In Ass-less Pants

Burrito Head

Chicago taught me a lot about weather.  I learned to wait to put on mascara until after I melt the icicles from my eyebrows.  Chicago taught me how to run and slip and slide through thigh-height snowdrifts in scrubs, to get to my girlfriends waiting to drive my carless self to work when they couldn’t get down the side street to my bus stop.  After too many years in trendy, not-nearly-warm-enough pea coats, Chicago humbled me into wearing the ubiquitous puffy coat: despite my chagrin at looking even more inflated than my baseline Chicago puff, it was love at first snuggle.

What Chicago didn’t teach me though was how to manage chronically syrupy, suffocating, glutinous Asian heat and humidity.  How to sweat so profusely and continuously that even cold showers are ineffective at ebbing the flow.  When your toes are sweating, and your hair is sweating, and your sweat is sweating.  When you drink upwards of 5 or 6 liters of water daily, only to pee hardly ever.  Thus far, 2016 has been my year of chasing summer.  And I’m over it.  

There is of course, the occasional reprieve.  There aren’t yet too many hostels here in the country, but those I’ve visited tend to have functional air conditioning for sleeping.  Hallelujah.  That is unless your roommate insists on turning it off and sleeping in a windowless, unventilated shoebox with several strangers: she was a peach.  There are also the night buses.  Built to show off all that Myanmar has to offer, this sweet ride not only blasts arctic air directly onto your head all night long, but will also, if you’re lucky, blast some super special tunes.  Music is important here, a real fundamental of Myanmar culture.  On occasion you’ll even spot a karaoke truck gliding along, inviting people to come and belt their hearts out into the accompanying megaphone, which is always a blistering treat.  So for your overnight pleasure, because surely you didn’t want to actually sleep, there is a continuous show, a continuous blast of music videos.  And not your run-of-the-mill western pop, but crooning, swooning, Myanmar heavy metal.  Live.  I burrito my head to protect my ears from frostbite, but not even the thickest of blankets can protect me from the cacophony detonating from the speakers.  Oh, Myanmar… 

Cool Treats!

While I’d prefer to keep the cute little attached earlobes I share with my siblings, I’m open to just about anything that could provide respite from my sweaty self.  I pool hop at hotels I can’t afford, and wash my hair unnecessarily, simply for the relief of something cool and wet on my neck.  I wear Thai tourist pants like all of my college student [non]peers, partly to avoid the scandal of being a woman in shorts, and partly to avoid the dreadfully hot weight of my trusty hiking pants. But as they say, and as I’ve continued to learn, I need to be more careful about what I wish for.  Or at least, more careful about dressing like a college student.

It was just another steamy evening here in Yangon.  I’d connected with a young Chicagoan named Caroline, a bright young thing with a million lifetimes under her belt, Caroline killed me with her caustic self-deprecating humor and inspired me with her courage.  She also allowed me to tag along to the Human Rights Human Dignity International Film Festival being held just around the corner.  While we waited in a 200 degree lobby in a crush of hundreds of people, I tried not to faint of heatstroke or whack any of the unsuspecting men pressing me from all sides: while I’ve made progress since India, I’m considerably more skittish than before, and secretly consider my umbrella as much a samurai sword as a rain protector.  Baby steps.

When we finally arrived to our seats, I chugged what remained of my water and tore open my prawn chips; a significant concession for this popcorn-loving girl.  We sat through the painfully slow beginning to a Chinese film, only to arrive at the even more painful content.  Though artfully done and compelling, we were contending with less weighty but similarly compelling distractions from our respective seats.  Caroline was captivated by the army of cockroaches marching across the railing.  I was focused on my ass.

My enormous tourist pants are ever falling down, but I wouldn't call them particularly breezy.  As I watched Mongolian migrant workers labor in the hell that is the coal mining industry, I had an epiphany: I had busted the ass out of my pants.  Not a little hole, or a subtle rip.  The seam down the middle intended to adjoin my two bigger-than-the-average-Asian legs was literally hanging on by a single thread: it simply didn’t exist anymore.  For how long I’d trucked myself and my flesh-toned, hideous traveling underwear through the city I had no idea.  Not exactly the cool off I had in mind, but maybe it's onl fair: one free show deserves another?