vaga #3/6 On Wheels

Part VI

NOTHING is logical, the distance is in Fur, of course, you are an outcast if you don’t understand the language. It shows once again how isolated they are from the rest of the world. 

When I went out onto the street as I arrived in Mandalay, the day of the Water Festival, I realised that they drive like us in the sense that they use the same side of the road as us, but the steering wheel is on the other side, like the English, NEVER EVER SEEN THIS BEFORE and I doubt that other countries have anything like this. Please, if someone knows anywhere in the world that does this, please let me know, the steering wheel is on the wrong side of the car. But then I saw buses ..... some had the steering wheels like us and others NOPE  !!.  I clarify this madness because not all of them have the Steering on the same side. How do they manage?… ..  as fluidly as they go from fur to miles and kilometres, for them, it is not an issue. They are more versatile than any other culture that I have come across...? ... 

SURREAL COUNTRY

I did not intend to post these because it was my impression and I did not think about the Blog, If I had, it would have been more specific.

After two weeks I bought a bus ticket from Kalaw to Inle Lake, a short trip, but they left me at a junction and not at the place I was supposed to be dropped off at. I had to take a taxi to get to the town for which I had bought the ticket and paid in full. A young French couple also got off the bus, with the same surprise, ........ they were annoyed ... getting angry? ...  the occupational hazards of travel  ... hahaha... I proposed sharing a taxi with them, the trip was about 15 kilometres, and it cost more than the bus ticket to get to the junction …. OK… .. they agreed and I had to sit in the front seat with the driver……… .. here comes the point of this story…… ...  I had to make a drawing because it is difficult for me to explain the situation in words…

All the driver did was to navigate around trucks without having any visibility of the oncoming traffic, he had to drive on the opposite side of the road and he seemed to guess if he could overtake the trucks in front of him……… .....… ..but I'm there next to him, facing the oncoming traffic..... HE COULDN’T SEE ANYTHING ...... I started yelling if there was oncoming traffic, .......... Insanity........... How many deaths are there from such a driving system? ……… ..Never again will I sit in the passenger seat next to the driver, I will sit behind the driver in future ... THIS IS A travel TIP because it is a life or death situation when you travel in Myanmar.

Some curiosities of the routes .......

BUS STOPS: Some are empty and the others have passengers waiting for the bus, .... hahaha...

GASOLINE FOR MOTORCYCLES: every 50 meters there is a plastic bottle filled with Gasoline and a funnel ........ I could not take a picture of it on the spot, but the idea is clear, I saw this in Mandalay especially.

I end off with this photo of public transport and as I have already said there is always a pagoda in the background. Mandalay 2018