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Myanmar
Burmese on Motorbikes

There is a test you can do when entering a country for the first time. You smile at someone and then you wait to see how long it takes until that person smiles back at you. In Myanmar, it takes just milliseconds! Driving with the locals on the roads of Mandalay gives you a chance to shoot a photo series of happy smiling Burmese people.

Shooting Location: Mandaley
Coordinates: N21° 56' 55.932" E96° 5' 15.756"
Thanks to: Myint Shion

There are times when I’m hunting for days for a story that’s worth photographing, but nothing happens. Then, there are moments in which photos just fall into my lap. On the morning of such a day in Myanmar I was not to find out until the evening that I would be able to add a few photos from Mandalay to my treasure chest of touching moments.

It was my first day in Mandalay and I wandered through the city for a while. It was much more homely, cleaner and more inviting than Yangon, the capital city, and it was definitely more economically developed. However, the city was also somehow monotonous and tiresome. The street corners all looked the same. I walked and walked, from street to street and block to block. My feet began to feel heavy. A rickshaw driver had been watching me and offered me a seat in his sidecar just at the right moment. I agreed immediately and slumped into the car that had a forward-facing and a backward-facing seat. Myint Shion, the name of the driver, had already begun to pedal when I registered that I had sat facing backwards. I would have gladly faced forwards but I was far too tired and let it go.

However, this position did provide me, at least, with a new, unusual perspective of the street: just above the pavement, in the center of a tarmacked path that had up to three lanes. The other vehicles overtook us, especially the trucks with their stereotypically exposed engine compartments - from which there were regular spurts of water coolant. Mopeds coming out of the side streets crisscrossed along the street behind us. It was a rather amusing piece of street theatre and I really got a kick out of it. The Burmese evidently sensed this, as they overtook us. They smiled and shouted over to me whilst we were driving wanting to know where I came from. Every time they came too close to our vehicle I signaled to them that they shouldn’t tailgate us. The Burmese would just simply laugh and would tailgate us all the more for their own amusement.

At this very moment, I grabbed my camera. I let the “Wild Hordes” know that I wanted to photograph them. Then, most of them drove deliberately extra close to us again, smiling and waving for the camera. At times, moped drivers would be able to see the mobile photoshoot as they approached, and amused, formed a sort of travelling queue – which was great fun for all involved.
Even Myint started to enjoy himself, began to pick up speed and drove even more centrally so that I could have the best possible choice of shooting. We toured through the city like this for almost an hour. I suggested to Myint that we should take the odd break, but he didn’t want to.

Incidentally, in the background of one of the photos you can see a blue panel truck. About 50 cm beneath the roof of the truck there are bars that people are holding onto from the inside. The vehicle in question was the old standard model of Burmese prisoner transport. I only discovered the photo after the photo session on my laptop that evening. It is really crazy: despite this brilliant encounter these moments could not be captured without Myanmar’s dark past resurfacing.