Mandalay

The bus actually arrived in Mandalay early (5am), which is almost unheard of so I headed straight to a hostel for a but of kip. Duly refreshed and having learnt from my Yangon experience, first up was booking my onward transportation to Bagan.

I decided to go for the train as again there were no buses (water festival) that booked I set off to explore.
To visit the main sights in Mandalay you need to pay a government fee of $10 which of course goes straight into the pockets of the Generals. To avoid this I went on another trip around the temples and monasteries.

The main temple in Mandalay contains a gold Buddha statue, being the Burmese New Year the whole temple was packed with pilgrims. In fact in was almost comparable with the pilgrimages i saw in Tibet.

I wandered though some dusty backstreets and by dusty I mean just sand, led my to some local monasteries. Far more interesting than paying $10 to a 1996 palace reconstruction built by slave labour!!

That evening I went to see the Moustache Brothers, a comedy trio who have been banned and arrested multiple times for satirising the military junta, as part of their traditional Burmese dance and comedy act. They now perform at their home only to foreigners (after a mention in the Hugh Grant film About A Boy they're too well known overseas to completely repress). A fantastically funny and moving experience, in spite of only one of them speaking English:







The next day I hired a motorbike and driver to take me to the surrounding former capital cities of Myanmar. They used to move them regularly on the advice of astrologers..,

The day involved a 100m climb to a temple in 40 degree heat, a horse and cart ride around various monasteries (needless to say avoiding the $10 fee...) and crossing the worlds oldest teak bridge, 200 metres in length!! Who ever said Mandalay wasn't worth visiting!!!

An enjoyable couple of hours in a local beer station preceded my train to Bagan...