Meeting point for the August Full Moon Run was the Beer Station across from the Golden Rose (I think that was how it was called) Hotel. As the waiters were not very willing to serve drinks to beer thirsty hashers and the hares Maria Phallus and Scot No Balls (at this point of the evening still known as Just Robin) were busy doing whatever the group started with a 45min delay and already pretty rumbling stomachs.
The trail first took the runners up to Kandawgyi Lake through Mingala Taung Nyunt Township and then went down more or less straight to downtown. As we are in the rainy season most of the shreddy had disappeared by the time the runners came looking for it. The hares were reaaaaally helpful standing around with big grins on their faces pretending not to know where to go.
All in all the trail was about 4,8km long and a quite typical Yangon Full Moon trail: some bridges were crossed, some part of the trail was on railway tracks, one locked door cutting off the trail provided an additional obstacles and lots of mean-looking mud puddles had to be avoided. A notable focus of the trail was on passing especially mad and angry street dogs which provided some excitement and throwing-stones-at-dogs arm workout. Another highlight was the completely dark and muddy dumping ground which had to be crossed – if it was not one officially it sure felt and smelled like one.
There was one extended beer stop (beer supply problems – again) with quite interesting stories from the fellow local beer drinkers who turned out to be sailors keen on sharing stories on their travels.
The run finished in 52th street in the Green Gallery and lots of discussions followed on the location of the circle as due to police controls beer cannot be drunk in front of the restaurant. At the end – no surprise there- it was decided to squeeze all hashers inside into a tiny circle to be able to start drinking right away. Some other people also had decided to have dinner at Green Gallery that night and clearly enjoyed the coziness of a tightly packed space with sweaty hashers and beautiful hash songs with meaningful lyrics. Surprisingly the other guests left quite early and thus missed out on some of the circle highlights.
The circle was run by Smokeback Mountain and next to the usual stuff (lots of blaming and a hashy birthday song) a definite highlight was the transformation of Just Robin into Scot No Balls through the force of a nerdy StarWars enthusiast laser sword. It made up for the fact that due to the circle being inside of the Green Gallery, Robin got baptized with a lot less beer than normal during namings. But maybe that was not that bad as beer supply was –again- a bit of a problem. The food however was excellent and lifted all hashers into Curry-heaven.
The evening ended with the hares skipping out on the bill. They tried to blame it on Smokeback Mountain saying that he left with all the money in his car but honestly – isn’t it a bit stupid to leave the hash money in his car to start with???
By Kathrin Raabe
Yangon Hash House Harriers 