Bagan, Myanmar | Part 2

Rested from our relaxing Christmas, we grabbed breakfast at our favorite little restaurant next to our hotel. The young server was probably 13 or 14, had a warm, contagious smile that would make any Teen-Vogue subscriber giddy, and was always working from sun up to well after sun down. We always ordered from him, using hand gestures and pointing to order our meals. We loved the fried bread dunked in Myanmar Coffee or Tea. I became oddly obsessed with the local herbs salad and cauliflower and eggs. The food was spectacular and we ate there almost every day (if not more than once), and although we like to try as many places as we can, Burmese food is typically very greasy. We opted to remain loyal to our newfound favorite restaurant and became new regulars surrounded by local smiles. Feeling brave, we ventured to a new restaurant once morning, and found the most incredible coconut stuffed pastries. That I shared those things with Will is medal-worthy. They were warm and flaky on the outside, with delicious, sweet, flaked and slightly crisp coconut meat on the inside. Oh. My. Gosh. If you’re in the area, let me know and I’ll tell you where to go. If you’re not, you should be. It’s worth it.

We rented bikes again and rode into town, stopping for cash on the way. Both men and women in Myanmar cover their faces with this chalky cream called thanaka as a SPF and/or make up. While waiting for Will, a woman and her smiley baby approached me and tucked something into my scarf. I looked down to see what it was, and as I looked up, she painted my face saying "this better for you!" referencing the sun care qualities of the cream. She wanted me to buy a jar of it, which I couldn't carry onto a airplane, so I had to decline. She was adamant I keep whatever it was that she tucked into my scarf ("it's a present from me"), but I told her I just couldn't keep it and thanked her kindly for her generosity. The baby looked up at me and giggled a cute giggle. We shared smiles and bid farewell. I wore my paint with pride all day.

We hopped back onto our bikes, thanaka cream protecting my cheeks from the hot sun, and rode through the market. Will made fast friends with a cheery, toothless gentleman who, unabashed, joined us on our stroll through the market, talking about something wonderful as Will listened intently. Of course, we couldn't understand him, nor could he understand us in return, but it was a lovely conversation and plenty of laughs and smiles were shared.

We continued on to the riverfront. Ditching our bikes, we both wandered around a bit, debating our next move. A group of young boys were playing with homemade swords and goofing off, laughing and shouting like carefree boys should. Stray dogs roamed everywhere, lazily rolling in the dirt and sand to stay cool. Locals went about their daily business, washing laundry or running their little storefronts, selling packets of shampoo and conditioner next to 3-in-1 coffee and peanuts. There were a few little restaurants, and Will scoped prices for a cup of Myanmar’s best coffee as I slowly made my way towards him, taking pictures as I went.

I found an abandoned litter of puppies, three little cuties in all, which is pretty common to see, especially in Bagan. They were plump and rolly, resting in a shady spot doing what chubby puppies do best. I squatted down to snap a picture of two of them, not too close, but trying to capture 2 little chubs in one shot. I startled the little guy to my left out of his slumber, and as I used a soothing voice to calm his fright, I saw something dart behind me, coming up to my right. As I turned away from the puppy to see what moved, I was met with a sharp and warning snarl. Mama was not pleased with my presence. As quickly as I processed what was going on, mama snapped at my upper thigh and circled behind me. I was shocked and confused, not fully processing what just happened. I shouted to Will that I had been bit, and walked over to him, bewildered. The locals and an English couple gawked and whispered, the English husband shouting to watch out for fleas (gee, thanks), and we stayed calm and ordered a coffee.

My leggings hadn’t been ripped, and the bite didn’t leave a gash. I was mostly upset and thoroughly embarrassed. I was nervous but not overly worried. I assumed I would be fine since my pants weren’t ripped. They were wet with saliva. Mama dog must have been giving me a warning; if she’d felt more threatened, she would have torn a chunk out of my leg. I asked the woman who ran the restaurant where a toilet was, and she took me all the way to her home. I looked at my leg and saw the skin was, in fact, broken and my leg was starting to bleed. Not much, but enough to make me worry. There is no cure for rabies.

I stayed calm as I walked back to Will and suggested we get back to the room immediately. We downed the coffee (it seemed to make the most sense at the time…) and paid to leave. My leg had started to hurt and was swollen. I had 4 raised piercings where teeth met flesh, and as time passed, they started throbbing more and more.

Will hopped online and started reading about rabies and what we needed to do. I stayed calm until I read that Myanmar has a very high rabies rate. I also read about symptoms, and, knowing the ultimate end of the disease always ends in mortality, my anxiety started to climb. It’s a painful death. I scrubbed the wound and rinsed it out as best I could, forcing horrible thoughts from my mind.

