Last night’s visit to the night market was a complete dead
loss; apparently there is a vibrant market selling absolutely everything during
the day but at nightfall a few stalls set up in the street plus BBQ stands
selling skewers of ???
Luckily our taxi man had offered to wait, so within about 20
mins we were back in the car and off to the restaurant, the Green
Elephant. The food was delicious so we
think we’ll go back there again before we leave Mandalay.
Our first day actually on tour today and it was
fabulous. Our guide is called Nylon (at
least that’s what it sounds like) and is probably early 30s but looks
considerably younger. He appears very
organised and knowledgeable but as with the guides in Vietnam/Cambodia/ Laos
earlier this year, he is quite difficult to understand. The group is down to 18 (don’t know why) and
we’re on a 32 seater coach with Mr R the driver and his ‘oppo Mr Misty who
helps us all in and out of the coach and hands out wipes each time we enter a pagoda and have to take our shoes off.
Mostly we have visited pagodas or monasteries and, although
all lovely, their individual histories wouldn’t make particularly interesting reading,
so I think I’ll just name them and give a few pertinent details (and apologies,
but the photos will be straight from camera as I’m too tired to process my RAW
files tonight).
Mahamuin Pagoda (which houses a statue of the Buddha which
was made whilst the man was still alive, the only one left in the world, and
supposedly a true likeness. The statue has grown and become deformed over
time with the gold leaf Buddhist followers press onto it during their
devotions. He is also attended by 5
statues which believers say if you have a pain and touch the corresponding part
on the statue you will be cured – needless to say Ian gave the back of one
statue a good old rub. There was also an interesting demonstration of how monks’
robes are made; from spinning to the weaving.
On the way to lunch we stopped at a craft place (not the
usually one where you’re expected to buy!!) they did teak carvings, made beautiful
puppets etc. This man's legs amazed me until I realised he was probably just making the most of a physical deformity.
Mandalay Palace totally destroyed by allied bombing in WW2
and rebuilt in 1990s as a replica showing how the last king lived. The whole
complex is square, with a 2kms moat on each side and dominates one end of
Mandalay – rather impressive.
After an unremarkable lunch of Myanmar cuisine (had better
last night) we went to the Golden Palace Monastery which is the only surviving
building from the Mandalay Palace as it was dismantled and resited by the last
king, it being the place where his father died. It’s now crumbling but was once totally
covered in gold leaf.
Kuthodaw Pagoda which is known as the largest book in the
world as it consists of 729 individual stupas (little buildings with turrets on
top) each containing a marble tablet inscribed with a different teaching of the
Buddha. The Myanmar people aren’t able
to translate the original’s Sanskrit inscriptions so a smaller replica has been
built with wordings in Burmese instead and actually from an architectural point
I found this a much more interesting set of buildings although far less ornate.
Finally, we got into open back trucks for a hairy ride up to
the top of Mandalay Hill for sunset.
This is lit up pagodas I posted a couple of days ago. The most incongruous thing was once at the
top, we were faced with a tower containing 3 escalators to get us to the
top. There’s also a lift but that was
broken. When we wanted to come down, the
escalators simply got turned the other way to go down – I suppose all
escalators can do that but I’ve never thought of it before.
