^Yeah, it's basically just a crowded, noisy, dusty, nondescript city with a few nice bits crammed around one area, which I'll get to now.
I’m just going to hammer out a photo dump to finish this trip off before I get a proper park report started in the next couple of days.
I had two full days in Mandalay, but there wasn’t a massive amount to do or see there to be honest. There was a small park with a +1 just a few minutes’ walk to the cultural s**t, so headed there first.
I was there quite early, so I thought I might have to pop back a bit later.
Or maybe not.
F**kers.
I was contemplating throwing myself in front of some traffic, but it was on a quiet road and I don’t think the occasional moped that was driving past would have finished the job.
I walked past the entrance to Mandalay Hill, coming back a bit later.
There were a few temple/pagoda things nearby. I really can’t be arsed to go into any detail. I doubt anyone’s desperate to know what everything is.
This old wooden monastery thing was quite fab. At $10, it was quite pricey, but the ticket included a bunch of stuff in the surrounding area.
Back to Mandalay Hill.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before, but at all of the temples, you have to go barefoot. Since the whole of Mandaly Hill is considered as a holy site, I had to take off my shoes at the bottom and walk barefoot the whole way up.
The view from the top isn’t even that great. There’s not a great deal to see since it’s just flat.
I stupidly hadn’t noticed the easier way to get up to the top: a minibus from around the corner from the entrance I’d used, going up almost to the top, followed by this lift. Bollocks.
Nature:
Apparently, the hill is popular for sunsets, but I didn’t want to hang around, there wasn’t anything really interesting to look at from there, and I was sick of f**king sunsets to be honest. I ended up getting back to the hotel fairly early and watching a couple of films.
I still had a full day left, and nothing to really do in Mandalay itself. What few tourist sites there are I’d done on that first full day since they’re all basically right next to each other. The city itself is a dump as well really. I ended up asking people at the hotel for suggestions, and they suggested hiring a driver for the day to go and see some of the surrounding area. Apparently, it’s a common thing to do, so I didn’t have to make any plan; the driver does it regularly, so I just let him take me around.
I didn’t want any kind of tour guide – I prefer to do stuff myself and find it awkward to feign an interest – but luckily, he just drove to some place and waited at the car until I got back.
Oh joy, a temple:
This one was quite cool though. People – men only; women aren’t people - buy packets of gold leaf and press them onto the Buddha statue, creating a monstrous “elephant man” Buddha.
From there it was to Amapura, timed to gawp at a few thousand novice monks traipsing to the monastery after walking around the town with their begging bowls.
Then up to an area called Sagaing with some hill with more stuff.
And another hill, with more stuff.
Then it was to Inwa, which is kind of, but not really an island and used to be some ancient capital or some such s**t. I had to get a boat across, and then hired a horse and cart to take me around. Again, this is the “done” thing, so the drivers just drop you at a bunch of stuff and leave you to it before taking you back to the boats to get back.
Another old monastery.
Some tower. The remnants of some city wall or summat.
And another old temple. It was very impressive, admittedly, the best thing on the island, but I was pretty much done by this point.
The final stop was this old wooden bridge, which I recognized. It basically leads to the monastery where I’d been that morning, but it made more sense to finish up here at the end of the day for yet another f**king sunset.
It’s 1.2 km long. I walked al the way across and then back again. It was all very safe.
There’s an area with a couple of makeshift bars and a bunch of chairs set up, so I ended up sitting there with a couple of beers and chatting to a few other tourists. Definitely a good spot.
We had a good laugh watching the oblivious people enjoying their boat ride, not realising what was going on behind them.
I don’t think I’ve put many sunset pictures in this report, so I’ll just finish off with a bunch of them.
And that was it. It was a nightmare getting back to Hong Kong since there was nothing direct from Mandalay Airport on the day I wanted to leave. I ended up flying to Bangkok and then Macau, having to clear immigration, collect luggage and check in again since it was a s**ty budget airline, then getting a ferry back to Hong Kong from there. This was, stupidly, the best option taking into consideration connection times etc.
The old, s**ty, Bangkok Airport (which is now used almost exclusively by budget airlines) at the end of Chinese New Year? DON’T.
Summing up the whole trip then. By the end, I was a bit “done” as you can probably tell. It was definitely worth doing though. Mandalay and the surrounding area would be great as a starting point perhaps, when it would all seem very impressive, but after days of temples and sunsets already, I was sort of over it. I think if I would have done Yangon – Mandalay – Bagan, that would have made me appreciate Mandalay a bit more, and ended the trip on more of a high. I spoke to a few people who had done just that and I think they had the right idea. It wouldn’t have been too much more of an effort with regards to getting in and out really.
So yeah, Myanmar is very much worth a trip, especially while it’s all still very newly accessible and hasn’t been f**ked by tourism yet.
The next report is creds. No culture, just whoring creds.
