Twante

On Saturday we decided to try another bike ride. This time to a place called Twante. As usual it was a bit of an adventure. First up we went downtown to get boat tickets. Ant had already established that foreigners no longer need a special permit to visit Twante… which is handy!

Then we got on the boat – I think a first for Big Blue and Big White (the bikes)… the short boat ride across the river was more market than boat ride. You could buy key rings with Aung San Suu Kyi’s face on them, pieces of water melon, eggs (quails, ducks and chickens eggs), those yummy pork intestine snackies (always tempting), power ranger balloons in red, blue and black (also tempting), sun hats, baseball caps, tropical beach shorts etc. etc.

  

After the boat ride we needed to find transport to Twante (because no way I was cycling both ways in the heat). This was easy enough… the bikes were loaded on the top of the van, and then we clambered in. Now… you might think that the van is fairly full at the point the photo below was taken. However you would be very mistaken. Actually there is plenty more room inside, on the tailgate, and of course we mustn't forget the roofing space as well. By the time we were ready to head off there were 13 people (including us) on the benches in the back of the van, 5 people on stools in between our knees, 6 people standing on the tailgate… and even more on the roof… we couldn’t really see how many to count. Then there were 3 or 4 in the front cab with the driver. So it was pretty friendly (and sweaty) inside. It took about 45min to get to Twante. Bumping along the roads, honking the horn all the way (I would appreciate this aspect on the ride back - always nice to know when a van or bus is about to mow you down - but on the way it was just a bit annoying).

Twante is supposedly renowned for its pottery. However we failed to see any pottery for sale in the town… and we failed to meaningfully communicate with anyone as to where the famous pottery was. One person said it was 3km up the road… another 10km up the road… we didn’t really fancy what could have been a wild goose chase looking for pottery, which lets face it even if it was nice we couldn’t exactly carry back home on the bikes with us… so we set off back in the direction we came, taking a quiet side road before re-joining back the main road (which wasn’t really very main).

It was a lovely ride… about 20m of peaceful pootling through villages with their bamboo houses on stilts. We also spotted some interesting looking temples, but we will have to return to them another time wearing something more suitable than shorts.

  

It was also very hot and sweaty… so we finished up back at the port having lunch in a tea house. Not sure my lunch looks particularly appealing. It was OK, but not amazing… however I like the fact that quails eggs are so common and cheap here that even in the cheapest eats you get a nice little boiled quails egg on the side. I also like the fact that most tea houses resemble pre-schools… we often enjoy crouching on little primary coloured plastic stools… all the time hoping that our non-asian sizes don’t cause any mortal damage to the furniture.

 

Ended up our ride admiring more artistically arranged vegetables on the quayside.