Myanmar Part 4 - Mandalay

In very polluted, crazy Mandalay we had 2 days of sight seeing. On the first day we went to a puppet making factory:



and then we went to see the 10.30 am lunch at Ganayon Kyaung (monastery). Every day hundreds of monks queue up here for a free meal. Unfortunately it was a bit touristy.


Next we went to see some Longyi's (traditional skirt worn by men and women) being weaved. Here's a photo of some bridal wear that takes weeks to make:


Next we had a hot sweaty climb up Sagaing Hill to see the pagoda and the great views.


Next we carried on to Inwa, which is cut off by rivers and canals. We traveled around by horse cart and the track was horrendous. The locals live as they must have done for centuries and they were very welcoming.



This is a 27 metre clocktower, which leans precariously but can still be climbed:



I had great fun playing with these cute kids:


Next we made out way to Amarapura for the sunset. The 'city of immortality' is famed for the U Beins Bridge, the world's longest teak bridge at 1.2 km. It's 200 years old and has 1060 teak posts. We strolled along the bridge with the locals, monks and other tourists. Then we had an amazing coincidence. A young Burmese man started chatting to us so he could practice his English and he turned out to be the brother of Aung Zaw, our horse cart driver in Bagan. We invited him and his friend to join us on our boat trip.

We had an amazing sunset and here our some of our photos:




Aung's brother is on the right:


Here is our rower:

We had a day off and then had another sight seeing day. We visited Mahamuni Paya , which was cast in the 1st century AD and has a Buddha covered in 6 inches of gold leaf.

There's also some huge Buddha's flip flops here:


They also have some bronze Khmer figures, war booty from Angkor Wat. You can rub their body parts in order to heal yourself. I rubbed his nose as I had a cold. I couldn't run his elbow as he doesn't have one. Also, his crotch seems to have been rubbed away (pre-Viagra!)


We also visited a very peaceful and beautiful teak monastery (Shwe In Bin Kyaung) and saw this monk catching up on the football. They are obsessed with the Premier League here.


At the end of our busy day we climbed Mandalay Hill, which is 230 metres high, in our bare feet for the sunset. Most of the tourists drive to the top (lazy buggers!). Here's are little blue taxi at the base. These little, ancient Mazda 600 cc pick-ups are the main mode of transport. Quite a bumpy ride!

This is one way of carrying your spare tyre:



One of the places we visited was a small factory making gold-leaf, which is very much in demand in Myanmar as people love to cover their favourite Buddhas with it. It's an unbelievably labour-intensive process. They take a gold nugget (1 oz) and turn it into around 2000 gold leaves - BY HAND! They roll it out and cut it into small strips and then men with use huge hammers and a lot of energy bash it for a total of 5 hours.



This lady works in a small, hot air less cell hammering bamboo paper to make it thinner. The gold leaf is packaged using this paper. I didn't like to ask how much they got paid but we know that the ladies working in the fields in the rural areas only get about $2 a day.


This cow lived around the corner from our hotel and often was decorated with coloured paint. I know he's loved but he doesn't look too happy, although his owner does.


We then got the night bus to Lake Inle, another 12 hour bumpy ride. The bus was packed to the rafters and one poor man had to sit in the aisle on a tiny plastic chair. The only people you here complaining here are westerners. We have no idea how spoilt we are!