The road to Mandalay

Mandalay

Finally made it to Mandalay. I haven’t stopped singing Nellie the Elephant and no we didn’t see her on the road to Mandalay. We have had a full moon though, so I suspect she caught up with the head of herd somewhere along the way.

Both of us were almost sick on the road and, again, I was petrified of being driven off the side of a mountain by our kamikaze driver. I think I would rather spend twice as long on a night bus with mental Myanmar MTV blaring all night than go through a journey like that again with a cabbie.

We got to the hotel and spent the afternoon looking round our part of Mandalay, including the night market. Baby D said the area felt a bit like Bangkok and that was soon proved true when we spotted all the sex stalls in the market.

Being a bit hungover, we fancied a bit of carb so we found a pizza place across town. Finding a cab to take us was less easy and eventually two guys on the side of the road asked us if we needed a lift. They wanted to put both of us on the back of one scooter but we refused and set off, one of us on each scooter. They didn’t use their lights and didn’t look left or right at junctions, but at least my scooter had brakes unlike Baby D’s.

Kuthodaw Pagoda

Mandalay Palace

Next day we were off to Mandalay Palace - the last palace of the monarchy in what was Burma, which is now a tourist attraction and houses the military – then onto Shwe Nan Daw Monastery, and Atumashi Monastery, before heading to  Kuthodaw Pagoda, which contains the world’s largest book in the form of large stone tablets of Buddha’s teachings. Next door was Sandamuni Pagoda which houses the world’s largest iron Buddha. On our way to Mandalay Hill, we were passed by several trucks carrying young men, with music blaring, most of them drinking beer, some of them dressed up in full drag. We discovered that they were letting their hair down (before shaving it off) in advance of their ordination as monks. 

Shwe Nan Daw

Mandalay Hill overlooks the city and there are several stupas on the way up to the one at the top, Sutaungpyei Pagoda. There are thousands and thousands of pagodas all over Myanmar. Wherever you look you’ll see them. Many are loud and proud gold ones, some are more muted red brick. This one at the top of Mandalay Hill was the epitome of tack.

We stopped for lunch on the street and Baby D fancied some meat skewers. They were not chicken. Or beef. Or pork. Or lamb. I didn’t eat any but stuck to my tea leaf salad instead…

The next day was a wash out, literally. Torrential rain all day and night so we stayed at the hotel and I caught up with some work. 

On our 3^rd full day in Mandalay we had arranged a trip to a place called Monywa, about 3 hours out of Mandalay. We had met a taxi driver desperate for our business on our way to Mandalay Palace a couple of days before, so I took his card and promised to call him if we definitely decided to go on the trip. 

We decided to go and arranged with the driver to go into the town of Monywa as well as to a couple of other sights around the town, and the price seemed reasonable. On the day of the trip, the driver was nowhere to be found. Finally after several phone calls, he turned up – 45 minutes late. He had overslept. So much for being desperate for our business. Hey ho, off we go in his rickety old cab. We got about 2km before he stopped the car and told us what we were doing for the day, with no mention of the other sights around the town. I picked him up on this and he insisted we pay more to see the other places. I told him we had agreed a price for everything, but he was not having it. For once in my life I had been semi-organised and when we had been discussing the trip with him, I had made notes which the driver had agreed to. When I pulled them out his face fell and he knew he had been rumbled. We got out of the car and walked back to the hotel. 

It was too late to go to Monywa, and as the previous day had been written off because of the weather, we wanted to make the most of this day. We headed back to the hotel and the staff were completely bemused having waved us off to Monywa half an hour earlier. We looked at the map and agreed to quickly find a cab to take us to Saigung, Inwa and Amarapura, 3 interesting places on the outskirts of the city. We headed off to find a cab, and we walked for about 2km before we realised that we had completely different ideas about where we were going. Cue huge slanging match in the middle of town about going the wrong way and wasting half the day, which was classy. Luckily our knight in shining taxi appeared and we arranged a day tour to the 3 sites for a price we were happy with.

The first place we visited was Pathodawgyi Pagoda, a beautiful white stupa which looks like a wedding cake. It was hard to look at it without sunglasses and it made a change to see one that wasn’t gold. 

We then went up to Saigung Hill, overlooking the city, to SoonOoPoneNyaShin Pagoda for more fantastic views of the city.

After lunch we headed to Inwa, a small picturesque village where we had to take a boat across the river to reach it. We took a horse-drawn cart around the village, stopping off at pagodas and monasteries along the way, including a teak monastery called Bargaya, where a noisy classroom full of children were being taught by monks. On the boat over, we met an Aussie called Greg who shared our cart. Turned out he was also from Blackheath, just the one the other side of the world in Sydney! We also saw Sinkyone fort and mahaAungMyaeBonzan monastery.

