Last night the bus was headed to Inle Lake but we wanted to get off slightly before that to go to a town named Kalaw so that we could trek the rest of the way through the hills to Inle Lake. We paid more than locals do for the bus and were put near the front instead of in the back with the rest of the tourists. We assumed that we were in the front because the bus people knew that we wanted to get off early.
We were supposed to arrive in Kalaw between midnight and 1am so around 11:30 I unplugged my headphones and listened intently while looking out the window to make sure that we were ready when we got to Kalaw. When it got to be about 12:30 and we still weren't there I was going to ask the driver's assistant when we would be in Kalaw but then I saw a sign that said "Welcome to Kalaw", We put the rest of our stuff in our bags and waited for the bus to drive into town and then pull over. The stop was a place for everyone to get off and go to the toilet and have some food. We were silly to have worried so much about missing our stop.
When I got off the bus, I asked the driver "Kalaw?" to which I got a laugh and many locals pointing back the way we had come from. It turns out we were in Aungban, 11 KM past Kalaw. The driver and his helper quickly ran off so that we could not find them. We kept trying to find someone who could speak English and was in charge and finally got some kind of boss man to come around and talk with us. "I said 'Kalaw' when we drove through there and many of the local people heard" the boss man told us with many local people nodding. We explained that we had been paying attention and hadn't heard anything. The boss man suggested that we hire two motorbike taxi's and get them to drive us back. We argued that we had paid to get to Kalaw and they needed to get us there or give us a refund and we would make our own way there. Finally after making such a scene that everyone from the local town, that was awake at 1:30am, and from the bus were all standing around us, the boss man agreed to get a three wheeled tuk tuk to take us back to Kalaw.
The tuk tuk driver was trying to save on petrol so he took all of the downhill parts of the road back to Kalaw in neutral. We finally arrived on the main street of Kalaw at 2:30am where the streets were deserted. We started knocking on hotel doors, as they were all closed, and woke up several managers. We found one hotel that was willing to take us in on the main street for $30 a night, a fortune by our standards, but it was freezing outside and it was 2:30am so we relented, paid the money and promptly passed out.
We woke up this morning early in hopes of coordinating a 2 day and 1 night trek through the hillside to Inle Lake but all of the trekking companies need lead time so instead we spent the day coordinating our trek for tomorrow.
There is also Nepalese restaurant in Kalaw and there were momo's on the menu, a dish I first tried in Northern India. I was so excited I could hardly sit still when the waitress came over to take my order. Only to find out that momo's aren't a regular menu item and need to be pre ordered, so I quickly ordered some for dinner. We returned for dinner and the momo's were really tasty! Tomorrow we head out on our trek.
Check out the rest of today's pictures in the slideshow below:
No comments:
Post a Comment