After making it to Mandalay, I took a badly needed nap. I needed energy before my 20 km bike tour that afternoon. Grasshopper tours didn't disappoint! We traversed through the ancient capital of Ava seeing centuries' old pagodas stopping along the way for a roadside snack of fried tempura with chickpeas and some sort of spicy dip. We also passed by some villagers cutting down bamboo to later weave into sheets that are used as walls for their houses. The next town we reach after Ava was Amarapura, known for weaving. We visited a silk weaving workshop and saw some women in action at the loom making ceremonial longhi with beautiful designs. After that, it was onto U Bein bridge for sunset. We paddled out into a boat to watch the silhouetted figures of monks crossing the bridge on their way home for the evening. I enjoyed the tour so much, I've decided to do another one before I leave to see another side of Mandalay.
To give my legs a rest, I hired a driver on my second day in Mandalay to see the sites within the city. The day began with a visit to a gold plate workshop where I saw how gold plate is made. As so many temples, pagodas and Buddhas are plated in gold, this is a big industry in Myanmar. We then paid a visit to Mahamuni Paya which houses a giant golden Buddha where devout Buddhist men (but not women) can pound some gold plate onto the Buddha themselves. This makes for a rather bumpy looking Buddha, since your average man isn't an artist at such a craft. We then got to see some more local artisans at work with visits to the stone carving district, a
- wood carving workshop, and the jade market. While it sounds like the guide was trying to get me to spread around my western wealth by taking me to a bunch of places where you could potentially get suckered into buying things, the proprietors actually didn't bother me at all and I was able to walk away empty handed. There is no room in my luggage for souvenirs at this point.
With the majority of our visits to see local life covered, we started back on the pagodas and monasteries beginning with Shwe In Bin Kyuang. This beautifully carved teak monastery was quiet and very peaceful. There wasn't another tourist in sight! The only other people I saw were monks meditating or going about their daily chores.
Next stop was the flower market, an important part of Myanmar life due to the extent of alms giving in the way of flowers for the Buddhas. It was a very busy and colorful place. We then ventured on to the Royal Palace, which was quite the complex. After having visited the Grand Palace in Thailand, the Forbidden City in China, and the Royal Palace in Cambodia, this wasn't as ornate or impressive, but I'd still be happy to be a princess there! While I was wandering around, a group of teenage girls and their mother approached me and asked for a picture. I assumed they wanted me to take their picture. When I went to reach for the camera, one of the girls passed it to her mother while she looped her arm through mine to have our picture taken together. I'd been getting lots of stares throughout the day as the Burmese probably don't see too many blonde girls walking around. What a trip!
Next stop was Golden Palace Monastery and Atu Mashi Monastery, side by side and yet very different. The former was a teak carved monastery with two gilded Buddhas within behind a barrier with a big sign forbidding women to enter. The latter, an enormous white-washed and golden building with an enormous empty hall housing a smallish Buddha statue. My celebrity continued within Atu Mashi Monastery where I was surrounded by about 20 children of varying ages who seemingly wanted to practice their English on me. I snapped a picture with them before leaving too.
My favorite stop of the day was next up: Kuthodaw Pagoda. This site is known to be the world's largest book. Surrounding the golden stupa, there are 729 marble slabs contained within their own small stupas which make up the entire 15 books of the Triptaka. Another 1774 slabs containing commentary encircle Sandamuni Paya next door. The vast number of mini stupas reminded me of the cemetery in Buenos Aires full of mausoleums.
I got a lesson on Buddhism from a betel nut chewing monk at our next stop, Kyauktawgyi Paya. From the bits I could understand between his gross spitting and broken English, within the pagoda is a giant Buddha made out of one slab of marble weighing 900 tons. He walked me around the complex, spitting out historical facts and red juice for about 20 minutes and then told me he wanted a donation so he could buy a new robe. I figured I'd be forking out some kyat at the end of his tour, but was shocked when he asked for $20! Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for me, all I had on me was the equivalent of $5 which I gladly handed over. It's not every day you get to have a monk spit on you!
Last stop of the day was Mandalay Hill. On our drive up the hill, we stopped for a photo at a standing Buddha whose arm points out towards the Royal Palace. We also attempted to stop and see a reclining Buddha but the doors to the pagoda were closed so I could only catch a glimpse through cracks in the walls. The view of all of the stupas filling the city and countryside around Mandalay from the top of Mandalay Hill was a great way to end an exhausting day.
Power outages are very common here. In the past 36 hours, there have been two. The first one was just before I laid down for a nap at my hotel. The outage was bread though thanks to generators backing up the entire hotel. Same thing happened while I was having dinner at Diamond Ring Indian Restaurant. They immediately ran outside and turned on a generator. I guess when you run a business and power outages happen daily, you've gotta have a back up!
Feeling I had a full day of the Mandalay sites on my second day, I opted for an off-the-beaten path bike tour on day 3. Since I had already done one tour with Grasshopper Adventures and had another one scheduled for the next day in Bagan, the manager gave me a nice discount. I'm happy I went for the ride. What was meant to be a 13 mile ride turned into an 18 mile ride to the local market and through the rural villages surrounding the city visiting a bamboo fan workshop, a mushroom farm (it's not what you're thinking...unless you're thinking of normal, boring mushrooms, in which case, it is) and a great little roadside tea house where we are all kinds of deliciously fried Myanmar snacks. Another lone traveler from Canada, Mike, joined the tour. He was flying out to Bagan later on the same flight I was so we decided to have dinner so that neither one of us had to dine alone. I hope meeting people is this easy for the rest of the trip!
In parting, I leave you with my final Mandalay discovery. The airport doesn't have air conditioning. To give you a feeling for what that's like, imagine yourself inside the dry sauna at your local YMCA. I say YMCA over 24 Hour Fitness or Equinox or whatever shmancy gym you might belong to, because this airport is more on the budget side of things (see a over re: no air conditioning). Then, schedule every flight in the country on every airline at approximately the same time so anyone flying out of Mandalay today is sharing that sauna with you. It's 97 degrees F/36 degrees C with a heat index of 111/44. I'm exaggerating of course, because it's low season and there actually aren't very many people anywhere, but the airport is still too hot to deprive passengers of their right to AC.
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