I've had the same pair of Tevas for over 5 years. They were holding up pretty well, but a crack had developed in the left sole. This seemed to be a manufacturing defect, everything else about them was fine, so I was thinking about sending them back to the factory to see if they could re-sole them. I was rather attached to these Tevas, they'd been just about everywhere I've been over the last 5 years, so there was a lot of good history attached to them. Alas these Tevas are now simply history.

The plan was to take the night bus across the mountains from the inland town of Pyay (or Pye, or Prome - whatever) to the coastal town of Taungok (or Taungup, or Tonggot, or Taungkok). We knew the road was somewhat notorious for being long and rough, the bible (the Lonely Planet Guide), was clear about this, and I'd seen travel reports posted on the internet suggesting flying to Thandwe if you wanted to get to Ngapali Beach, which is exactly where we were going. However flying is expensive, and well, maybe just not adventurous enough. We were willing to rough it and take the local bus to get over the mountain range, this would allow us to see more of the country and also meet more of the locals away from the major tourist areas.

I had the second row on the right to myself. This was a rarity, every other bus we rode on the entire month was packed solid with people in every seat, people sitting on little benches up the middle of the aisle, and people standing up at the front of the bus. There was a guy wearing a green US Air Force jacket in the row behind me, this jacket seems to be all the rage in Burma presently. He was very talkative, however he didn't speak a word of English. I temporarily learned the Burmese words for things like Toll Station, I remember it being something like Nanit Somethingoranother. I would say things back to him in English, sometimes totally random nonsensities, and he would respond in Burmese that was just as meaningless to me. Dick had the row behind him, and Werner had found a sack of rice on the other side of the bus just behind the middle exit door, which was more or less blocked by a spare tire and a 55 gallon drum. He was looking for a decent way to string up his hammock. Speaking of cargo, this bus may not have been packed with people (there were about 12 total, including the driver and his helper), but it was loaded to the gills with cargo. The entire rear of the bus was packed floor to ceiling with boxes, bags and crates. The middle aisle had a layer of boxes and bags, and more stuff had been packed under all the seats eliminating 95%+ of the footroom. Oh and the smell, the whole bus reeked of fish. I guess I was lucky, there was a wheelwell at my row, and next to it was almost a whole square foot of footroom where nothing had been packed. I utilized my space by putting my clothes pack up against the side of the bus as a cushion, and clipping my camera pack to the seat in front of me with a carabiner - who would have thought I could have unclipped it as fast as I did? I had stepped on something that looked like it was possibly a banana with my Tevas earlier in the day, so I had them separated from everything else in a plastic bag under the seat.

It took the bus forever to get out of the station and get going. There was immediately a really rough road leading out of town, with a ubiquitous toll station soon followed by a ubiquitous military checkpoint before we were allowed on the bridge over the Irrawaddy River. Once across the river it became apparent why this trip is so infamous. The road was rough, hilly and full of curves, and the ancient bus negotiated everything slowly. Dust began to fill the bus and I wrapped a t-shirt around my face. Within about a half hour we suddenly came to a stop. I was starting to doze off, and looked up to see the guy behind me shaking Dick and Werner. Dick says "What's going on?" I looked outside and could see a flickering orange glow illuminating the trees on the side of the road near the back of the bus, so I said "It looks like the bus is on fire." "WHAT?!?!?" In what seemed to be an instant a cloud of smoke billowed up from the rear of the bus towards the front along the ceiling. A stampede for the front door ensued. Good thing there was only 12 people aboard. Apparently Werner jumped over the obstructions blocking the side door, and then realizing that the bus really was on fire reached back in to grab his pack. I decided to join the rush of people out the front, and somehow managed to unclip my camera pack from the seat in front of me in about half a second flat, and grab that pack and my other clothes pack and rush for the door in like 3 seconds, managing not to trample anyone in front of me in the process. I was the second to the last person off the bus, and Dick was last, he managed to avoid the temptation of trampling me to get to the door a little quicker.

