travel diary — day 310

In buddhism, travel on 3 February 2010 tagged airport, amapura, bangkok, battery pack, beer, blanket, boat, breakfast, bridge, burma, bus, bus ticket, camera, coffee, cold, customs, dhl, dinner, drunk, flight, hammock, horse cart, hotel, ice cream book, india, indian embassy, koreans, longyes, mandalay, market, monks, myanmar, new years day, new years eve, noodles, passport photos, razors, shampoo, soap, sunglasses, sunset, taxi, temple, thailand, tshirt, u myo aung, ubein bridge, visa, yangon with no comments

day 306 — new years eve — the day began with break­fast and chess online, after which i checked out and headed to the air­port. i flew to burma and met some other tour­ists (two koreans and a swiss guy) and we all agreed to share a taxi to town. i had a few errands to run, so after check­ing into the hotel, i called dhl (to find out about my camera’s bat­tery pack) and vis­ited the indian embassy to check on visa times and pro­ced­ures. on the way back to my hotel, i got 24 pass­port pho­tos for $1.50. sweet!!

story: cus­toms and the bat­tery pack.

dur­ing my first trip to burma, i dropped my cam­era on some con­crete and cracked the cam­era hous­ing. as a res­ult, the bat­tery com­part­ment sits loosely and the bat­tery doesn’t always con­nect. the cam­era is out of war­ranty and i don’t think there are many options for get­ting it fixed. hon­estly, i’m prob­ably going to have to replace the cam­era. i don’t want to spend that much money, so i came up with a solu­tion: use my bat­tery pack.

it was a simple, good idea. i emailed my friend in korea who is hold­ing some gear for me. he agreed to send the bat­tery pack via dhl to burma, where i could pick it up. a mutual friend in burma would receive the pack, hold it for me, and i could col­lect it upon my arrival.

and thus, a prob­lem arose. the bat­tery pack was val­ued at $60 (actu­ally it’s worth $150, but that’s irrel­ev­ant). burma’s cus­toms (ie gov­ern­ment) said that any item over $50 requires an import licence. this ridicu­lous rule is accom­pan­ied by the rule that any items that aren’t per­mit­ted will be auto­mat­ic­ally con­fis­cated, rather than being returned to sender, in accord­ance with inter­na­tional laws … i guess when your gov­ern­ment is a dic­tat­or­ship and you’re under eco­nomic sanc­tions, you don’t really have to care about any­thing else.

after a lot of wrangling, arguing, cajol­ing, talk­ing, email­ing and beg­ging, dhl agreed to try and help me get the bat­tery case. i was blam­ing dhl for the prob­lem (since they didn’t warn us that this would hap­pen) and even­tu­ally they got me to fill out some forms, which they took to cus­toms. they con­vinced cus­toms to release the bat­tery pack and i col­lec­ted it (after pay­ing $12 for “fees”).

i was glad to get the bat­tery pack, but really annoyed at how this could happen.

that even­ing i had din­ner with u myo aung, the friend who’d been try­ing to help me col­lect the bat­tery pack. i had also agreed to meet the koreans for beers on the bal­cony (to cel­eb­rate new years). how­ever, i fell asleep and missed new years in burma. damnit!

day 307 — new years day - i went to the indian embassy and sub­mit­ted my visa applic­a­tion. then i faxed the doc­u­ments required by dhl. i walked around town, had some ice cream and returned to my hotel. i bought a bus ticket to man­dalay, then spent a few hours drink­ing beer on the bal­cony, lying in a ham­mock, read­ing my zusak book.

later, i walked around the mar­kets and bought a pair of cheap sunglasses. i had noodles and sugar cane juce for din­ner. when i got back to the hotel, dhl called and told me that cus­toms had released my package.

day 308 — i had a big break­fast and walked to the dhl office to pick up my bat­tery pack. i walked around the flight agen­cies to fig­ure out an itin­er­ary for get­ting to india. i also went to the train sta­tion to get prices for trains from mandalay.

i packed, checked out, and got a taxi to the bus sta­tion (which is a long way out of town, for some stu­pid reason). i had din­ner, chat­ted with the loc­als (who rarely see for­eign­ers) and got the bus to mandalay.

the trip was really uncom­fort­able. it’s the middle of winter and they insisted on using the air con­di­tion­ing on the bus … at full blast. the music and shitty burmese dra­mas were also play­ing at full blast on the tv. i was freez­ing cold and at a break stop i con­vinced the driver to turn off the a/c.

day 309 — the bus was still cold and i man­aged to bor­row a blanket. i finally got some sleep and arrived in man­dalay early in the morn­ing. i got on the back of a bike for the cold trip into town, found my hotel, checked in, curled up in the warm blankets and got some more sleep.

i must have been tired, and i know i was on the verge of get­ting sick, since i slept all day. i had a hot shower and returned to bed, sleep­ing all night.

day 310 — i woke up feel­ing good. i had break­fast and walked around the early morn­ing mar­ket. i bought two longyes and a long sleeved shirt. i had some cof­fee and went to the train sta­tion to inquire about tick­ets. it turns out that i can only by tick­ets one day in advance, so i had to return later.

i bought some razors, soap, sham­poo and organ­ised a ride to amapura (ubein bridge). arriv­ing at amapura i hired a boat, walked across the bridge, checked out the little temple on the other side, and hit the water to get my sun­set shots. the sun­set was awe­some and i got a bundle of good photos.

after dusk i returned to the banks of the lake and bought a tshirt. i also dis­covered that my driver was drunk and didn’t want to return to man­dalay. i paid him less than agreed, but still enough to keep him sat­is­fied. i got on a horse cart to the main road and rode in a pick up truck to town. it was a long ride and i was a little annoyed at my driver. but i wasn’t too bothered, and return­ing to town i had a beer with din­ner, then went to bed.

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