The River to Mandalay

Our second pre-dawn start in two days saw us down at the Irrawaddy River at 5am, attempting to board a boat from the beach using a plank, in the dark, carrying all our luggage! It was no mean feat!

The boat had two seating compartments downstairs, each able to seat about 40 people so you can imagine our surprise when we got to the departure time with only six other passengers on board! We didn’t leave for another half an hour though as our boat was beached! After a lot of revving and pushing on sticks from the crew, we finally began our 12 hour journey to Mandalay.

About half an hour into our journey, we got to watch the sunrise. Looking back towards Bagan, we could also see the hot air balloons that we had ridden in the day before. It was a pretty nice start to the day!

The journey itself was really relaxed, with nothing really to do except write blogs and watch the world go by. I was encouraged by the women on board to use thanaka, a type of suncream made from wood bark. You can watch more about it on the BBC here.

As we got closer to Mandalay, we passed Sagaing and Amarapura, both of which are full of temples. It was a great backdrop to watch the sunset.

Upon arrival into Mandalay, we were surprised to find taxi hawkers actually getting onto the boat and accosting us before we had even disembarked! We’d expected to be surrounded when we docked but not before we’d reached dry land!

We walked off the boat and got a taxi at the top of the steps to our hotel, Hotel Aurora. We made use of the free cocktail that’s served every evening and had dinner on their rooftop bar, surrounded by smiling chairs!

The main thing we noticed when we arrived in Mandalay was the appalling air quality. You could actually see the air! Luckily over the next 24 hours it cleared up, but we decided to only go for a short walk around the block after dinner to get our bearings.

Our hotel was right next to Zay Cho market, so we wandered there to the outdoor stalls which were mainly selling books and clothes. There were lots of warehouses nearby stocking tomatoes, potatoes, onions and garlic. Despite being about 9pm, it was a hive of activity with vehicles transporting goods around ready for the following day.​

With only one full day in Mandalay, we were up early to make the most of it. Our first stop was Mandalay Hill. It took 45 minutes to climb to the top, passing various shrines and pagodas on the way up. One unique statue was of Buddha pointing to the position of the Golden Palace. Legend has it that Buddha prophesied about the building of Mandalay by King Mindon and that it would become the centre of Buddhism. The statue shows Buddha pointing to where the city should be built.

The pagoda complex at the top was stunning, with lots of mirrored tiles reflecting the sun. We also got some views out over Mandalay, although the smog hadn’t cleared sufficiently to get a great view.

On the way back down we came across two very small puppies, who even me as a non-animal lover, found pretty cute! We also bought a few pictures of places we’d been in Myanmar, made with paint and a razor blade on photographic paper.

At the bottom of the hill, we visited a couple more temples, including the old Palace (which I loved because all the temples were in perfectly straight lines!) and another that houses over 1,700 stone tablets that have been inscribed with Buddhist scriptures, sometimes referred to as the world’s largest book.

For lunch we visited a little restaurant around the corner called Pan Tha Din where we got one of the cheapest meals we’ve had, two curries, two bottles of water and a coke and a complementary tea leaf salad, all for £2.50! The food was pretty good too!

From here we walked through various neighbourhoods to get to the Eastern gate of the Golden Palace. We declined the offer of a tuk tuk to the Palace (but it’s very far to walk, how far, 1km, we’ll walk!) and spent the next hour or so wandering around various wooden buildings. During WW2, as the British retreated, they burnt most of the buildings to the ground so they couldn’t be used by the Japanese, so many of the buildings had been rebuilt or restored.

We got a taxi back to Zay Cho market to look around the indoor stalls. Most of them sold fabric and clothes, although there were also loads of water pistols in preparation for the Water Festival that happens in April.

After another free cocktail at the hotel, we went to a restaurant called Mingalabar, which means Hello, for dinner. We treated ourselves to a bottle of wine produced near Inle Lake and it was actually pretty tasty! We ordered a curry each and luckily didn’t order anything else as there were about six or seven complementary side dishes that came with it! They also threw in dessert so by the end we were absolutely stuffed. Again, it was very cheap, with all the food only costing £6.90 for the both of us!

With a few hours to kill before our flight, we headed back towards the Hill to see two more buildings, the first being Atumashi Monastery, which was OK but a bit sparse. By far the star of the show was Shwenandaw Monastery next door, which was intricately carved out of teak. It’s in the process of being restored and you could watch the teak carvers working next to the temple. Definitely worth the visit.

Our taxi driver had waited for us and after a quick stop back at the hotel to collect our washing, pack up and check out, we headed south towards the airport. Our driver suggested we stop off at two main attractions on the way, Mahamuni Pagoda and U Bein Bridge. Mahamuni Pagoda is a big complex, at the centre of which is a Buddha statue that male Buddhists constantly top up with gold leaf (women aren’t allowed). This is the main temple for Buddhists in Mandalay and holds special significance for them.

We continued south to U Bein Bridge, a wooden structure that would utterly fail to pass health and safety in the UK! It’s the most photographed spot in all of Mandalay, with tourists mainly turning up for sunrise and sunset. I’m really glad we were there at lunchtime as it was less busy and meant we were less as risk of being bumped off the bridge as it had no sides to it!

It’s really long, so we only managed to get to the centre before we had to turn round to head to the airport. We’d agreed to pay our driver in a mix of Kyat and Dollar for the journey, but when we got to the airport, he deemed our dollar note was not new enough to be accepted so we had to change some Thai Bhat into Kyat to pay him the full amount. This meant after having run down our Kyat, we had loads left again! We ended up buying lots of food to use it up, forgetting we had lunch on the plane. As a result, we arrived into Bangkok extremely stuffed!

Our first impressions of Mandalay were a bit negative due to the smog, but it definitely improved as the smog cleared. Of all the places we visited in Myanmar, it felt the most like the rest of South East Asia, bustling and full of noise and scooters. If Yangon was more like HCMC, Mandalay was definitely more like Hanoi. It was good to get the contrast.