A Boat to Mandalay

February 6, 2012

I'm writing from the upper deck of the Shwe Keinnery  a river boat heading up the Ayarwaddy River from Bagan to Mandalay .
The air is warm and there is a haze of low laying smoke that brings a warm glow to the scene as locals make there way as I imagine they have for the last thousand years or more. Woman balancing baskets on there head, ox carts carrying wood and other assorted goods and fishermen cast there nets from small narrow wooden boats. As we lazily make our way there are pagodas that regularly dot the shore line. With slow determination, a steady stream of cargo and transport  vessels work there way up and down this watery highway, many with young men at there bow sounding the water depth with long poles as they go.

February 7, 2012

The boat arrived in the evening just after sunset and I decided to take a trishaw (a bicycle with a sidecar) to the hotel.  The hotels in Mandalay, and Burma in general, are basic and typically over priced compared to the rest of SE Asia.  A plane and unloved room with fan is about $20-30 per night, about twice the cost of a similar room in Vietnam, Cambodia, and most of Thailand or Malaysia. That said, I am quite comfortable and at least the internet works... on a basic level anyway.

The taxis in Mandalay are particularly interesting for there size if nothing else, they are tiny.

And somewhat undependable...

I took the "around town Temple/Pagoda Tour the next day.  I visited many sights.

The Burmese are a very devout people.

I happened on a ceremony at one of the temples.

Wood carvings are common and very detailed.

Painting the Stupas

The day ended with a climb up Mandalay hill, what a work out.  I appreciate the exercise, but doing it with no shoes really beat up my feet and ended up bruising my feet to the point that I'm finding it hard to walk the last few days.  To enter any religious site it is required that a person take off there shoes and socks.  That's not usually a problem except that many (most in Bagan) require climbing on and over rough and broken terrane. A real problem for my tender feet.  I'm sure they, my feet, will toughen up as I go. In the mean time it is giving me a chance to catch up on the blog.

View from the bottom

On the way up I couldn't resist a self portrait

View from the top

I came across these Nuns while at the top

When I got to the top, Buddha was there to tell me to go back.

The architecture of the buildings is impressive and the number of these religious sites is astounding.  Everywhere one goes there is a temple, pagoda or a monastery and if not one of those, than some sort of supporting enterprise such as gold smithing or Buddha carving.

Pounding Gold into sheets of gold leaf

Placing gold leaf on small paper squares

People have been adding layers of gold leaf for many years.

Mandalay is a pretty basic town otherwise, the people are nice though there is the sent of money in the pockets of  the tourists on the street that is proving to be a temptation to the local population that is eager to charge what ever they can get for the services and products that they provide.  I'm not saying that isn't the way it is everywhere, but some places they just make it a more pleasant process of exchange.

A horse cart to Bagan

We were in Yangon only one night and then it was on the night bus to Bagan (Remind me not to travel all night on a bus again). The Burmese sized seats where almost comical for two big white guys to sit in side by side. Plus, they had packed sacks of rice or something under the seats so there was no place to put our feet.  We arrived, after 10hrs, in the early morning about 4:00AM and where greeted by a small fleet of horse cart taxi drivers.  We were both tired and it was surprisingly cold... about 48F(I know that's nothing if you have the cloths for it, but we didn't) so we took our drivers recommendation for a hotel and after checking in we got a few need hours of sleep. Once the sun was up it warmed up quickly (highs in the 80's) and we made our way via horse cart to the temples to have a look around.  Nick stayed for only a day and then made the return bus trip to Yangon and then back to Saigon while I stayed in Bagan for several more days before boarding a boat for Mandalay.

Bagan.

This is quite the place.  Many have compared it to Angkor Wat in Cambodia and while it is similarly impressive, they are so different in character that it is difficult to make a comparison. Thousands of pagodas dot the horizon. Built from about a thousand years ago to the present and ranging is size from about 8' to over 200'. Though each structure has it's own merit the most impressive thing isn't any particular structure but the combination of all of the structures randomly covering the landscape. Add to that a fair amount of smoke from cook fire and trash burning and you've got imagery that even Hollywood would have difficulty coming up with.

The people of Bagan are truly wonderful. Good natured and quick with a smile they are happy to help with anything from directions to the nearest restaurant to marriage advise.  What is lacking here is infrastructure. The tourist gates have just begun to open since the normalization of relations with the US just three months ago and most hotels are already fully booked, internet is almost nonexistent  and prices have risen over 50%.  And while it appears that there is a ready work force to tackle the infrastructure needs there seems to be a real lack of leadership to guide the needed efforts to prepare for the flood of people that will most assuredly arrive in the coming months and years.

Putting together the team:

Aung Aung was my horse cart driver, a very easy going and thoughtful young man with a real philosophical point of view towards life relationships and time.

As we made our way through what seems like a sea of pagodas I was fortunate that we come across a couple of young women selling cloths at one of the temple entrances.  

                                                                              There names are Mo Mo and Win Win.

Mo Mo and Win Win are sisters who spend most of there days selling clothes to tourists.  There main gig is to follow the hot air balloons via motor bike to there landing place and then try to sell to the tourists after they have landed.  These two were easily the brightest personalities that I had come across so far in this country. They spoke Burmese, some French and fairly good English. They had a fun style that made even there efforts to sell me stuff I didn't need a pleasure to say no to. When I asked them to assist me with my photography they where happy to help and a pleasure to be around. They caught on very quickly and were proactively intuitive about the process.

On my last day in town I was able to have lunch at there house.  It was great to be in a real Burmese home, and what a tasty feast we had.

Mo Mo prepares Tanica (tree bark) by grinding it on a stone.

Tanica is applied as a sunblock and beautification process

At the end when we where saying goodbye they gave me several shirts and some post cards.  Very generous gifts indeed.