On The Road to Pyay

Morning fog and my trusty steed, the Kenbo 125

Teaching gig complete. Four days off before I had to teach again. My motorcycle with me. It was time once again for another road trip! 

My ultimate goal was to bring my motorcycle to the capital, Naypyitaw, where a friend and colleague is starting his own two month assignment in that strange city. I figured I'd help him out and let him borrow my bike. Besides, I've got no place else to put it. 

Village life

In researching my route, I discovered I had to go to Pyay. There isn't a single crossing over the mighty Irrawaddy River between just north of Yangon and the city of Pyay some 200 miles north. Remarkable. So as much as I'm adverse to returning to places I've been before (I stopped in Pyay on my last Myanmar motorcycle journey), there was no getting around it. Besides, I was coming from someplace totally different, and I wouldn't be on any of the same roads.   

None of the roads are marked in English here, and so it might be really easy to get lost. Fortunately, nowadays we have GPS and google maps. My phone knows where it is on the planet which usually aligns with the maps in the Google database. 

So you want to cross our bridge? Think you can?

Sometimes, though, Google misses some important details. My google-mapped route had me crossing the Patthein River, a major offshoot of the Ayeyarwaddy as it becomes a delta, on what was a yellow line, indicating a highway. It was anything but. 

I've written before about how I have a fear of bridges. I don't think it's classical gephyrophobia, as I have no problems on low bridges nor do I have any reluctance of going under a bridge. It's only those long high bridges over rivers that give me problems, make me have panic attacks. Anyways, what I think it is is agoraphobia, a fear of wide open spaces. There's nothing more wide open than high up on a bridge crossing whatever. 

The bridge in this first Hinthada to Pyay video... well lets just say I was more concerned with tangible fears of how I'd get through it than I was any irrational phobic reactions.