Dalama Adventures Tale of two corporate types ditching their jobs and traveling the world for 14 months... check out all photos, blogs & interesting tid bits at http://www.dalama.net

As if we haven't had enough torturous bus rides here, we again opted to put ourselves through it again.

15 hours, no A/C, windows that don't  open, and a busload of betel-nut spitting zealots... Yep, our last bus ride in Myanmar, from Bagan to Yangon was just as pleasurable as we had anticipated.  While at least our seats reclined on this trip, the seats themselves were two-thirds the width of normal passenger seats - and they reduced the seat size so they could fit an extra aisle of narrow seats down the middle walk way of the bus, to cram in more people.  Forget emergency exits or evacuation routes; with the aisles packed full of passengers on fold out make-shift seats, and the bus windows sealed shut, unopenable - one accident and we're all finished.  Not to mention one hour into the ride the driver decides to conserve energy and turn off the already weak A/C.  For 15 hours we sat drenched in our sweat, wedged into too small seats, our arms and legs feeling prickly and falling numb in discomfort.  There were only two break stops during the entire trip.  Thank God we didn't drink too much water.  At the 2:00 am pit stop, I wanted to just hang on the bus and sleep, but the driver, who was now sweeping the floor with his hands, told me I needed to get off.  So groggy, at the roadside tea shop, we splurged on a couple of mangoes for a whole 50 cents.  We got a huge bowl full of juicy, diced up mango; more than one could ever eat by themselves.  It was the perfect pit stop snack, and now I have the perfect analogy to describe how our skin feels on this bus trip... If we rubbed all the mango over our skin, and let it set, all sticky, for the remainder of the 15 hours, with dirt and grime quickly adhering to the sticky mango covering on our bodies - that pretty accurately describes how gross and grimy we're feeling at this point.  This bus also had the full on entertainment music and comedy videos going the entire time at top volume, all in Burmese.  They were teen Burmese-Idol type music videos, and after the first hour, we had had enough, but there were no headsets to turn off, just old rusty speakers blasting at top volume above the seats.  The only redeeming factor about this bus ride was that it got in on time.  We arrive back to the massive Yangon bus depot at 6:30 am, where we were hounded by taxi drivers vying for our business, none willing to negotiate their over-inflated rates down to the 5,000 kyat we had paid two weeks ago to get us from the guest house to the bus depot.  As we had already paid double the cost for our bus tickets (they claimed petrol cost had increased in two weeks, and charged us double), we had only saved 5,000 kyat for the ride.  We needed to manage down our kyat, or get stuck with currency that would not be useable or exchangeable.  So finally a driver agreed to take us, if we shared the taxi with another person.  One more person ended up being two more, and before we new it, we had just subsidized the ride into town for the drivers buddies.  In the bigger scheme of things, it was only $5 USD, and this driver needed his fix of betel-nut.  Who were we to deny him of a price that would pay for the cost of the drive, plus feed his addictive habit.  So off we sped through all parts of town, dropping off his friends and their cargo.  An hour later we were finally at the guest house, paid our $15 for the night in crisp USD bills, and caught some long, overdue sleep in a pleasant air conditioned room.