Travelling with Terrible Buses

A recent report said The Shwedagon Pagoda is the most checked-in places of all on Facebook in Myanmar. When you head to the golden pagoda ordinarily, one easy route is to take no. 204 bus line, along with privately owned shiny new SUVs on the road. Almost all the buses of that line are quite old and rusty with some windows that don’t move up and down. Interiors are replaced by local untidy decorations. You'll hear a lot of bangs and clunks and two rows of wooden benches are sometimes shaking when the bus turns left or right. Double stack of long CNG tubes are under these benches, but there's never been reported any danger resulting from sitting above them! 

At rush hours, buses are overcrowded and it's the right of the bus conductor to put in as many passengers standing on the middle rows as he likes. Until a few years ago, old war-time buses like no. 39, 61 were running along Yangon's streets. Hilux models dating back as far back as the 80s in faded condition were only recently replaced by mini-bus lines like no. 3, 54, 38, 33, and then some.

With these new changes, and along with new year comes a new bus line in Yangon known as Evergreen linking the route from North Dagon to Downtown, according to a daily newspaper. One thing they added is that the bus fare is only to be paid via electronic card system known as iPay. Since around 2011, these iPay cards are announced and set up to be used on buses, and soon these slots seem out of service, out of wire on the door stand of the buses. No one uses, perhaps no one even learns how to use. This new bus line is trying a new strategy and it'll need some time to pursue people to get used to it.

 
Surprisingly, a 204-line bus driver was once overheard by me as saying he hoped that one day our city buses would be like those from foreign countries like Singapore. I heard that two years ago, still not much changing now; his own bus line might be one of the worst conditions of all, I guess. Easy and comfortable transport system is a must to attract tourists and I hope a day when a local or foreigner will travel by bus in Yangon without sitting in frighteningly shaking wooden seats should be foreseeable in a few years.