Seeing the life of the workers was, for Dan and me, one of the highlights of our trip to Myanmar. This is the first of a number of posts showing people at work. The waterfront in question served the crossing of the wide Yangon River for river traffic traveling between Yangon and the southern regions of the country. The river was not deep enough here for large seagoing vessels but instead served the local fleets.

And working on the waterfront were also vendors of goods and food to serve the stevedores and the travelers.

One of these flower vendors gave me a rose. No questions, no money expected. Just a rose. This is when I first began to understand that the people of Myanmar are friendly, kind, generous, and open. As a stranger, I felt good to be among them.

Here we are looking at an outdoor restaurant for the workers. The lady in the turquoise top is the cook and the waitress. (She’ll probably wash the dishes, too.) The gentleman standing on the left is not a customer; he is our estimable guide Zaw.

We also saw some workers–stevedores, perhaps–taking a break from the grind to play a soccer-like game with a woven (cane? bamboo?) ball.

There were small boats for the short trip just across the river and larger boats for the longer trips downriver. Some of the latter even had staterooms; others carried merchandise and goods on the lower level, where a ferry in the U.S. would carry cars.

Vendors were packaging the bulk goods on site.

Some of these packages are so heavy that it takes three men to lift one of them onto the shoulders of one man. And once loaded up, the stevedores literally run from the vendors to the ships. They are paid piece work, so the more packages they can load, the more they make that day. It’s grueling work, not for the faint-of-heart.

Just by the boats, other vendors sell a last-minute meal or snack for the journey. The boat below is about to depart, and so the lady in the flowered shirt with the green stools has gathered her tray of unsold pastries from the stool in front of her so that she can head over to where the next boat will soon be leaving.

The young couple below impressed me as unhappy. They seemed to need customers very much, but had none.

Each boat, in its turn, departs at last.