The S.E.A Odessey Day 2 - Myanmar // Hpa An
After spending the whole day in Yangon we rose at about 6:30AM today and headed to the bus station. The ride to Hpa An was nothing eventful other that we missed our stop in Hpa An by about an hour... I know, great job Nico! We asked the driver what to do. He stopped the bus in a place where we could hitch a ride. This was all we were hoping he'd do. His kindness extended way past this and actually paid the guy giving us a ride. We tried to stop him and tried paying ourselves but he didn't let us.
We got in the extremely packed van with our backpacks over our legs both in the front seat with the driver. We tried to communicate where we needed to go by making gestures and pointing at maps on our phone. Once in Zwegabin we got the first lodging we could find.
After settling into our rooms we ventured in the quest for an ATM as we had almost no money left and everything in Myanmar is cash only. We rented two scooters and set off on our mission. We stopped every five minutes asking locals where to go but it was quite challenging. We would say "Eyy teee emm" and try showing our credit cards.
We got extremely lost, ending up in a dust field playing football (soccer for my American friends out there) with some Burmese kids. At first we didn't know why they weren't playing as hard as when we got there, it was because we were wearing shoes and they weren't. So we took our shoes off and the game became more challenging.
Cesar's team won, I stepped on cow shit and got some pretty gnarly blisters. But the feeling of pure spontaneity and joy to play like that was extremely refreshing. We got back on our scooters and the kids waved goodbye with frozen smiles.
Kids playing in the background at sunset
After gettin back to the hotel we hired a taxi to take us into town and help us find the ATM. Two of the first ones we went to weren't working because of power outages but the third one did! We met a French backpacker outside the ATM and we all headed to dinner, then for beers then home.