The 7 day visa backpackers shuffled into the carriage of the train from Rangoon to Thazi. We found our tickets entitled us to…floor space. Never mind, only a 12 hour overnight journey… on a crammed – full train… in the middle of the hottest month of the year. It was still the week of the water festival associated with the Burmese new year, Thingyan, and periodically a bucketful of water would be hurled through one of the open windows of the carriage drenching those sitting on the bench seats. After the initial shock it didn’t take long for everyone to break out laughing.

The local Burmese families were kind to us floor dwellers and shared their food. I shared my walkman and judging by the faces it was the first time they had ever experienced music by headphones. Or maybe it was to do with the Eurythmics…

At 6am it was time to disembark at Thazi & make our way to the bus station on the other side of town by local taxi – a horse and cart. The bus turned out to be a Datsun bemo that was already full. There were no less than 27 men, women and children piled in! I climbed onto the roof to escape the packed-in-like-sardines horror below. On top were large trunks, all the backpacks and 6 other backpackers.

Heat and sunburn be damned – it was a commanding view up top as we slowly made our way across flat, baking, featureless plains. Periodically the driver would stop and we’d clamber off as he crawled under the vehicle to tap on the rear axle with a wrench. A technique obviously learnt from bitter experience. But what was he going to do if it was cracked – abandon us in the middle of nowhere? There were few other vehicles on the road.

After 5 hours finally a vista of temples dotting the landscape at Pagan (now Bagan). Got off weary and dizzy from the heat, found the Sitthu guesthouse, drank water from an earthenware jug by mistake – “for the Burmese” and spent the night throwing up from both ends…