This may not be a thrilling tale. I guess it's fairly mundane, actually. This entry is a lot of rambling about flight bookings and visa hassles. If that doesn't interest you -- and there's no reason at all why it should -- you best skip it.
So we woke up yesterday morning in Yangon with the intention of catching the first available flight out of there. On top of that, I had to pick up my Russian visa, which was waiting for me at the consulate. We had $300, of which $70 had to go to the visa, and the rest was set aside for the plane tickets. We had only a vague idea how much they were going to cost, and we knew it was going to be tight.
As I've mentioned before, credit cards were not an option because MasterCard isn't accepted in Myanmar.
Tom and I walked to our first choice, Biman Bangladesh Airlines. They had a flight leaving at 2:00pm, and nothing else for four days after that. The tickets were only $80, well within our budget, but they were overbooked. We tried desperately to get on the flight, but there was no hope.
After that we split up to save time. Tom went to Myanmar International with all the money, I went to Thai Airlines with my credit card. The plan was that if he could get the tckets for less than $100 a piece, he'd go ahead and buy them. Meanwhile, I'd find out if we could pay for the Thai Air tickets, which we knew would be more expensive.
It turns out we could, and Thai Air's flight didn't leave until 8:00pm that night, so we had that as a fallback. I went to our designated meeting place to wait for Tom and find out the results of his inquiry.
He showed up with tickets from a different carrier, India Airlines, which he'd bought for $75, but the flight was leaving in less than two hours. I was pleased but also dismayed, cause I now had only that much time to pick up my Russian visa.
Tom and I made plans to meet in an hour at Trader's, a palacial five star hotel in the center of the city with an unbelievably great $11 buffet. We had enough left to afford it, and the theory was if Tom had to wait for me at least he could get some food. Neither of us had eaten real food in over a week, so it was a pretty exciting prospect.
I went to the Russian consulate praying that everything would go smoothly. The slightest hitch at this point was pretty much going to force me to cancel the whole Trans-Siberian railway trip, which I'd been dreaming about for months. I'd have to figure out a whole new and far less exciting way to get home.
I got through the front gates without any trouble, but as soon as I was inside, the guard told me the consulate was closed for the day. I was there during regular hours, but the employees had just decided not to show up. I was asked to come back on Friday.
I handled the situation in a way that I would describe as "calm but American." I made it clear how urgent my situation was, and basically wouldn't leave until they figured out some way of helping me.
I managed to get on the phone with someone at the Russian embassy. He tried desperately to hang up, but I refused to let him go. He told me the head of the consulate, who I'd met with several times, was away somewhere in the city and wouldn't be back until 2:00pm. I told him I would be out of the country by that point and I had to see him right away. I asked the guy if he could tell me where in the city the consulate head was, but of course he couldn't.
I was stuck. I was standing there a few meters away from my Russian visa, which had already been processed a week ago, but I couldn't get at the damn thing. I even tried bribing the guy over the phone to go in there and get it for me, but alas it wasn't as simple as all that. There was lots of stamping and signing still to be done.
I left the consulate, sulking and depressed, and caught a cab back to Trader's. Tom had just finished two racks of lamb and several steaks and was ready to depart. I, meanwhile, hadn't had a chance to eat yet. But our plane was leaving in less than an hour, so we had to go.
We caught a cab to the airport, marched into the check-in terminal, tried to find the India Airlines counter, but soon realized it was closed. Someone from another airline asked who we were flying with, and looked puzzled when we answered.
"There's no India Airlines flight today. It doesn't leave until tomorrow."
I looked at my ticket and realized it was for the wrong date.
It wasn't Tom's fault at all. He was very specific with the woman at the airline about when he needed it for. It was the communication barrier that caused the problem. Not understanding what he was saying, the woman selling him the ticket nodded repeatedly and said "Yes, yes, yes" until he handed over the money.
This is a very common practice.
As an aside, it's occurred to me that I've made Tom out to be a fool on a couple occassions recently, and that it's an entirely unfair depiction. The truth is that the majority of the time, I'm the one being rescued from my own stupidity, while Tom is completely on the ball. Honestly, he's an expert traveler, cool-headed, competent and dependable in all circumstances.
He did look like a rodeo clown on the bike, though.