Once outside we moved quickly away from the bus. Werner pointed out that diesel doesn't explode, okay, but what about the 55 gallon drum? We moved back a little further. Before too long there was a little explosion, but it was just a tire. Then another. Then another. But never a big explosion. It looked like the driver and his helper almost managed to put the fire out by throwing sand into the engine compartment, but in the end it got away from them. Hey guys, you ever heard of these neat little inventions called fire extinguishers? Soon the entire bus was engulfed in flame. I felt compelled to take pictures. Who wouldn't? I got a couple nice shots of the increasingly large fire from the front, wandered around to the side as far off the road as I could get and took a couple more shots, then went back to where everyone was hanging out. The guy who'd been sitting behind me saw the camera and gestured for me to take his picture with the burning bus in the background. Then I took one last shot of Dick and Werner with the fire in the background, which was now starting to spread into the woods along the side of the road.

Werner tried convince Dick and me that we should start walking back to town. He felt it was only 5 or 6 miles, and we could get there in a couple hours. After all, he argued, no one was going to come and help us - this was Burma. I argued against the plan, I had this insane idea that someone would come and help us out at some point. We decided to wait for a little while, just to see what would happen.

Not too long afterwards, the guy who's picture I'd taken is addressing a small crowd of people. He gestures towards me, pantomines taking a photograph, and I catch the word "digital" mixed in with all the Burmese. Some of the people are starting to look at me with concern. I decide to walk away some distance and lay low. Maybe we should start walking back?

The fire department arrives! 2 ancient fire trucks come from the direction of Pyay and start dousing the fully-engulfed bus. The fire won't go out but it seems to be helping some. A small group of people run past the fire coming our direction. One points at me and yells "You! Come with me!" We move towards the small crowd from the bus and the guy points at Dick and Werner and yells "You! You! Come with me!" We are led by the still burning bus, trying to avoid the spray of water from the fire trucks, to another small group of people standing by mopeds. They have pea-green jackets on much like the US Air Force jacket that other guy was wearing. "This is Myanmar Police. Go with them," and we are pointed towards the mopeds, which are getting started. Cool, ride to town.

Riding on a moped with a heavy backpack is a bad thing. On some of the bigger potholes it was all I could do to hang on. I pictured myself falling off backwards and how I would start to roll, Must ... Hang ... On ... Then another paranoid thought enters my brain, "hey, what if they think we started this fire for some reason?" and I dwell on that for a few minutes. After a while the police officer shouts back to me "I'm a Buddhist" - well I guess he can't be all that bad then.

After what seemed like an eternity we arrive back at the military checkpoint at the bridge. The cops that gave us the rides all seem friendly and laugh about the circumstances. A rather stern officer in a brown uniform demands our passports and copies the information down into a book. "Did we lose any of our belongings?" "No. Oh wait, my Tevas! Yes, I lost my shoes" Werner lost his hiking shoes and a sweatshirt. A few more questions are asked, several phone calls are made, and then we are offered rides back to a guesthouse in town. A big commotion is made at the guest house but we escape after only a couple minutes demanding that we be allowed to go next door to the Pyay Star to drink beer.

This should be about the end of the story, unfortunately it was made to drag on a little more.

The next day we try once again to book a ticket to Taungok. The guesthouse calls the bus station and then informs us "no bus, we get you taxi." Well, the taxi wants $100 for a ride all the way to Ngapali Beach, about 150 miles. We find 2 other people that were looking to go there also but had been told "no bus." We check out the proposed taxi. It's a Datsun pickup truck from about 1970 with a canopy over the bed and bench seats, 4 bald tires and a bald spare. Yikes, no way. We ask around town until someone comes up with a $90 taxi that at least has half decent tires and only a slightly slashed spare. It's the best we can do so we take it. $18 each. A ride from hell. It's another 1970ish Datsun pickup, infinite miles, original suspension, wood benches in the back with no cushions, driven and crewed by a band of betel nut chewing locals - their few remaining teeth stained bright red by the betel nut juice. The ride is hot, dusty, bumpy, endless. It would have been cool country to travel through in a decent vehicle, was I ever wishing for my Toyota. We pass many buses, yeah right "no bus" my ass. We left at noon and arrived in Ngapali Beach at midnight. Ngapali Beach is paradise, just unbelievable, coconut palm beach, undeveloped, local villagers still fish right off the beach, and later dry their catches out on mats.

