Lazy
breakfast ended with us being invited t a wedding ceremony. called barmitzwa
for a strange reason. I´m not jewish but hey, a wedding isn´t really a barmitzwa,
is it? We felt a bit underdressed while all the ladies wore the traditional silk
dresses with elegant designs. The guy was from Singapore but the bride was from
Myanmar we heard. The officla celebration started so we left them and went for
the big climb – The Mandaly Hill.
The plan
was to see the Mandaly Hill, then the world’s largest book - the Kuthodaw Paya,
then the teak wood monastery, the only original remaining building from the
Kings palace - the Shwenandaw Kyaung. I thought we could rent a bike at the
Mandalay Hill Resort fitness centre. They requested 6 USD for a half day for
one bike. Yeah right. For 12 Usd I could bloody buy a bicycle. Went outside to
our red teeth betel nut chewing blue Mazda driver that seem to live outside the
hotel. I guess we were the only guests going outside the hotel on a un-organised
tour. All the guest either did not speak a word of English and all the locals
had their own cars or mopeds. Every time we requested a taxi a bell boy embarrassed
asked is it “OK with small taxi?” He meant the blue Mazda. We made a deal for
7000 for a round trip to all the sites. A tour to the city or from the city was
4000 so 7000 seemed OK. I explained the itenary for the driver and he said he
is “NOT go to the hill, too steep!”. It took me 3 minutes to tell him that we
wanted to WALK UP and that he was supposed to wait for us. Actually, there is a
tarmac road almst all the way to the top so it IS feasible to drive. We started 10:00. The lazy morning ended when
we started to climb all the bloody stairs. Oh boy did we climb. We entered the
Mandaly Hill from the entrance with the two lions. Looked relaxing. A shady walkway,
up some stairs, then a platform with some merchants selling water and food and
some other junk. Further up, another sales place with yet another set up of stairs
afterwards. It never ended. Finally we reach the top. Took some photos of the
panoramic view, enjoyed the Buddha image. A guy with some sorts of ID came up
and said ticket, camera...he repeated “camera” a couple of times. I said, “Yes
a kick ass camera” and showed him it could film in HD as well and then he left.
I also told him that the stairs up here were punishment enough and that the
government don´t need to charge us for the combo ticet during the hot season. That
shut him up and he disappeared. To my amusement, I noticed that we were only
2/3rds up the hill, and we still had the most steep part left. I was sweating
rivers already, hauling my Eos 7D with the battery pack, the xtra lenses and
some other shite in my shoulder bag. We made it to the top. Spent like 10 minutes
on the top, lost another litre of sweat and went down. Nice interval training
in +42C.
We drove on
to the world’s largest book. It was an impressive thing with hundreds (729)
marble tablets, each one protected by a small pagoda. Amazing place, especially
for a writer like me J. OK, I´m a technical writes and I use minimalistic
style so I´d write the same on 13 tablets or so but hey, that was one huge
book! I loved the place. Among the pages
of the book, the star fruit trees were planted and a golden pagoda was erected
in the middle. A very tranquil place. It demanded respect and it came naturally
in a way. You lowered you voice while in there and there are only a few hawkers
in the premises. Even they respect the place.
After the
book we went o the teak monastery. Shwenandaw Kyaung. An amazing rather small building with beautiful
carvings. I guess that is how far you can take the teak building technology.
Top of the line. Nough said.
The driver
proposed we visited the Sandamuni Paya on our way home, so we did that. Even
more tablets here. 1774 marble slabs of commentaries to the Tripitaka. How is
that for an Appendix to a book??? A nice place to visit since you are already
there. It was built on the same place where prince Kanaung was killed. I was done
sweating so we went back to the hotel for a swim.
In teh
afternoon we took the blue Mazda to the “78 shopping mall” to see what they had
to offer. Pretty much what they had in Yangon actually. We walked the 78th
street back to the Palace and visited some other malls and cafes on our way.
Seemed like the shopping street in Mandalay. The railroad station was really
grand! Looked like an exclusive hotel. Fought the traffic and dust and we
finally reached the palace moat. The whole city seemed to be covered in a dust
cloud. I almost lost my voice from talking in the fumes and dust. We walked
past the half finished stages being set up for the water festival. The extremely
loud music from the stages and the traffic made it almost a torture. And NO,
I´m NOT getting old. The decibel level actually made my ears hurt! I´m suddenly
happy that I will NOT be here for the Water Festival Celebration. It´s like being
sober at a rave party without ear plugs being washed down with a water hose
from the fire department. I´m not sure it´s nice. (Later we were hosed down in
both Bagan and around and on the boats at Inle lake and it was OK.)
We walked
all the way to Ko´s thai restaurant. A thai restaurant we found in the LP. Ordered
some papaya salad, catfish salad, tom yum gong and shite. The food was OK.
SPICY was the word but the portions were quite small. I´d much rather spent the
equivalent at the Golden duck just 3 streets away and have a much larger and
more tasty meal. Oh, the dessert we got
looked like fish eggs in milk and it tasted...similar. DON´T EAT THAT!
Could not
get a taxi outside so we started walking towards the hotel. Managed to hail a blue
Mazda outside the Golden duck, where else, and went home for 4000 Chats...yes...standard
price.
The wedding
in the garden was still going on, ended around 21:30. We later got to know that
the wedding reception during the day was the old fashion traditional part and
later at night the celebration was more informal and more like a western
wedding. Including a wedding coordinator that was leading the party. They all
looked to have fun. I hope they have a nice life.
