On the boat to Mandalay where the flying fishes play

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Apparently Kipling never went to Mandalay but as my Dad said before we came it's one of the 3 exotic sounding places people had heard of. I've been to Kathmandu and now we are going to Mandalay, I think I'll give Timbuktu a miss.

The taxi picks us up at 4.30am and it's not until we are ready for getting on the ferry from Bagan that we realise the travel agent has given us tickets for the previous day, thankfully they take the tickets from us without even looking at them. The ferry is large but there are only 20 of us on board so we have space to spread out both inside and out on deck. The boat swaps pilots at various points along the river, it's dry season and the river is at its lowest, at times it requires a boy with a stick to test the depth of the water at the front of the boat to prevent us getting stuck on a sand bank. It's slow going but the hours pass by amiably with first breakfast and then lunch served in the restaurant and in watching life along the banks. The ferry is late arriving which gives us another stunning sunset over the river.

Mandalay is large and bustling, we find a street restaurant nearby for a meal serving traditional Shan food and all the dishes we choose are tasty, We try to have a drink on our way back at a place full of young men watching Italian football. Martyn to the waiter 'beer', waiter to Martyn 'tea', Martyn 'beer', waiter 'tea' and finally in a plaintive tone Martyn 'beer' and the waiter 'tea' at which point we notice the 50+ young men were all drinking tea, it was a tea house and not a beer station.

We hire a taxi for the day for a trip around the various places of interest just outside Mandalay, a budda that has had so much gold leaf added to his calf's he looks like he has elepantitus, a monastery where the monks are queuing up for lunch and a couple of pagodas giving views back to Mandalay. A small ferry takes us over to an island where horses and carts take tourists around the various sites. They have to switch us to a cart with a larger horse which causes great hilarity and our female driver is defiantly a live wire. Before returning to Mandalay we stop at U Bein bridge at Amarapura and walk along this famous teak bridge that is over 1km long.

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