourist destination. But it was the most relaxed we'd felt on the whole journey.