Now that's really where the story should have ended, However...

After Ngapali Beach we decide to go to Mrauk-U. It wasn't in the original plan but the bible talked it up as a very cool place to go. Bagan-like, but with hills and not quite so hot, dry and dusty. We decide to go for it, despite the travel challenges presented in getting there. We take an extremely crowded uhh, bus? large pickup truck with canopy? what do you call these things anyway? back to Taungok, and then decided to take the $9 three-day two-night boat to Sittwe rather than the $50 one-day fast boat (turns out it was actually $40). Once on this boat we migrate to the upper back deck where Dick and Werner can string up their hammocks between the rails. I'd been looking for a hammock at the markets for several days but couldn't find one. Immediately we start meeting people on the deck who want to meet the foreigners. One of them, Nye Nye, speaks pretty decent English and gets into a conversation with Dick about BSA motorcycles. Nye Nye is travelling with his uncle, a retired colonel, and try's to use his influence to get us a cheap cabin on the boat. This almost works, I looked at a cabin, agreed to take it, was ready to pay, when suddenly it's not available anymore. This left me a bit bitter. I ended up sleeping on a roll of carpet the first night, and then the cold steel deck the second night. Anyway, back to the story at hand, who should show up just before we pull out of port other than the guy from the bus whose picture I'd shot. With Nye Nye as translator, it turns out that this guy is a sergeant in the army. Great. I guess I should have known that a guy in a green imitation US Air Force jacket would be an army sergeant. When Nye Nye walks away this sergeant, who I started referring to as Sergeant Scary or Sergeant Strange, starts pantomiming me giving him my camera for the photos. I pretend not to understand. Then I try to tell him the camera broke. And 2 days later as we approach Sittwe and he starts going into this routine again (Nye Nye was gone by then) I hand him my address book and tell him to write down his address, I'll send photos. He starts to scribble something, then stops half way through and hands it back to me. I ignored him as best I could after this, and when we got to Sittwe I was one of the first off the boat. However, we got held up at Immigration since they had to copy our passport numbers down.

They know where you've been sleeping.
They know when you're awake.
They know when you've been bad or good
so be good for goodness sake....

From the Immigration hut I watched Sergeant Strange walk by, and he kind of glared at me but kept walking.

Later that evening, after eating, we returned to the guesthouse. In broken English the guesthouse person started talking about "our friend" stopping by and telling him the story about the burning bus and how he'd rescued Dick from the bus. We kind of looked at each other, then I ran upstairs to see if my stuff looked messed with. It wasn't, but I assumed the Sergeant had come to copy down our names and passport numbers. For the rest of the trip I was nervous about Customs confiscating my camera at the airport. Just to make sure I managed to keep some of the photos, including the ones they apparently would want the most, I managed to make a photo CD at a computer store, and sent this along with other people on our flight. As it turned out, nothing happened at the airport, but for the longest time I was left with this uncomfortable feeling. This was compounded in Mrauk-U by someone who suddenly showed up by our side talking pretty decent English asking us lots of questions. I asked what he did, he said he taught English. He also said he was part of the Loyalty Party. I said that sounded safe. We later referred to him as The Spy. He showed up the next day too.

Once we returned back to the beaten tourist path, the feeling of being watched subsided. The Myanmar government likes to have tourists come to their country and spend money in the 'regular' tourist areas, but they are touch leery about tourists who go off to the recently opened nether regions and start talking to the locals. The last thing in the world they want is bad press, which is why they were so quick to pick us up after the bus fire. Must Not Let The Tourists Have A Bad Experience. This is great, I suppose, if you are one of the tourists, being catered to so that you won't have anything bad to say. I wonder about the other people on that bus, however. Did they get a ride back to town? Did they get their bus ticket money returned? That next morning the police stopped by again with a guy from the bus company, Dick met him out in the reception area. Apparently the bus guy was looking a little dejected, if not petrified. The police officer made him hand over the 10,500 kyats for our three bus tickets and then said something like "Are you happy?" "Uh, yes sir." "Are you satisfied with the country of Myanmar?" "Oh yes sir, um, couldn't be happier."