hui's monologue : Myanmar Trip 2014

Myanmar Trip 2014 - Part 3 (Mandalay)

Click for Part 1: Yangon and Part 2: Bagan

Mandalay Day 1

Warning: This is a REALLY long post because we covered a fair bit of ground in Mandalay!

I was woke up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason - but I think it could be due to the complete darkness both in the room and outside. Realized my phone wasn't charging anymore and that it was complete darkness outside except for the moonlight gave me the conclusion that... it's a blackout!

I attempted to wake the rest up but I guess no one really cared about whether it was a blackout or not because it's 2am in the morning. There's no purpose in some of the dark photos here - no idea what I was thinking because really we can't see anything without a flashlight.

Us getting all romantic at the hotel lobby with candles - apparently it's very common for blackouts to happen in Bagan.

That's Phyllis at the lobby waiting for the hotel owner to tend to us. Photos below taken with flash. The owner mentioned that it is common for blackouts to happen in Bagan, especially so after the explosion of tourism after Myanmar opened up. There is still much room for improvement in the infrastructure of the country.

Our bus ticket - which already gave me a feeling that it will not be as comfortable and luxurious like JJ Express.

The bus company arranged for transport to pick us up at the hotel - as the transport is also owned by the bus company itself, it gave us insurance that in the event we were late (which we were due to the blackout), the bus will not leave without us.

Our transport to the bus terminal!

It was a lorry in case the photo doesn't give you any clue. Sans the bumpy road and the extremely cold morning winds - it was actually pretty fun. The ride was about 20-30 min long. The bus station was extremely empty - there wasn't any tourists except us. The bus driver signaled us to load our luggage into the bus and get on.

We were the only passengers!

I was right, it wasn't as luxurious as JJ Express and it smelled a little funky. Granted that it's a day ride and ONLY 6 hours, I guess it was kind of bearable.

While the seats were not the most comfortable, the scenery along the way was very beautiful. We passed by fields and fields of sunflowers, plots after plots of richly cultivated farmlands. When we were not dozing off, we were constantly pointing out of the window and exclaiming out loud "Is that wheat?", "Is that corn?" and "Ya it is corn!".

Absolute urbanites behaving like country pumpkins, in the countryside.

The bus made multiple stops along the way, picking up passengers and within the next 2 to 3 hours, the bus started to fill up.

Granny with weird hat joined us on the bus trip:

We arrived in Mandalay around an hour later than expected. Similar to every other bus terminals that we had visited so far, there were hordes of drivers gathering around the bus - waiting and asking for your business. I will give credits where credits is due - that is the drivers were never pushy. If you didn't want their ride, they were cool with it. I guess it has something to do with the mild nature of the locals as well.

One of the drivers was very helpful - a 24-year old enthusiastic young man. Although we declined upfront for a ride (as our research tells us that the hostel we will be staying at is of walking distance), he patiently studied the map with us and pointed us directions. Turn out well, the hostel wasn't THAT near and we decided to engage his service for the next day's itinerary.

He quoted us US$25 for a full day (inclusive of additional tour guide function) and Phyllis mentioned this was the exact price she read off many forums. Honest and helpful, what more can we ask for!

After about a 20-min ride, we arrived at our accommodation for the next 2 days - Yoe Yoe Lay Guesthouse. It's really more of a hostel and we paid about US$10 a night per person. Dirt cheap! The hostel is owned by a Burmese Chinese lady and to our surprise, she spoke perfect Mandarin! We were the only Chinese at the breakfast table the next day and she came forth and asked if we understood Mandarin. It's always nice to meet someone who speaks your mother tongue in foreign land. :)

Ok I know the place looks a little shabby from the photos but the rooms and bathrooms were very clean. We were really lucky as well - we were assigned a room with attached bathroom all to ourselves!

We left our luggage behind and decided to head out for lunch. The food choices were very different from Bagan. Bagan had more options in terms of Western food as it was more of a tourist destination. We didn't see as many western food outlets in Mandalay - or maybe we were looking at the wrong places haha.

Weihao and his mountain of rice. I can't remember what dish this is but it was fried rice with red beans - weird combination if you ask me.

I had Shan Noodles - which was spicy rice noodles. It reminds me a little of the spicy dandan noodles of Southern China but this was a drier version. it originated from the Shan state in Myanmar (borders on China, Thailand and Laos). It's one of the must-eats of Myanmar so do try it if you have a chance!

Phyllis wanted to try Mohinga, another must-eat in Myanmar but the eatery has already ran out of them so she settled for some French toast instead.

Hailed a cab and first stop was Mandalay Palace. We were actually a little scared of going in because there were MANY signs that kept reminding you not to take photos until you are in the Palace itself as there are still military folks based there. The Palace didn't take long to explore, it was getting to the Palace that took a long while. The entire compound is massive and is a square area of 2 km per side. For more information on this royal palace, you can read here as well.

You can only get in via the East Gate, which can be an issue if you stay at the West Gate (where most hotels are).

Loads of photos coming up!

Just a glimpse how far the wall spans!

Taking the long walk across the compound towards the Palace.

Of course we had to go up to the watch tower! Steps were a little creaky and it freaked me out for a good part of the climb up.

