Last Day in Mandalay

I spent my last full day of this trip zipping around Mandalay on the back of a motorbike! (Note to self, next time bring one of those nose masks... *cough, cough*)

Ending in Mandalay didn't make sense geographically because it meant I was backtracking. I actually had planned on skipping it, but after spending four nights at Inle Lake, I had a short amount of time before I needed to be back in Yangon for my flight home. Mandalay seemed to be the most predictable destination for me to go to and then get to Yangon in time without driving myself crazy with a really long bus ride. I entertained the idea of a 20-hour bus ride to Mawlymine so I could visit Hpa An or take the six-hour ride to Loikaw that would have meant a 18-hour ride to Yangon, but in the end, Mandalay seemed to be the easiest option.

My one day in Mandalay was a whirlwind. The night I arrived, I bought my onward ticket to Yangon (most important!) and then found a motorbike taxi driver on the street to take me around the next day to the ancient capitals of Sagaing, Inwa, and Amarapura.

Leave it to me to find the one motorbike driver who was actually a government officer by day; didn't smoke, drink, or chew betelnut; drove like a grandma; and kept repeating throughout our day "Safety First!" The other drivers with tourists were browned by the sun, had teeth stained from chewing betelnut, and well, seemed a lot more street-wise. 

"Cow." He would point out to me as we passed a cow. 

"Hotel!" He would proclaim as we passed a hotel. 

He reminded me of that guy on that old TV show, Monk, like he had read a book on how to be a motorbike tourist guide but had never actually done it before. He had to ask ten people the way to the U Bein Bridge, which is the biggest tourist attraction in all of Mandalay! And at the end of the day, he told me that he'd had a fun day. Like he'd never done that before. 

Leaving Mandalay, we passed by his office and he showed me that he was even wearing his office job uniform under his jacket. I wondered, did he need to keep it a secret that he was going to ditch work to drive me around? He cheerfully explained to me that at his office job, he made 7,000 kyat a day (around $5), so the 15,000 kyat I was paying him was a lot more. His English wasn't great, so I couldn't figure out if the fact he had taken a "casual leave" day from work meant he was getting paid his regular salary in addition to what I was paying him. At first I was a little annoyed that of all the motorbike taxi drivers, I had somehow managed to pick up a government stooge taking advantage of the system, but at one point when we were trying to talk, he proclaimed to me that he liked Aung San Suu Kyi.

"Many people like Aung San Suu Kyi!" he shouted to me over the roar of the wind. I felt a bit better. Everything and everyone is more complicated than it first appears. 

We zipped around Mandalay and the surrounding ancient cities, starting first with.... the Palace Hospital. Clumsy me, I had walked right into a tin roof in Inthein two days before, so I had a wicked cut across my nose. It seemed like at least a tetanus shot was in order. The facilities weren't great, but the doctor seemed very competent. After talking to the doctor, I paid the cashier (12,000 kyat for the doctor visit, which is around $10, and 1,000 kyat for the medical record book where he wrote my symptoms) and then they sent me to the pharmacy where I purchased the following: my syringe (100 kyat), tetanus vaccine, and some antibiotics (totaling almost 28,000 kyat), which I then carried over to nurse to inject me (300 kyat, which is almost 25 cents, for the injection). An interesting look at the pay as you go medical system that many countries have.

Bandage on nose, it was then off to Sagaing, where I hiked from the Lion Gate up to Soon Oo Ponya Shin Paya and Umin Tounzeh, the "30 Caves Pagoda."

View of the temples on Sagaing Hill

Umin Tounzeh, with the 30 "caves"

This time, I wasn't fooled by the cave reference. I remembered from the Po Win Dang Caves in Monywa, that "cave" is more like a shelf or grotto, or in this case, a doorway.

Mandalay is the second largest city in Myanmar, after Yangon. One of the differences I noticed between Mandalay and Yangon (besides the lack of traffic jams and abundance of motorbikes, which are banned in Yangon) was the number of monks in Mandalay

Monks heading up the stairs to Soon Oo Ponya Shin Paya 

Apparently, half of the country's monks live in Mandalay and the surrounding area. There are a lot of monk schools in Mandalay, so you see monks everywhere.

A monk I saw napping at a monastery on the way to Soon Oo Ponya Shin Paya

I didn't have the time or the interest to take the boat to Inwa, pay the 10,000 kyat for the Mandalay combo ticket that I was going to use for only one site, and then take a two-hour horse cart. I really wanted to make sure I made it to U Bein Bridge well in time for sunset. Another motorbike driver, who was properly tanned and chewing betelnut, taught my driver how to go to Inwa to see a couple of the more minor sites from a back road without paying. Since Inwa was supposedly very touristy, I was happy to see a few of the minor sites of Inwa minus the souvenir vendors and other tourists.

Inwa

Inwa 

Then we headed to U Bein Bridge where I ran into Karin from Kekku, also walking across the bridge. I did keep running into a lot of the same folks at different places, as everyone seems to kind of be on the same tourist route.

The U Bein Bridge was built around 1850 and is the largest and oldest teak bridge in the world. Not that I even knew this was a category with any competition! It's a simple bridge and at 0.75 km, a lot longer than I expected. During wet season, the water level is so high that it almost skims the bottom of the planks. That would be really cool to see, if not a little scary. As it was, the bridge seemed a little rickety. We rented a little boat to go out in the water to see sunset, which was really beautiful.

U Bein Bridge

View from U Bein Bridge: Reflection of a boat 

Monk snacking as he walks across U Bein Bridge

Monks crossing U Bein Bridge at sunset

More monks crossing U Bein Bridge

A quick stop off at the Mahamuni Pagoda, featuring a Buddha statue taken from Mrauk U (life really comes full circle), a dinner of chapati and Indian food at a street stall, and then I was off on motorbike to the bus station for my overnight bus to Yangon! A whirlwind day, but I'm so glad I did it. 

The next morning, after I arrived in Yangon, I got a call from the motorbike taxi driver to see if I was okay. I told him I'd share his number, so if anyone is looking for a "safety first" follow-the-rules kind of motorbike taxi driver in Mandalay, let me know.

Another adventure coming to a close... I'm heading back to Yangon, which almost feels like home, and then back to home home, wherever that is or whatever that may be these days.