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Published: March 14th 2015
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piers and ruth with free cocktails 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 so much better than the two
previous shows we had seen with only one puppeteer, especially as it was
performed with a traditional Burmese orchestra.
The next day we travelled by shared taxi to Pyin Oo lwin, an old British
hill station. Of course we thought it would still look how it had in the
thirties and certainly all the old colonial buildings were there, but
now interspersed with the detritus of modern living! Our hotel was in a
lovely old building reminiscent of stock-broker Surrey houses with a fireplace in our bedroom, so we could pretend
we were just about to go out to play tennis or have a sundowner at the
club! We walked around the botanical gardens, which could have been Kew,
and marvelled at the hornbills
in their aviary. A ride in a horse and
carriage took us into town to see the 1936 Purcell clock tower and other
buildings all mixed up with restaurants, shops and a Hindu
temple, very reminiscent of temples in Tamil Nadu, South India with brightly coloured images of gods and animals. Another meal under the stars - how I love
this climate - before a rather hairy walk back to our hotel in the pitch
dark.
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