Yangon Circle Line

Another post from last weekend. Our trip round the Yangon circle line. It costs $1 and takes about 3 hours. A super good value tourist attraction?! Here is Yangon Central train station, brooms were on sale in case anyone was interested. In the photo on the left you can see a man wearing a “longyi” the traditional sarong that most men wear here as opposed to trousers.

  

As the train poodled its slow way round there was lots to see. People ambled across the lines. I guess there are no fast trains and no electric rails. Plenty more brooms for sale… and monks… and girls carrying huge sacks on their heads… and most strangely many people drying their washing on the railway lines. Perhaps not all of the tracks are in use, and perhaps the track-sleeper combination makes for quick drying?

  

There were no window panes or doors… made it nice and easy to jump on and off.

  

Lots of interesting people to observe and be observed by. The train conductor is sitting in the far left of the left hand photo below. He had the honour of sitting on a newspaper, which was laid out on the bench. This seemed to be an indication that no one else should sit there. Sometimes he got up and waved his little green flag, other times he just sat on the bench and leant out of the window and waved it. The two fancily made up girls in the right hand photo were hilarious. They got on the train and were clearly trying to discretely take photos of us using their mobile phone. From time to time they would giggle as they looked at the photos. This went on and on for quite some time. I guess they needed a lot of photos of the pasty white faces. In the end we started taking photos of them, which they seemed bemused about. I think they were a little embarrassed that we had caught on to their plan!

 

For the first half of the journey the carriage was quite quiet. The train made many stops and people came and went. However as the train creaked into the station at the top of the line there was a clamour of voices and a scrum of vegetable sellers. There were huge sacks of cabbages, cauliflowers, onions, green beans, random green veg, aubergines, fresh noodles… you name it they had it. The sacks were hauled up through the door and into the carriage (this would clearly never work in the UK… the automatic carriage doors would make a right mess of the green veg…), more sacks were lifted up and rolled in through the windows. Everything was a-buzz. Eventually the train started on its slow way again, and the veg sellers got busy trimming their greens (any excess slung out of the window) and tying them up into little bunches ready for sale in the city. Was fun to watch!