There’s an old train that takes 3 hours to go round a circular track which passes through the city centre and out to the outskirts. It’s one of the main things tourists will do here because it gives you a city tour and it also takes you out to the very edge of where country meets the city.
Like a lot of old cities in South East Asia there is poverty and I don’t think I’ve seen so much rubbish polluting the rivers and it’s just about everywhere.  On the edge of the railway there are small villages and because no one comes to collect the rubbish they just set fire to it. The toxic smoke is really dreadful.

The train doesn’t go that fast because the rails are twisted and so it shoogles quite violently at times in parts.
It’s well used and there are people moving their produce from one stop to another. Sometimes it takes longer than a normal stop takes to load everything. In fact I was on the steps and I got stuck there for about 40 mins because they had brought on board so many bags of fresh fruit and vegetables.

I was beginning to get cooked here in the doorway, hence the reason for looking so happy………………….

At many stops someone will jump on and sell fruit or drinks so you will never go hungry.

Where there is a river they have a toilet sitting over the water and so the shit goes straight into the water where the fish will recycle it for you and even better than that there are vege patches being irrigated by the very same water.

It’s a great shame to see the country side and also seeing that many people living in poverty such as this.  I have of course seen this before but I feel that the amount of folk living in squalor here is greater, but it’s not as bad as India of course because that’s on a level of its own.

Tomorrow I move on to Mandalay and I’m hoping that I will enjoy that city more. Although the food here has been great and I did enjoy the shoogly train…………