Kathleen
Mandalay – Feb 10-13, 2016
Mandalay….I am guessing that, like myself, most of you think of Mandalay Bay when you here this word, which as far as I can tell is just a made up thing, because Mandalay is on the Irrawady River, and there is no such thing as a bay here. Another city in Myanmar that had its glory day as capital (seems like every new king or leader wanted to move the capital), Mandalay’s greatest sites also seem to be the multiplicity of temples commissioned by said Kings both in town and in a series of additional alternate capitals that are within an easy ride of the larger Mandalay.
Like Yangon, it is quite difficult to walk around the city due to the fact that peoples lives spill over from their homes and workshops over the [sidewalk] and into the street and the craziness of the traffic; trucks, mopeds, cars, horse carts and ox carts fight for space going in each direction. Sadly, there are also dogs everywhere you look in Myanmar, I have never seen so many dogs that were so obviously mothers to new litters in my life. Unfortunately, these dogs roam everywhere and we were the unhappy participants in two cab-meets-dog incidents. It is very sad, but it seems so difficult just to focus on not running into a person or another vehicle, that you feel for the drivers as this must be a daily incident.
That said, we mostly got around Mandalay by taxi. A friendly chap picked us up the first day while we were walking in search of an internet cafe (our hotel had internet, but the configuration was such that Steve couldn’t access what he needed to). Anyway, he took us around to the main temples in Mandalay on the first day, and out and about to the surrounding towns on the next. Highlights were probably Mandalay Hill, a large hill with a covered walkway leading to a temple complex at the top (we were able to walk up for beautiful views) and a visit the next day both to a monastic school at mess time and an elementary with very young monks and nuns.
Mandalay was our last stop in Myanmar, a country hopefully in the midst of some drastic change for the better. The people seem cautiously optomistic, but there is a lot of work to be done to clean things up and issue in a better way of life. It will be interesting to watch Myanmar’s progress over the coming decade……and it was fascinating to get to see the country and the people at this time.