View from the top:

Like every other tourist sites, there were a couple of drivers waiting out there for business. We decided on a pick-up just because I don't know - maybe it looks cool. Hahahaha.

Next up heading to Mandalay Hill - where it is famous for clusters of pagodas and monasteries.

Shwenandaw Monastery - known to be carved entirely out of teak wood. It's a real amazing piece of art work.

We headed on to the Kuthodaw Pagoda where the world's biggest book is located.

This book has 1,460 page and each page of the book is a stone tablet around 153 cm in height and 13 cm thick. Each stone tablet is housed separately in a cave-like structure and has a gem on its roof. It's amazing how much space this book takes up!

It was just too tiring to walk the entire compound because it was so huge! This gives you a rough view of how it looks like bird eye view:

At the very top of Mandalay Hill is the Su TaungPyi (literally wish-fulfilling) Pagoda. This is a popular place for tourists to catch the sunset. If you are fit enough, you can opt to climb the entire hill as your tour route (visiting temples along the way). However, granted that we were already on the second half of the trip and we were honestly quite exhausted so we opted for the driver to drive us up instead.

Once you reach the pagoda, you have the option to take the lift up (we did. Hahaha) or do a short climb up the stairs.

Here's the view:

Surroundings of the top floor of the Pagoda:

The sunset was very breath-taking (sans the part that it was REALLY crowded). The driver recommended us to try a restaurant called Green Elephant. Food was so so but it was the priciest meal we ate in Myanmar so far - around US$14 per person. He got commission for driving us there! Hahahaha. Horrible.

We headed back straight after dinner for a good rest. And that wraps up our first hectic day in Mandalay!

Mandalay Day 2

Our honest young driver (recall US$25 full day driver, not the one who brought us to Green Elephant) came to pick us up the next day.

First up the Mahamuni Pagoda

Only male devotees are allowed to apply golden leaves on the statue - it looks abit shapeless now because so many layers of golden leaves have been applied over the years. The statue went from weighing 6 tons to now 12 tons. 15 more cm of golden leaves were estimated to have been applied by the devotees! It's incredible.

This is a painting of a monk cleaning the statue's face - the cleaning takes place every morning around 4am. If you wake up early enough, you will be able to catch it. The face is being washed by only one chosen monk until he passes away. Apparently before this monk passes away, Mahamuni will choose the next candidate via dreams. The face is being washed by Tanaka everyday!

On a side note, Burmese folks love to put Tanaka on their cheeks and face - you will see it on almost every person's face. It's supposed to keep them fair and skin hydrated given how hot and dry Myanmar is.

In the backyard, there is an area where devotees can make some Tanaka (juice?) by rubbing it against the stone slab and some holy water. The juice made will be kept in the temple to clean Mahamuni's statue's face.

Note the lady's face with some white/yellowish patch on her cheeks - that's Tanaka.

There was a long line of workshops outside the temple - which carves statues out of stone:

Next up: The Mahagandayon Monastery! Its the largest teaching Buddhist monastery in Myanmar and has over 1000 young monks studying there.

Everyday there will be tourists visiting the monastery - to catch a glimpse of the daily lunch session where all the young monks will queue up in 2 straight rows and walk in to their canteen for lunch.

These signs were outside the canteen - food for thought indeed:

We left shortly in order not to disturb the daily activities of the monks and headed off to Inwa, an ancient capital 20km away from Mandalay.

It was a long ride and we started conversations with the driver. He had a university degree and spoke decent English (by Myanmar standard) but chose to be a driver instead because office work just didn't pay well. A regular graduate earns about US$100 a month and more well off jobs such as lawyers and doctors make about US$600-700 a month. It wasn't enough to buy house or get married, he said. As a tourist driver, he makes about US$20-25 a day and most of the time they have no problems getting a driving job every other day given the rise in tourism. Guess it's not just us folks in developed places who has housing and money woes!

We passed by a highway along the way, that according to the driver, if you drive 2 days straight down the same road, you will reach India!

There's only one way to get to Inwa (which is built on an artificial island - or so we were told) - via boat:

It's a tiny island and all I can say is when you arrive on the island, the first smell you will get it horse poop and pee. And loads of them. I will spare you that by not posting a photo of it.

There are 2 ways to tour the island, either by horse cart or walk. Most people opt for horse cart as it would take too much time to walk and I'm not sure if you will be able to cover all grounds that way.

So horse cart it is again!

We ended the day at U-Bein bridge - a 1.2 km long bridge made of teak wood. It was built in the 1840s!

We asked the driver for dinner recommendation (clearly we did not learn our lesson from the other driver's Green Elephant the previous night). He asked if we are keen on Chinese food and if we spoke Mandarin. We said yes to both and he said "now that's easy". He dropped us off at an outlet near our accommodation (we requested for proximity to hostel as we have a late night overnight bus to catch).

We signalled "3 people" to the server and we were shown a seat in the middle of the restaurant. Another female server came by and the first question she asked us was if we spoke Mandarin! We said yes and all our conversations thereafter were made in Mandarin. This is way too fun I swear.

As we were all not entirely hungry, we opted to share a large portion of fried noodles. Oily but absolutely yummy.