U Bein bridge

Our last stop was U Bein bridge. This wooden bridge is 1.2km long and is a sight to see for sunset. We walked over the bridge to get the best view and again, we were massively impressed by the obvious strict enforcement of building regulations and structural safety of this bridge…I was bricking it all the way.

It’s amazing what a beer or two can do for you - by the time we walked back, I had no worries.

Our driver was a good guy and we asked him to take us to Monywa on the following day. His English wasn’t the best and he went straight in at 90,000 kyats which was the price we’d settled on with the dodgy driver the day before. We were happy to pay him that amount but he obviously misunderstood when I asked him what time in the morning, saying ‘8?’ (am) because he came back with, ‘okay…85’ (000 kyats). The next morning we were outside at 8am with our fingers crossed that this driver would turn up. He didn’t, but his 2 sisters did, in a much more comfortable car. After 5 minutes of confusion, as we were concerned we were nicking someone else’s ride, we jumped in and away we went to Monywa finally.

Monywa

Monywa is a small town around 135 km from Mandalay. It is home to Maha Bodhi Ta Htaung in which reside 2 enormous Buddhas; one reclining, which is 333ft long and 60ft high, and one standing upright which is 424ft long. We’re not sure but we couldn’t find any other Buddhas which were taller. Before going to the main attractions, we stopped in a park where there are thousands of Buddhas in different poses, in a park which is a popular spot for monks’ meditation and contemplation.

Big Buddha

We were able to climb inside the huge upright Buddha, almost to the top. Inside were numerous Buddhas where people were worshiping and some mind-blowing art on the walls, including many depicting Buddhist hell. I wouldn’t like to be stuck in there at night, put it that way. We then went over to the reclining Buddha which was a bit older but just as impressive on the outside. The inside however was really dirty and run down. They could do a lot to improve it (run a duster over it for a start), even make it into a nice restaurant or a proper place of worship. We went down to the main pagoda in Monywa, Thanbodday Pagoda which houses over 580,000 Buddha statues. There were some lovely stupas in this complex around the main pagoda. 

Reclining Buddha

We were taken to a local restaurant called Yarmanya where there were several small dishes already laid out on the tables. The restaurant looked like something from 200 years ago and it didn’t exactly look clean – although we were ordered to wash our hands as soon as we arrived so maybe looks can be deceiving. We were given cutlery and a plate and told to dig in. We had no idea if the small dishes were all we were going to get, or what they were and we were almost ready to tell our guides that we didn’t want to eat there, when a bowl of chicken soup each came out, along with a plate of chicken curry, pickled mango, beans, pickled bamboo, stewed vegetables, a huge pot of rice, another big bowl of chicken soup with a chicken’s foot in there to make it extra tasty, and a dish of pork fat. The sauce for the pork fat was delicious but the fat sadly, wasn’t crackling, but that nasty soggy fat which the Burmese seem to really like. (They do also love proper roast pork with crackling though – just not here apparently). I can’t even remember what else we had; there was such a bewildering array of food, but it was all traditional Burmese food and it was a feast. We ate about a 5^th of it. 

Buddha hell

Next on our itinerary for the day was a visit to Phowintaung caves which sit about 25 miles from Monywa. We had heard they were really worth a visit although our driver didn’t look convinced. After an hour and a half we reached our destination and got taken around the site. The caves weren’t as we had imagined. We had thought they were deep rockface caves containing many Buddhas. They were rockface, but they weren’t very deep so didn’t quite meet the picture we had in our minds. They were worth a visit though, the number of different types of Buddha was interesting to see and many of them had original paintings inside from the 14^th-18th centuries. 

Phowintaung caves

The really nice thing about Monywa (and this is ironic really), is that it was not full of tourists. The big Buddhas were the busiest part of the trip and even they weren’t crowded. The only tourists there were people from Myanmar and they were so friendly and funny. 

We finally made it back to the city at 8pm, and I felt for the driver who had navigated the way back in the pitch black. Although the roads in Myanmar tend to be better maintained than Nepal or India, and there is a great deal of infrastructure development, the roads are not always the best and are very poorly lit.

A couple of good places to eat in Mandalay which were reasonably priced and where many locals ate, were Shan Ma Ma and Beer City Beer Station near our hotel (Hotel 8 which was fab) on 29^th street. Both restaurants were a step up from the street food but were by no means posh places. Shan Ma Ma had a buffet where you could choose 3 typical Shan (regional)  dishes. We also paid extra for a plate of melt in the mouth roast pork and shrimps in a lemon sauce. Beer Station served local food at a very good price and we were able to watch a bit of football at the same time. 

We had a fantastic time in Myanmar and we would definitely return. It seems inevitable that it will change as more and more tourists discover it, I just hope that the people stay as warm and friendly as they were during our trip (except the cab drivers that is, they’re bound to get worse…!)

#mandalay #myanmar #monywa