Thurs 26 [26 February 1903] Al Lu got us Chota Hazri soon after 6. Wooded country, villages each with its pagodas and monasteries, hills behind, bare rice fields. Breakfasted at Yamethin. Got to Thazi at near 11 and our carriage was taken off and run into a siding. All the station names are written in 5 characters, English, Arabic, Nazari, Burmese and I don't know the 5th. We walked out into the village but it's only a railway village. Bought a pineapple for 4 annas from a lady who was scarce awake enough to sell it. Lunched in the station and off in a dawdly manner about 2. Not very hot. We then ran onto the new line to Myingyan, a very bare country with little cultivation but many palm trees. The train was very late so we dined in our carriage - the chickens we brought for our curry went bad! Bien nous en a pris, for when we got to Myingyan about 9 the station master told us we had better go at once to the ferry, indeed he had the bullock carts ready. I asked if there were any place to sleep. Sone keb waste there was an achha jagah said an agreeable bystander from Jannpore, so we packed into the bullock carts (ours had a hood) and set off in the black dark. We drove through the village, the people were smoking an evening cheroot in their little open Japanese houses. Then we jolted down a lane in deep sand and from thence the sand became deeper and deeper and the dark blacker. There were not even any stars. Once or twice we passed another bullock cart, at imminent peril. At last we reached a house or two and stopped - nowhere in particular. One sprang up out of the dark and said something in Burmese. So we replied firmly Pakukku [Pakokku] and he led the way along an extreme holy steep and sandy bank which we presently discovered was the bank of the Irrawaddi [Irrawaddy]. There were certain barges moored and stumbling along further we came to the smallest steamboat known with a plank leading from it to the shore. I crept along it - it was steep and slippery and lifted an awning and stepped inside. It was hot and smelling of machinery and the tiny decks were covered with people asleep. I lit a match, woke them up and demanded somewhere to sleep. After some persuasion, one got up and lit a lantern and we crept out together and went back along the bank to where a big boat was moored - run aground I fancy. Onto this we got and found ourselves on an iron deck. We woke up a man in a cabin and he took us onto the upper deck of which a part was walled in with bamboo matting. There were also a few cabins and a big charpoy. So H [Hugo] had the charpoy and I had the gentleman's cabin (the ladies was being used as an office) and a little closet with a basin in which I washed. We made our beds and went to sleep at once. It was about 11.30.