The bus ride was bumpy. No, terribly bumpy. Scratch that, indefatigably bumpy. Like horribly, terribly, supercallifragilisticexpialidociously BUMPY (Did I just extend the longest word in the English dictionary to make an even longer word? Dang, yes I did!).

 
Jodee and I, after spending three days in Inle Lake, had caught a bus to the much heard about Bagan. The journey began, not with a bang, but with a bump. Rather, many, many bumps. So much that I began to think that the bus had leaf springs, though a quick check underneath revealed an air suspension standard on modern buses. That meant the road was so, so bumpy that the suspension just couldn’t keep up! Add to that winding roads out of Inle lake, and it was all I could do to not open the window and let loose last nights dinner in reverse gear. Indeed there were a couple times when I just wanted to tickle my throat just to get out of this misery. Then I saw what the locals were doing. All were peacefully asleep!
When in Rome… so I tried the locals trick. I first put in my ear plugs. That already helped bring down the Nausea Factor from 90% to 70%. Then I closed my eyes and rested back against the seat. Wonders! Down went the NF to about 40%! That was enough. Soon I gave in to the undulations of the bus and moved with it, and was in peaceful slumber…

 
Till we all got woken up rudely by shouts of “Toilé! Ten Mini! Toilé! Ten Mini!” See, the Burmese language has this thing called a “glottal stop“. Being a tonal language, one of it’s tones is to end vowels abruptly (Say “Duck!”, now say it without the “ck”. It should sound something like “Du.!” That’s it!). So to represent their complicated tonal sounds in the simpler latin alphabet, they use a terminating ’t’ to represent a glottal stop (so, the “Duck!” without the ‘ck’ would be written “Dut!” in burmese). A side effect of that is that when the Burmese valiantly try to speak English for the benefit of us vernacularly challenged tourists, they end up dropping the ’t’ sound in regular english words as well. And hence my alarm bell of “Toile!. 10 Mini! Toile! 10 Mini!”

 
After using the facilities, which were pretty awesome I must say, and western (Burma, like most parts of Asia, uses traditional eastern toilets), we continued on our way. This time thankfully no more windy roads. Just horrendously bumpy ones.

 
Seven or so more hours of this bumpy ride, with every bone in my body being dislocated and subsequently relocated a dozen times, and we reach Bagan.

Or rather, we reach the New Bus Stop in Bagan. Located 9Km outside Bagan. As we stepped outside the bus and were approached by the 10 or so taxi drivers looking for their daily wages, we got to witness a good example of how backpackers start to jade the locals. In our bus were about 11 other European backpackers. The first local approached and quoted 12$ for the 9Km ride into town. Stating the high price being due to a fee for entrance into the new bus stop. Were the fees bumped up? Probably.

 
Did anyone of us newcomers have the faintest idea what a fair fare was? No. Was 12$ too much? Probably.
Having been brought up in Asia and having haggled a fair bit, this is my analysis of how these things usually go:

 
Local: The price is X (inflated over the actual fair price, say ‘F’, because you’re a rich looking ignoramus)
Outsider: No, no, I’ll only pay ‘Y’ (An arbitrarily chosen amount that is a fraction of ‘X’. Y is usually chosen to be an amount that has the Outsider feel like he is not getting ripped off, and then cut down a bit to account for ‘haggling margin’)
Local: Oh no, (E.g. dying wife, ailing son, impending operation, etc…), it has to be ‘X’, but for you, special price. I’ll do X1 (X1 is between X and Y, very close to X)
Outsider: Oh no no no. , Y is fair, but I’ll concede and offer Y1 (Y1 is also between X and Y, but close to Y)
Oh no no no….
This continues till a mutual price is agreed upon. Whether its closer to X or Y depends on how eager the Outsider shows his desire for the object being haggled for, and how desperate the Local is to sell.

This practice is well known and practiced widely in many parts of the developing world. I know it can get tiring. But then, you can always walk away from haggling, concede, or just offer a price tiredly and doggedly stay in silence till they either concede or leave.

 
In this occasion haggling was probably called for. What, in my opinion, was completely uncalled for was the manner in which a couple of English girls haggled back. They decided that 1$ is their arbitrarily chosen fair price. Sure it’s as good a price as any. But then they commenced to shout it down the taxi drivers throats, adding statements like ‘You’re all a bunch of liars and cheats!’ and ‘What did I tell you? I told you a $ per person. Don’t you listen?’ with a good helping of “I hate this bloody country.” They’d follow that up with “We’re students. We have no money. You hear? We have no money!”. Keep in mind that in Myanmar, 150£ is considered a high monthly salary for a family of four. That being said, I was impressed with how the drivers were smiling back as they quoted prices in their broken English… initially. They did get upset with the constant insulting and left us after sometime.

 
After about 20 minutes one enterprising driver agreed to take the quoted price from the backpackers, a dollar each, and proceeded to stuff everyone into his van. As we left the bus station and everyone was elated with a ‘we won against the system!’ sort of cheers, someone quietly pointed out that at a dollar per person, the taxi drver was making 13$ for the trip. A dollar more than what they initially quoted. The math was quickly drowned out with cheers of “We got them to listen to us! Yes!”.

 
Amidst this cheers. the driver could be seen sitting in the front seat with a broad smile on his face. Sitting amidst the crowd, I began to see how towns where there are a lot of backpackers soon end up with jaded locals who just see the tourists as meal tickets. Sure, theres an economic disparity and the locals could soon want the luxury lifestyle of the backpackers. But what I saw was a group of travelers walk in with a ‘us vs them’ adversarial mindset. And it won’t be long before that mindset gets transplanted into the minds of the locals as well, and Bagan goes the way of Kuta or Khao San Road.