Mandalay

Our next port of call was Burma’s second city Mandalay.  We were to use Mandalay as our base for visits to two other points of interest in Burma, Bagan and Monywa.  We got the overnight bus, which ended up being a surprisingly comfortable journey.  The government recently completed a highway linking the two cities, and to say it was lightly used would be an understatement.  We only saw a handful of other night buses during our time on the motorway. 

We arrived early in the morning in Mandalay.  We found a decent guesthouse which was centrally located then had a wee rest.  We didn’t do very much on our first day apart from get a feel for the city.  We met a friendly American teacher on the bus, it was his 20^th trip to Asia, every school holidays he would jet off somewhere.  We met up with him on our first night and went out for dinner and a couple of jars, he kept us entertained with his tantalising travelling tales.

The next day we hired some bikes and went off exploring.  Our main focus point was the 230m high Mandalay hill.  It has a stepped walkway all the way to the top with many shrines, Buddha statues and stupas along the way.  On our single speed bikes we cycled up the west side of the hill until we ran out of steam.  We pushed our bikes up until we found the steps then continued on foot.  It’s a nice climb and pretty steep from the west side.  There are a lot of interesting things to see en-route, including a huge golden Buddha pointing towards the palace.  We admired the view at the top of Mandalay hill, then when we’d stopped sweating, made our way downwards. 

In our few days in Mandalay we managed to see most of the main sights.  The royal palace is the overwhelming centre piece, encircled by a giant 3.5km moat.  It was heavily reconstructed during the 1990’s, mostly using forced labour, and is a bit of an eyesore.  It doesn’t help that the overall site is unkempt with overgrown gardens.  We didn’t linger long on our visit.

Mandalay Palace

The other sights we visited were yet more pagodas, there are a lot in Burma.  Kuthodaw Pagoda, is frequently dubbed, ‘the world’s biggest book’ for its surrounding 729 marble slabs.  The entire 15 books of the Tripitaka (Buddhist bible) are inscribed on the slabs and each slab has its own little stupa.  It has been estimated that reading for eight hours a day it would take 450 days to read the complete book, that’s a lot of reading.  We also visited the Sandamani Pagoda which was similar to the Kuthodaw Pagoda, but a bit more run down.  We cycled round a few interesting monasteries and round the Palace moat.  Mandalay was a fun city to cycle round especially round the moat of the palace.  There are definitive cycle paths that most people abide to, and it’s difficult to get lost, almost every street name has the American system of 21^st, 22^nd street etc.

Kuthodaw Pagoda