So anyway, we were screwed. The tickets were no good. We discovered that seats had in fact become available for the Biman Bangladesh flight leaving in a few minutes, but we'd spent all our cash on the first set of tickets and there was no way we could pay to get onboard.
We caught a cab back into the city. Tom went off to get a refund for the tickets so we had some cash to spend on another pair. I went to some other airlines and tourist offices to do price checking.
Finding Thai Airlines and their generous MasterCard policy to be the best option, I retreated to Trader's to catch the end of their lunch buffet. Once again, I'd like to mention that I seriously hadn't eaten in a week.
I filled up three plates with food; I had two steaks, some lamb tenderloin, shrimp skewers, chicken cold cuts, pastrami, bread, cheese, crackers, a plate of pasta with meat sauce, and a couple vegetables crammed onto the edge of the overflow plate. I placed my orgy of food at the nearest table, eager to begin tearing through it.
Guess who was sitting at the table next to me.
Go on, guess.
It was the head of the Russian consulate. He was having the $11 buffet lunch at Trader's Hotel.
He looked over and saw me. He said, "Where have you been? I had all the paperwork ready last week?"
I explained that I'd had to leave for Mandalay and to see the rest of Myanmar. I told him all about my situation. He said that if I could meet him at the consulate in two hours, he'd take care of my visa.
It was just one of those days.
Tom came over, having gotten the cash refund, and sat down with me. We spent a long time debating our options. It basically came down to staying in Yangon another day and catching the cheap flight we'd mistakenly bought tickets for, or paying an extra $45 a piece to get out on Thai Airways in a few hours. I was ready to leave, and it was more than worth it to me to pay the extra money, but it wasn't worth it to Tom.
We went back and forth for a while, but when we looked at what was ahead of us as far as getting into Cambodia, it was clear that we needed to get started early the next morning, so that night's flight was the best option.
And that was that. We bought the ticket, I finally picked up my goddam Russian visa after months of struggling, we got out of Myanmar, and here I am.
Now I'm facing a new problem. Today's the 17th and I have to be in Mongolia on the 23rd to meet up with the Trans-Siberian tour group. I hate tour groups with a sick, undying passion, but in this circumstance it was the only way I could figure to make the Trans-Siberian leg happen. I can't get into Cambodia until the 18th at the earliest, and I'd have to leave by the 22nd at the latest to get to Mongolia on time. That's not a very long stay in Cambodia.
What I might have to do is skip Cambodia and just head straight to Ulaan Batar to kick around for a few days until the train trip starts. It'll be unfortunate. I really wanted to see Angkor Wat and Phnom Penh, but it doesn't look like there's going to be enough time.
Tom's off trying to organize things right now. We'll see what he comes up with. I really have no idea at this point how the next few days are going to turn out.
I saw The Hulk tonight. What a disaster. It was absolutely awful. Not only did the plot make no logical sense, it made no emotional sense either. The characters were thrown together in this absurd mish-mash of relationships that took over half the movie to sort through, was completely boring, and had nothing to do with anything.
Message to Nick Nolte: Knock off all that acting!
I was onboard for all the action stuff. That was good fun. But the pretentious, arty, Freudian naval-gazing was a silly attempt to elevate the material. Ang Lee totally missed the point.
The front page of the Thai newspaper today is about the computer game, Ragnarok, that has consumed the entire nation. The government is forcing the Korean developer to shut down its servers tonight from 10:00pm to 6:00am in an attempt to curb the massive loss of productivity. Kids aren't showing up to school. Adults are losing their jobs. People are playing the game round the clock every day. I've heard stories, though that's probably all they are, of kids keeling over dead from malnutrition after playing the game for weeks in internet cafes and living on nothing but instant noodles.
I'm noticing way more transvestites here than I have on previous visits. The receptionist at our hotel, for example. I'd thought the years of Springer guests so many of us have been exposed to has made discerning them a trivial matter (when in doubt, just look for the Adam's apple), but it seems to be a lot harder here. And they're mixed in with the general populace -- working in shops, middle of the day and all that. There doesn't seem to be anything seedy or tabboo about it. I was riding in a cab today and we passed this very attractive girl who was smiling and waving in at me. The driver laughed and said, "Very pretty boy, huh?" I had not even an inkling.