Before we left Minneapolis, we went to the Travel Clinic for a consult on what immunizations we needed. I left my first meeting with a recommendation for only 3 shots. I got injected, grabbed the pile of paper work, and left. Will went a few weeks later and received an entirely different list of recommendations. I ended up going back to discuss my immunizations again, arguing with the nurse:

“What’s going to bite me? I’m not working with animals, I don’t prefer to get close to wild creatures (you won’t see me with a street vendor’s parrot on my shoulder or cuddling a ‘friendly and tame’ monkey at the beach), and I can’t envision a scenario where something is going to sneak up on me.”

“Sara please, I would just hate for something to happen. You never know. If you get the immunoglobulin now and you’re bitten, you still need medical attention, but this buys you 24 hours. Immunoglobulin is extremely hard to find and is very expensive in the countries you’re visiting. I highly recommend you do it.”

Eye roll. “Sure, let’s do it.” My insurance said they pay for travel immunizations in full, including preventative, including rabies. Whatever, I’ll do it I thought as the needle jammed into my arm. I needed to return two more times on a strict schedule in order to be considered vaccinated for pre-exposure rabies. I went back both times and felt fine with my decision (until I got the hefty bill for the immunizations that were not covered by my insurance…).

Since the nurse is smarter than me and talked me in to getting the pre-bite rabies vaccination, we knew we had some time to figure out what we needed to do. Will worked quickly to get our insurance policy number and contact numbers ready to call our provider and get the support we needed to find a clinic. We had learned not to trust the local clinics; dirty, reused needles and an AIDS risk were mentioned, and that was enough to know we needed a trusted recommendation of where to go. Will emailed our provider as I ran to the front desk to make the call.

After numerous attempts to call the list of numbers, I was informed they don’t make international calls, even to 800 numbers, and they advised we go to the post office to make the call. Will was fighting with the impossible Internet, trying to get Skype to work, but the connection continued to fail.

We still had our bikes, so we sped to the post office.

“Nope, we don’t call internationally. Go to this Internet café. They can call internally.”

“We were told YOU can call internationally.”

“We don’t.”

“It’s a free call, an 800 number.”

“Sorry.”

We got back onto the bikes towards the internet cafe and made a pit stop at nice resort on the way, thinking they may be able to call. After some language barriers were conquered, she started dialing.

“Oh, this won’t work. Go to the post office.”

“We were just there. They said they don’t call internationally.”

“That’s odd… Sorry, we can’t help you.”

Back on the bikes, our speed increased as we peddled to the Internet café.

“Sorry, we don’t call internationally. Try this restaurant. They call internationally.”

Sweating, we arrived to the restaurant, dropped our bikes, blew by the Dutch couple we had dinner with 2 nights prior, and ran into the restaurant. Tears welling in my eyes, we asked to make an international call. No one understood us. Eventually, we were led to the phone. We dialed. Nothing. We dialed again. Nothing. Will asked if we needed to press anything special to make a call internationally.

“Oh, sorry. We don’t make international calls.”

We went to a second Internet café, the entrance passing caged monkeys, and were told the phone wasn’t working. “No connection.”

Literally thinking I could die, we got back onto our bikes towards the guesthouse and tried to fight with the Internet again to get Skype to work and see if the agency had emailed us back. Nothing. Will hopped back onto his bike while I pleaded with the interwebs. He went to a tourist information center, a tourist agency, and the third Internet café for the day. Finally, he was able to pay someone to use his cell phone to make the call.

The call was short. Will explained what happened, the claims specialist started our claim, and stated the nearest clinic was in Yangon, back where the international airport is. A 12-hour overnight bus ride. Mid-sentence, the call was dropped. Will paid the man an ridiculous amount for the free call he’d just made and met me back at the hotel.

By this point, it was almost 2 in the afternoon. We asked the front desk to book us on the bus to Yangon for that evening, explaining that we actually would not be staying that night after all, even though we had paid for the room already. Confused (remember, minimally clear communication is going on), he made the call to the bus company to book 2 seats.

The bus was full.

He was very nice and recommended the daily flight from Bagan to Yangon, departing at 4. He called an agent to see if there were seats, and successfully helped us book 2 tickets. We ran back to the room, packed our bags, and hopped into the taxi to the airport.

We had emailed the clinic in Yangon stating we were on our way, it was an emergency, and asked if they could stay open late. Our flight was landing right as the clinic closed, and we didn’t want to wait until the morning. Every minute counted. We hoped they would get the email. It was unlikely the airport had Wi-Fi, and even if it did, apparently all of Myanmar was disconnected, so we weren’t counting on getting confirmation until we made it to Yangon.

