Mandalay

Ah Mandalay; the ancient royal capital on the exotic Irrawaddy, the land of Kipling, Orwell and George MacDonald Fraser.  Well perhaps, but today it seems mainly to be a big, bustling, chaotic Asian city.

On our first day in Mandalay we walked the city, first past the palace walls.  We didn’t bother to go inside the complex as not much is left as the inside was destroyed by fire in WWII.  The palace was occupied by only two kings before the British took over Burma in the late 1800’s.  

The palace walls and moat

 

We continued on towards Mandalay Hill and the home of many of Mandalay’s religious sites. 

View of Mandalay Hill from the palace moat

We walked up the thousands of steps to the top.  When Bob was here in 1987 the place was packed with devotees.  Now the steps were nearly deserted and lined with shanty huts, basic stalls of food and souvenirs and it seemed to be home to a squatter community.  When we reached the top we discovered that the modern day visitor takes a taxi or bus to the car park near the top and then an escalator for the last few hundred feet. Nevertheless the views from the top were magnificent.

 

 

 

Escalators for the modern day devotee

At the bottom of Mandalay hill is the Kuthodaw Pagoda, built by King Mindon in 1857,it  is surrounded by 729 stupas containing upright stone slabs on which are inscribed the teachings of Buddha. It is known as "World's largest book".

 

 

 The next day we hired a motor scooter to go to Taung Tha Man Lake to see the U-Bein Bridge, a beautiful 1.2 kilometre structure built from teak pilings and planks.  It is said to be the longest bridge of its type in the world.  Tourist and locals flock to it to watch the sunset.  We took a wrong turn or two getting to the bridge which is about 11 km south of the city and happened upon a textile village.  The sides of the lake were filled with skeins of brightly coloured threads hanging to dry, others were twisting the skein to pack up for market and still others were stacking the skeins on the back of motorcycles for delivery.  Small huts housed looms weaving beautifully patterned cloth.  It was a terrific find.  I am very glad we took that wrong but oh so right turn.

Skeins hanging to dry

Loading up for delivery

Weaving the cloth

 The setting of U-Bein Bridge was very pretty.  People came for their wedding photos and fashion shoots as well as general tourist happy snaps.  There was plenty of prospects for everyone.

 

 

 

 

 

We left a bit before sunset as the place was just getting too crowded and we did not relish driving in Mandalay traffic after dark.  When we returned the motorcycle after the drive in the rush hour traffic we both had the wobbly knees and adrenaline rush of having just come through quite an ordeal and survived!

Traffic in Mandalay

Petrol station

The bowser