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March 14th 2015

Published: March 14th 2015

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Myanmar

Bagan Shwezigon Pagoda

The next day we were taken by taxi on an expedition to Mount Popa.
On the way we were taken to a local village to see how they collect palm wine,

and make it into gin and palm sugar products. It was interesting to compare it

to the production of palm wine in West Africa where they don’t go in for making

the sugar products but just stick to the alcohol!!!Mount Popa is famous for
its 777 steps leading up to a temple on top of a very high extinct volcano.

Game for the challenge we set off, having removed our shoes as is the norm,
only for Ruth to be attacked by a resident monkey, who snatched her water
bottle out of her hand, scampered off with it and then calmly unscrewed
the cap, drank a sip and threw it away in disgust - he was
obviously expecting coca cola! We carried on up and the experience
reminded me so much of similar pilgrimage sites in Southern India with
loads of local pilgrims, stalls selling all kinds of trinkets all the
way up, and then plaques at the summit mentioning the names of sponsors who had

Myanmar

Disneyesque modern sculpture

donated large sums for the upkeep of the temple. One made us laugh, an
Englishman had donated £50 but had insisted that QC should be put after
his name...
At the base of the hill was a shrine to all 49 gnats, some newly painted,
dressed in modern clothing and very colourful with neon lights flashing behind them
in a very bling way. On the way back to Bagan we were taken to a
temple, this time which could be climbed on the inside, which allowed us
another spectacular sunset. Our final day in the Bagan area was spent being driven round
in a horse and cart, trying to find the beautiful lively murals that
still exist in some of the temples. We found some breathtaking ones which
unfortunately we were not allowed to photograph, but we did manage to
take some shots. The Indian influence, in both the early
architecture and murals, is very evident in the lively artwork. Our final evening was spent with
an American, Sal, who had recently lost his job in NY banking and was using
his redundancy to travel the world, and Piers, a hooray Henry British
guy currently working for a charity in

Myanmar

Ditto

Saigon. Piers was a great raconteur and was obviously part
of the Chelsea set as had shared a flat with James Hewitt, and as a
photographer for both Hello and OK magazines had met the likes of Elton
John,(gay) George Clooney(gay).Tom Cruise(gay) Simon Cowell(gay) and royalty such as
Prince Charles(not gay!) Prince William and Kate(dull but sweet) and so
on. Thank goodness he had had a road to Damascas conversion about ten
years ago and has since done voluntary work all over the world.
We spent a fun evening together and all arranged to catch the
same 12 hour ferry up the Irrawaddy to Mandalay the next day.

Unfortunately, having got up at 4.30 in order to get good seats the starter

motor of our boat wouldn't work so they ended up giving us back our money and the

four of us shared
a taxi up to Mandalay. On the way I saw what looked like a rocket
launcher in the far distance, and then we realised that it was in fact the newly built
second tallest Buddha in the world. The largest is in China but that one is
carved out of a mountain, so

Myanmar

One of the thousands of Buddhas seen inside the temples

this one looked surreal, stuck in the
middle of a vast plain. I think it is near the new capital, which we
didn't see, which is again a dystopian modern city in the middle of
nowhere. Apparently the then President in the 1980s was told by his
soothsayer that he should move the capital from Yangon otherwise he
would be assassinated. So he secretly had this new city built and eight
years later all civil servants were given 72 hours to pack up and move
there. Apparently it is a mishmash of all types of architecture, wide
pavements and boulevards, spaghetti junctions, flyovers etc but with few
people living there.
Our hotel in Mandalay was really pleasant, with a big airy room, endless
spotless white towels, a TV with CNN and BBC and a lovely en suite. In
fact all of our hotels have been of a good standard even though they
are only two or three star. Cleanliness is obviously very important in
this country and everywhere you look, whether a city or village you can
see women sweeping and tidying. Mandalay is a big modern city
interspersed with older buildings from the colonial times.Much of it was

Myanmar

Another Buddha with added gold leaf

bombed by the Allies during the Second World War and it has been rebuilt on a grid system.

