The steamer docked at the sun-soaked Yangon pier could have just sailed in on a river of ink straight from Kipling's pen.
Vendors in sarongs scamper and chirrup through the crowded lower deck dodging chickens and crab crates, balancing plates of fried shrimp on their heads. Two decks above, red-robed monks lean with dignity from the first-class cabins dropping paper streamers or unfolding umbrellas.
The SS Baumawady hasn't seen a paint brush in years; its squat, enormous funnel belches a plume of smoke that scatters the swooping gulls and it positively simmers with smells -- spices, sweat, sandalwood, hint of latrine, frying, fuel oil and that gorgeous, indefinable musk of tropical Asia. What Joseph Conrad called the "sigh of the east."