“Left or right?”
I had no memory of that roundabout. The way to the bridge we had taken to cross the Ayeyarwady river was ahead, but I could not recall which direction we had come from. I had been too busy striving to follow the villager — who had showed us the way to Sagaing Hill on his own motorbike — to memorize reference points.
“No idea!” came the reply behind me.
“Whatever. Let’s eat at that restaurant over there,” I suggested while pointing at a building, which was actually no more than a roof above packed tables and low stools set on the bare ground. It was filled with locals. That was a very good sign.
“Yeah, looks amazing”
I parked our scooter at the designated spot, that is to say where a bunch of motorbikes were already. We got off under incredulous stares and calmly walked to the shelter of the shade. As we entered, more customers turned from the Chinese drama going on the television to goggle at the White woman followed by an Asian traveler, wearing sunglasses and all. What a strange sight we must have been.
I tried English with the young woman who apparently waited the customers. “Eat lunch? Or you only serve tea?” She cast me a puzzled glance, so I made the hand sign for eating, holding a bowl in the left hand while eating with chopsticks in the right one. She motioned for an old man, who looked aged enough to be her grandfather, to come. He trotted to us and, with a disarming smile, asked in an impeccable English, “What would you like?”
“To eat lunch!” was our answer. We were starving.
He showed us a small noodle stall at the front of the building. “Shan noodles?” We had not yet tried these noodles from the Shan people, one of the numerous ethnic groups of Myanmar, so we gratefully accepted. He invited us to sit down at a table.
The villagers around gradually went back to the drama. While waiting for the food, I had some time to take a look at the pictures from the morning on my camera. We had just been to the village of Amarapura before coming to Sagaing.
After our well-deserved and delicious lunch, we set off for the small village of Inwa, where ancient monasteries lay separated by quiet fields. We had to cross a small river by driving the motorbike on a boat, and then to suffer terrible, bumpy and sandy dirt roads, but it was well worth it. The serene atmosphere of the ancient monasteries, some still used by monks, was enough a reward.
