The road to Mandalay
August 10……The road to Mandalay is actually a 20 minute prop jet flight on the great Air Bagan, filled only with foreign travellers as no locals could afford such extravagance. We were met by our driver Chalwin and his 20 year old Nissan with worse suspension than the last car and a top speed of 60 kph.
Mandalay isn’t quite as romantic as Rudyard Kipling made it out in his famous poem or the subsequent movies and songs. But as a former capital of the old Burma (well, for 24 years at least) and the second largest city of Myanmar it still has plenty to offer. We visited a local monastery which is known for housing over 1,000 monks of all ages. The key attraction was the daily feeding time when these monks lined up to receive their rice and other goodies from the locals before sitting down to eat their meal while the tourists took photos.
What was much more interesting to Julie and I was wandering around the living compound of this huge monastery, seeing the monks going about their daily business of washing, cleaning, studying, socialising and generally living the calm simple soul-strengthening life of a monk. We also caught a fantastic scene where monks with rice left over from their daily meal handed it out to poor local kids who would come through the back doors of the compound hoping for a feed.
The city is probably best known for its heavily walled and moated Mandalay Palace and Fort, 2 km long on each of its four squared walls, where for a brief period in the mid 1800’s Mandalay was the nation’s capital. When the British took the city in 1885 the royal family’s reign ended and Mandalay became yet another British outpost. The palace and fort, mainly built of beautiful teak,
featured lavish quarters, a 110 ft watchtower and the tomb of the second last king. The view from the watchtower is worth the effort and the place has a royal but run down feel to it (in fact, totally rebuilt after the Japanese controlled the city for most of WWII and it was burned down in one of the many battles for local supremacy).
We saw a few other payas and zetis and the like but rounded off our first afternoon in Mandalay by visiting Kuthodaw Paya, said to contain the world’s biggest book. It is carved in a tiny font in an almost forgotten language on 729 marble slabs from the 19th century.
The other main feature of the city is Mandalay Hill, which overlooks the whole region. A combination of a steep switchback road and a series of very long escalators (which apparently stop working frequently with the power shortages) bring you to the summit to enjoy a nice temple, talk to the local monks who try to hit you up for money and soak in the magnificent sunset views over the Irrawaddy River.
The situation with the local currency is complex and a trap for young players. The currency is called the Kyat (pronounced chat) and the official exchange rate is about 6 Kyat to the dollar. But you trade your good old greenbacks for Kyat on the black market at the rate of about 950 or 1,000 to the dollar. The trick to this is that even the most shady money changer will only take crispy brand new notes, no old series (with the small US President heads) and nothing that has been folded or tarnished in any way.
The explanation we got for this is that the government buys this money and uses it for foreign trade – only the shiny new stuff is acceptable. We had heard about this before we arrived and brought mostly brand new notes but a few of them had been folded a few times or maybe even passed through a few hands – these would be immediately rejected as unacceptable (although we managed to sell one $100 note that wasn’t too bad but we had to take a lower exchange rate). Strange stuff.
The irony of this is that their own local currency is never replaced by the government mints so it deteriorates to such a state that the notes are frequently just solid sticky tape, often so brown with dirt and grim you can’t read any writing or numbers on them, torn, wadded up, even stapled together. You don’t even want to touch these things they’re so bad. And on top of that, the country does not have any coins at all, very odd in a place where indestructible coins would be perfect. The smallest note we saw was 10 Kyat which is worth one cent but we heard there was also a 5 Kyat and even a 1 Kyat note (one tenth of one cent). Bizarre.
And of course any entrance fees for government run sites, such as the Bagan temples, Mandalay Palace, etc, are all paid in crispy USD, none of this local junk for the men in green.
And another thing. They use yards and miles, still left over from the British before the war, but they drive on the right hand side. Go figure. However, because almost all of their cars come from Thailand, which drives on the left, the steering wheels of 90% of the cars are on the right, making it much more difficult (and dangerous) to drive on the right side. You couldn’t dream up this stuff.
The following day we spent most of the time visiting the numerous ancient capitals (or what’s left of them) outside of Mandalay. The morning was spent on a private boat motoring up the Irrawaddy past isolated villages of fishermen’s homes built on stilts to the far shore where we visited the village of Mingun.
The main feature of Mingun is the Mingun Paya (obviously) which looks more like a small hill and allegedly was only one-third complete when the ruling king died and they stopped construction. If that is true and if they had ever finished this thing it would have rivalled the pyramids for size, setting and grandeur. Instead it is now just a huge pile of rocks which we climbed up on top of and admired the views.
Not to be outdone by the largest book in the world, Mingun sports the largest uncracked bell in the world which we were able to stand inside of while some nong on the outside rang it a few times. That was fun.
For lunch we had a traditional Myanmar meal which means a very local roadside restaurant where there is no menu and they just bring out bowl after bowl of food to endlessly feast on. In the end they brought out 24 dishes and if we finished one they just brought out another. Numerous vegetables, not all recognisable, fish, meat, salads, various other things we weren’t sure of, all of it in living colour spread out in front of us. Most of it was delicious, whatever it may be, and it turned out to probably be the best eating adventure of the entire trip. But our driver said it was not good for westerners to eat at these restaurants at night because the uneaten food is just recycled all day long until it is finally gone. Okay, eat early and move on.
We crossed the Irrawaddy on one of its rare bridges to the ancient city of Sagaing which featured a unique stupa shaped like a giant breast. And we took a small little motor boat to another island where the ancient capital of Inwe was.
The highlight of this island is that since there are no roads or vehicles everyone travels by horse and cart. So we hired a young guy to take us to some of the sites, the usual teak monastery, huge temple and – to be completely different – a watch tower. This watch tower was built by the British and suffered a bit in an earthquake so that it is leaning perilously to one side. We quickly climbed up for the photos and views but escaped via trotting horse and cart before it fell over.
Our visit to Mandalay ended with yet another sunset spectacle, this time on the U Bein wooden bridge, all 1,300 yards long, across a lake dotted with half-submerged temples, boats, and floating plants. It was a peaceful and beautiful ending to our time in Mandalay.
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