We shared the taxi with a very frail and weak woman. She was probably in her mid 30’s. She turned around and explained she had passed out earlier that morning, was unable to fly, and had rebooked to our flight. She had just found out she was pregnant. She looked horrible, extremely thin with red-rimmed eyes. She asked us to carry her bags. We looked at each other, wide eyed. Americans are rightfully jaded about flying, and all the images of airport warnings flashed through my head. If you see suspicious activity, contact security. Never take someone else’s bag. Report an abandoned bag immediately. We didn’t want to assume we were being set up, but we were cautious. Our already high emotions and nerves escalated further. We helped her from the cab and found airport staff to assist her the rest of the way. I feel awful I even doubted her intentions. It was so bizarre.

As if the day hadn’t been stressful enough, Will had read about safety issues with the small planes in Myanmar. Many flying best practices and checks were haphazardly executed. We were booked on one of the airlines that had issues. Die in a plane crash, contract AIDS, or start foaming at the mouth? We figured our odds of the plane crashing were low.

Waiting for the plane, Will opened the computer. Miraculously, an email notification popped up. There was, in fact, a clinic in Bagan that was trusted: clean needles, could administer the vaccination, and fairly close to where we were staying. And, it was open until 5pm.

We jumped out of our seats, Will ran to ask someone from the airline if we could get our money back, which we could get half, and we sprinted to a taxi, who delivered us directly to the clinic.

Again, we did the awkward communication-barrier dance, attempting to explain what happened and what we needed. Eventually, the 4 kind women who were nurses/administrators called the doctor. He had already left for the day.

15 minutes later, I was in the exam room explaining what happened to a golf-appareled doctor, attempting to share that I already had 3 shots, I didn’t need immunoglobulin, and that I was instructed to get 2 more shots if I was bitten. The doctor understood, but said I would only need 1 shot. He looked at the bite and cleaned and bandaged it up. I watched him open the new, sealed needle, finally administering my rabies shot, and immediately felt better. Will grabbed the box the immunization came in on the way out of the room. $62 and about an hour after arriving at the clinic, our ordeal was over. I had my shot. I should be ok. I could develop rabies, but it would be highly unlikely.

Now we just needed a place to stay. We had the woman at the front call Pan Cherry to see if they had rooms. They didn’t. Although we had paid for the night, they resold our room, as they thought we left. We started our walk to find a new home. The sun had set, and we were worn out. We went from guesthouse to guesthouse with no luck. We found an expensive place, but I felt so bad about costing us the day and the medical expenses, plus the loss of the plane ticket, that I suggested we look for something else. Hungry and tired, we ended up back at Pan Cherry, to see what our options were.

The look on the face of the front desk gentleman who helped us book the plane was priceless. He was utterly shocked to see us. We couldn’t explain since he spoke little English, and he eventually just let his shock go. We asked if he still had our room, which he didn’t, and he felt horrible, which he shouldn’t have. We had left! Of course he would re-sell the room. He offered us the outdoor patio area, stating we could sleep there if we couldn’t find anything else. It was very kind for him to try to help us. We said thanks and kept looking.

Normally game for dorm-style sleeping, I was emotionally drained and really wanted my own space. I had held back a good cry all day, and felt like I needed some privacy. Unfortunately, this was not an option, so we booked the only two dorm beds we could find. We passed numerous travelers also looking for rooms. There were 5 beds total in the dorm and it cost more than our private room a few doors down, but that didn’t matter. We finally put our packs down and took a breath. We hadn’t eaten since our tasty breakfast and were famished, grabbed dinner, moseyed back to the dorm, chatted with the gregarious American girl, Kate, in the bed next to mine, who gave me the book she just finished, and slept hard.

Will read the paperwork from the vaccine box, which confirmed I needed a second shot 3 days after the bite, so we knew we would be staying in Bagan for a while. After breakfast the next morning, we went back to Pan Cherry, booked our old room, and made plans to go back to the clinic in a few days.

It was the lowest day of our trip. I’m glad it’s all over. And now that I don’t have rabies, we can laugh at our unbelievable day where everything went the opposite way we needed it too. Even under the immense pressure and tension, we both stayed calm and worked very well together. I never would have thought I’d check “near death by rabies” and “potential AIDS exposure” off my list of life experiences.

It’s funny, even with the bite, Bagan was by far our favorite place we've visited in the past 6 months. It’s true what they say, you do have to take the good with the bad. It just depends on how you manage the bad that matters.

The worst part of the entire ordeal? I didn’t even get a good photo:

From Bagan, with Love, Sara + Will