We walked to
the famous jade market where we saw hundreds of workers grinding out
bracelets, necklaces and jade sculptures from large chunks of jadeite
and shops selling vast quantities of jade of every type. Most of it goes to China
who rate jade more highly than gold. Then we visited
a beautiful monastery which was carved with the most exquisite figures
and mythological creatures. It had a wonderful calm atmosphere with the
shaved headed monks in their rust red robes gliding around silently. We then
decided to walk to the Irrawaddy River Hotel but got hopelessly lost.
However it did mean we walk through some fascinating streets with decrepit old
houses, small workshops producing jade artefacts and street vendors
selling vegetables and small household products.The big draw of this
hotel is that they have a Happy Hour at sundown when you can watch the
sun slowly sinking over the magnificent river and its myriad boats
whilst sipping free cocktails! It was so pleasant (maybe it was the three cocktails!) that we decided to eat
there too, which was also really

Myanmar

Four old temples

good - fish cooked in a delicious spicy
Burmese sauce. We had heard of The Moustache brothers, who in

the 80s and 90s had produced satirical sketches condemning the corruption

of the Government. Hardly surprisingly, two of the brothers were imprisoned,

and have since died, apparently because the lead piping in the old prison

poisoned their water supply. The remaining brother still does a show

with his wife, who is a professional dancer. It was interesting, and at times funny,

but did not really tell us any more about Myanmar politics than we already knew.

The following day the four of us decided to hire a boat to experience
traveling on the river as we had missed out on the big boat ride. In
fact it worked out well because the seven hours we spent, with a huge
boat all to ourselves, was plenty of time to get “the Irrawady river experience”
instead of the twelve plus hours we would have spent on the ferry and we were able to
choose where we wanted to go. The river is very wide, and quite shallow and has many

types of boats, ranging from

Myanmar

The Bagan plain

dredgers to simple canoes, whilst the riverside activities,

including washing and cock fighting makes fascinating viewing. More of Simon’s ashes

went into the river here as I am positive he would have loved the huge amount of human

activity going on everywhere. We were taken upstream first to the village of Mingun

to an enormous pile of bricks which was the
base of what would have been the biggest pagoda in the world in the
eighteenth century if the reigning ruler who had commissioned it hadn't
been assassinated so building had stopped. It was a huge structure, with enormous yawning cracks
caused by two earthquakes. There were big posters warnings that the government would
not take responsibility for any accident but we took the risk and
climbed, along with hundreds of mostly Myanmar or Thai tourists, to the
top with good, if hazy views over the river. Going downstream we
saw on the shoreline various temples and pagodas of towns which had
once been capitals of the country hundreds of years ago. An extraordinary floating hotel
passed us, built as if floating on two great golden birds with life size
elephants and Palm trees decorating

Myanmar

Bagan at sunset

the deck. Goodness knows how much a
night on that would cost! Our next stop was the longest teak bridge in the
world. This turned out to be a huge tourist site so thousands of people
were crowded onto the bridge, all takings photos of themselves. After
more cocktails and another meal at our favourite hotel we watched the show called

The Moustache Brothers which originally was three brothers but is now down to one.

It was supposed to be a witty satirical take on the political situation in Myanmar but

although it was interesting, including traditional dancing, it certainly didn't really deal

with current politics, perhaps because it is too risky, so we were a little disappointed.
We then said fond farewells to Piers and Sal who had been good
fun but were moving on to other parts of Myanmar .
For our final day in Mandalay Ruth and I decided to visit the Royal
Palace. This had been virtually destroyed by Allied bombing in WW2, but
has been reconstructed in part. The most impressive thing about it was
the vast moat and walls surrounding the royal gardens - we had to walk
miles

Myanmar

Making palm sugar and coconut sweets

in the heat to get to the entrance but once inside it was rather
disappointing though it did give some idea of the size of the place when
it had been fully functional. We then walked on to another beautifully
carved monastery which had survived the bombing. We so much prefer

the old teak ones to the gaudy paint,
led lights, and Disney figures of the modern ones. From there we climbed
up Mandalay hill to see the sunset. This again is rather like Mount Popa
where there are endless steps, numerous small shops, shrines and temples
all the way up. As one has to walk barefoot this is a real trial,
especially as there were a number of terraces which one presumed were
the summit but weren't. Finally we reached the top, only to find
hundreds of tourists who had been brought nearly to the top by taxi!
We decided we needed a treat so after a pleasant meal eaten again
outdoors in a lovely garden at the Green Elephant restaurant we went to
see a puppet show- this time with four puppeteers and a traditional dancer who, for
one scene, pretended to be a puppet. It was