The slow but steady fourteen hour journey from Mandalay to Bagan started in the late afternoon. The second we had stepped into the train, I felt the humid summer air press down on me, the wide open windows doing absolutely nothing to help air circulation.
The moment the train had pulled out of Mandalay station, I had been hit with a sense of emptiness. A curious feeling given that my weeks in Mandalay had been filled with nothing but warmth and kindness from the people I’d met. I’d met a monk on the U Bein bridge at sunset, discussed my relationship status with almost everyone I’d met (the first question was always whether I was married or single, never an in between option) and was in constant awe of the beautiful pagodas I visited. But it was only when I left a place that I started to feel like a foreigner, as if I was just an observer passing through.
Now the sun was starting to set, with only a strip of orange blazing across the horizon. I was glad for nightfall. There was even a slight night breeze as I rested my elbows against the edge of the window. The train rolled passed the glittering pagodas with mosaics that dazzled even in the dark. Pass the now empty marketplace that had been filled with shops of beautiful fabric waiting to be sewn into longyi. Pass the food stalls where I’d eaten bowl after bowl of refreshing shan noodles. Pass the twenty-four hour tea shops that were starting to bustle with laughter and chatter. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I hadn’t gotten to know the real Mandalay.
The train had long moved out of the city’s centre and was now approaching rural residential areas. We moved pass clusters of homes, tightly stacked against each other in an unruly puzzle. The street vendors had already packed up their goods and the shopkeepers had closed their stores. Everyone had returned home after a long day of work or school, and almost every house was lit.
Against the backdrop of the night sky, another side of Mandalay revealed itself to me, an observer sitting on a moving train. The train moved slow enough for for curious foreigners like me to peek into windows — and it seemed like people didn’t have a habit of drawing curtains or closing doors.
Families gathered around a table. Empty plates still on the table, remnants of a dinner.
Kitchens stocked with pots and pans, food still cooking on the stove.
A monk sat in the centre of a large room, empty of all furniture except for a round carpet. He was pouring over stacks of books that surrounded him.
Children squeezed around a television, their faces lit up by the soft blue light.
A man bent over a wooden Buddha statue, carving intricate details with great concentration.
Two women sat on the porch, one leaned against the wall and the other perched on the stairs. One woman used dramatic hand gestures as she animately told a story.
Streetlights illuminated the details of the bamboo and wooden houses. Some looked mismatched with slanted walls and rickety staircases. Some were meticulously built with lovely porches and splashes of colour. A turquoise door and a bright yellow staircase. A white fence and a purple windowsill.
Men lounging in the yard, beer in hand.
The silhouette of a cat sitting on a window ledge, tail swaying.
Three little boys in a yard, crowded around each other in a huddle, devising what seemed to be mischievous plan.
A sparkling red pinwheel was stuck to the side of a house, softly spinning, it’s tassels flying in the summer breeze.
Scenes of an intimate Mandalay revealed itself to me.
The train rolled on and we’d moved into the countryside, away from the clusters of neighbourhoods and streetlights. Now the only light source were the pinpricks of light in the distance and the fluorescent tubes in the train. The train rolled on, and I didn’t feel that earlier emptiness anymore.
Maybe part of me would always be an observer, a curious foreigner on a moving train.
But maybe that was okay.