Mandalay

  Mandalay, Myanmar Thursday, October 30, 2014

Mandalay is located 716km north of Yangon and sits within sight of a mountain range a little further in the north and east. It was the royal capital of the last two kings of Myanmar, and is the cultural and religious centre of Buddhism. The city is also famous for its traditional crafts and has a population of just over a million. The Mandalay streets are laid out in a grid system, and they numbers east to west (up to 49th street) and north to south (50th street and above). Our first hotel sits on 79th Street (hence it's name) and between 29th & 30th street so that puts it almost slap bang in the middle, just below the ancient citadel. And right opposite the railway station. We hear the bing bongs all night as trains are announced arriving and leaving.The best way to get around here is on bikes so one day we took out some bikes for the day and headed off towards the citadel which turned out to be huge. 2km along each outer wall which was also surrounded by a moat. It was very pretty. And very hot! Inside the citadel is the Mandalay palace which as it turns out, was half destroyed in one war, then the rest was destroyed in WWII so it has all been totally rebuilt. Still it was quite pleasant to walk around and you could get the general idea about how it would have been.. They had a tower inside which gave beautiful views from the top and you could see Mandalay Hill not so far away, right across to the mountains which from up there also seemed pretty close too.One evening we went to see the Famous Marionette Show. We had heard about this and to be honest, we weren't expecting much but the sense of humour from the puppeteers came through and we had a really nice time. We especially liked the fact that the Puppet Master who was in his 80s came around to say hello to everyone at the end.We got chatting to an Aussie girl, Lizzie & her dad whilst we were staying at 79 Living Hotel. She has been travelling on her own for 18 months and dad had joined her for this bit of the trip. I think she taught him a thing or two whilst he was with her! They were heading off towards Chiang Mai in Thailand for the lantern festival, the same as us, but they were taking a different route. Who knows if we will see them in Chiang Mai? We took a couple of trips our whilst we were here too but you can read about the Ubein Bridge and the Gokteik Bridge separately. We also moved hotels. Mainly because there was a wailing man who started wailing at 6am most mornings and Bryan hadn't been feeling too well and wasn't getting much sleep. The wailing man carried on all throughout the day too and we could never find out what he was saying. It wasn't the usual mosque wailing, it was more like preaching but when it's done over huge loudspeakers it's just too much. As it turned out, we were as well to move as Bryan took a turn for the worse and the new hotel we feel, was much better equipped for organising a doctor for him. And it was quieter! Anyway he got better and our life carried on as it did before - just a little bit more slowly... Another day and we took another bike out. The great thing here is that the hotels all seem to do free bike hire if you are staying with the. The lovely people at Tiger One Hotel had lovely shiny new bikes too. We stopped to see gold leaf making. There was a workshop not too far away and it was fascinating to see how they made it.  The beat 200 sheets at a time so it gets hot and thinner. then they cut the sheets into smaller pieces, then beat a stack of 200 again. They repeat this process until it is so thin. It's probably easier to watch the video here than for us to try and describe it We also peddled over to the temple which reportedly holds "The World's Biggest Book". It really just consisted of hundreds of marble slabs with Buddhist text carved on them. It is impressive if you think it was all done by one man but we're afraid, that's as much as our impressiveness lasted! Myanmar has wonderful food which is fantastic for vegetarians. Mandalay has a couple of restaurants serving the Shan style food we had so much enjoyed in Bagan. Bryan was still not 100% so he wasn't able to fully appreciate it as his appetite was taking it's time to reappear. Shame as not only was it absolutely delicious, it was very cheap too. 2 meals of 5 curries each, rice, fresh watermelon juice, a sprite, a large bottle of water and a jug of tea, cost us precisely £3.68. Bargain!The bars here really are not the place for girls. We did try one but it really wasn't nice. They have bins next to each table for rubbish which you think is quite civilised. Then you realise people use them to spit in too and it really turns your stomach! Luckily the shops here serve a limited range of alcohol for home consumption and a 700cl bottle of rum, 4 small bottles of coke and 2 bags of crisps cost us less than £3 so of course we took that option instead, next time we fancied an evening out! Our new hotel doesn't have any English speaking channels. It's not that we want to sit and watch tv all day long, but occasionally we have to slow right down and have a night in. So we enquired at reception if they had any. The lovely people here just replied "tell us which ones you want". 20 minutes later we had a selection of film channels too. We love how things work here. On the day we left Mandalay, we booked our taxi early because we wanted to stop at the Snake Temple too. As we neared the temple, the lane we were on was blocked by a group of young boys (aged around 5 to 11 years we guessed) They were demanding money to be allowed to pass. Two of the boys were dressed as a "pantomime elephant" but resting on some stools. Jody got out of the car and said to them if they want money then we needed to see the elephant! Well the elephant got up off it's stools and started dancing for us. It was actually really quite funny. We took a bit of video you can see here. Well we gave them some money as they performed so well and we headed off to the Snake Temple, which was far less impressive than the dancing elephant. Bryan also took some video in the city of a similar thing which you can see here We headed to the airport and said goodbye to this fabulous country. Next stop - Thailand :-) [gallery columns="4" ids="9068,9070,9072,9076,9078,9081,9084,9086,9088,9092,9096,9098,9102,9108,9115,9122,9127,9131,9132,9135,9139,9141,9145,9149,9152,9157,9160,9163,9167,9168,9173,9179,9186,9188,9190,9193,9197,9199,9201,9204,9206,9208,9210,9211,9212"]