Mandalay is a relatively new city as compared to other historical cities in Myanmar. Though there have been settlements in the region for around 500 years, a devastating earthquake destroyed most of what was there in 1839. The city of Mandalay was actually founded at the foot of Mandalay Hill in 1857 as the Konbaung Capital. It enjoyed a relatively short, but fruitful, “Golden Era” which left us with most of the superb buildings and religious sites that people flock here to see today. There is an enormous Palace complex, somewhat like the Chinese Forbidden City, in the center with a wide moat around it that measures 1 kilometer (2/3 of a mile) square and is surrounded by an impressive brick fortress wall. Most of fits buildings were destroyed during WWII and rebuilt in the 1990’s, but now the entire complex, except for the rebuilt Palace buildings in the center, is occupied by the military.
I mentioned in my last message that Yangon had banned motorbikes in the central city. Well, I found out where they all went…… to Mandalay. The city is overrun by them, as is the case with most Southeast Asian cities. It reminded me a lot of Saigon, when we visited last year at this time. There is a thick mix of cars, trucks and motorbikes flowing through the streets and intersections, with very little traffic control, blowing their horns and whizzing past each other. It’s totally chaotic, but somehow it manages to work and we didn’t see any collisions or accidents.
We’re staying at a very nice place here, in the center of the city, called the Mama Guesthouse, run by a middle age couple (who spoke excellent English) and their two teenage children. They served us breakfast (included in the $50 room charge) and dinner of local homemade favorites (at a tiny additional fee) each day. They even made sure we were up and ready to leave at 6:00 AM on a boat trip to our next destination, Bagan. The children were waiting outside our door, when we emerged in the morning, to carry our luggage to a waiting taxi and then handed us a packaged breakfast for the trip. Five star service at a two star price, Carol called it. But, the best thing of all was…. there was a glass door separating the shower in the bathroom! 😉
Mandalay doesn’t have much in the way of public transportation. So, with the help of the guest house owner, for our two days here, we hired taxis to drive us around to various predetermined places. Each day the drivers spent 9 hours with us, the first day locally, for $25 and the second day, out of town, for $33. The US dollar goes a long way here. One of the nice things about having your own taxi driver for the day is that, whenever you want, you can have him stop at a Teahouse for “Birmese Milk-tea.” It’s an especially strong tea, boiled with milk and then topped off with sweetened condensed milk. It’s been our “go-to” stimulant for the entire trip (Carol says the coffee is terrible).
A lot of gold leaf is used to to cover most of the pagodas, Buddhas and religious symbols. It is also prized as a temple offering. Here in Mandalay, they still make gold leaf in the traditional way, by pounding tiny morsels of gold between layers of a specially made bamboo paper. They pound & divide and then pound & divide again, until the gold is only a few molecules thick. Then it can be applied to the surface of a Buddha or some religious icon. We went to a “traditional factory” to see the whole process. I think it’s actually more difficult to make the bamboo paper that gets pounded between the gold leaf. That paper takes a beating. They start out by taking certain parts of the bamboo and soaking it for three years in some kind of potion to soften it into pulp. They then shred it and make paper with it in the usual manner with a screen in a liquid bath. After that it is processed further into these sheets of brown translucent paper that appear to be as tough as Kevlar. They have to be that tough to be able to withstand the hours and hours of pounding. I put a short video of it in the photo gallery.
We had visited a lot of gold Buddhas here, but there was one that was particularly special and everyone wanted to press gold leaf onto this one. I was looking around at it, not really knowing what I was doing. I stepped into a line for men only and followed the guy in front of me. The next thing I knew, I was passing through a metal detector. , As I started to climb up a ladder, a woman on the other side of a fence put three packs of gold leaf in my hand and said “here, take this” and then disappeared. The top of the ladder led to a narrow catwalk that wound around the edge of this giant Buddha (about 20 feet tall). Everyone was squeezing in trying to press gold leaf on the sides of it. The catwalk was about two feet wide, WITH NO GUARD RAIL, and about 10 feet above the floor. All these men were pushing and shoving trying to get their gold leaf onto the Buddha at the same time. Hummm……. I wondered if Buddha would catch me if I fell off the catwalk? There were huge bumps of gold leaf piled up all over it. I did my best to press as much of the gold leaf as I could onto the Buddha. A lot of it ended up getting pressed onto my fingers and fingernails. Wait a minute……..was I becoming a gold Buddha myself……..was there a real person like me underneath all this gold leaf……….just kidding. After pressing my gold leaf onto the Buddha I climbed down the ladder and walked out. I never saw the woman who gave me the packages of gold leaf again. As it turns out, women are not allowed to press gold leaf on this Buddha (I don’t know why). So, women who want their gold leaf pressed on just wait until they see a “suitable” man in line and then put some in their hands. People have been pressing gold leaf on this Buddha since 1986 and it has a lot, I mean A LOT, of gold piled up on it by now.
Mandalay is the center for the wholesale Jade markets, one long street in the center of town. The Jade rocks are mined nearby and then brought here where they are inspected by the buyers with high intensity lights to determine the quality and transparency. You can buy anything Jade here from three feet diameter boulders to Jade scraps to finished Jade products.
Our driver took us to a street where were workers (mostly young) were carving stone statues, big and small, using electric grinding tools. There was white stone (I don’t know what kind) dust everywhere. The workers were not using any face masks or eye protection at all. Their faces were completely white with stone dust. I can’t imagine what their lungs looked like.
Speaking of carved stone, there is what they call the “stone book” at one of the pagodas here. It is made up of 730 stone tablets, with script on both sides, making up 1460 total pages. Each stone page is 3.5 feet wide, 5 feet tall and has its own stupa. The stupas are lined up in rows and columns and cover what looks like a couple of acres of ground. They claim it is the largest book in the world.
One of the most popular religious sites here is Mandalay Hill. It is a large hill, almost 800 feet high with a set of stairs and paths on its ridge and built up with temples, pagodas, Buddhas etc. Most visitors will make the trek up the 1729 steps to see all the sights. Now, we have hiked up a lot of long stairways in the world, many of them even longer, and done it in 90 degree heat, but, since this one is a religious site there is a special requirement. You must walk it BAREFOOTED. I had already been getting tired of taking my shoes and socks off every time we went into a temple or pagoda, but walking almost a mile, up hill, with steps, in 90 degree heat, barefooted? That was going over the top. After considering it for a minute we decided to go for it. It took us an hour and 15 minutes to get to the top (along with stops to see the sites), but only 30 minutes to come back down. I was never so glad to get my feet back into a pair of shoes in my life! I might be getting too old for this kind of stuff (but don’t tell Carol I said that). No one in this country wears shoes, except the tourists. Everyone wears flip-flops or goes barefoot. So, it’s easy for them to just step out of their flip-flops whenever they go inside somewhere. I would even go as far as to say that there is likely not one shoe store in this entire country. For that matter, no sock stores either. I have to tie and untie my shoes so often that I’m wearing out my shoelaces,.
One of the things recommended to do here is watch the monks assemble for their daily lunch of rice at the Gandayon Kyaung monastery. The monastery is actually a little town and once a day, just before lunch, hundreds of monks all walk from their various living places into the center of the street and march together to a large building with their rice buckets and sit for a communal lunch. The monks here all dress the same, barefoot, shaved heads with one large dark maroon garment wrapped around them. When they assemble, it looks like a sea of maroon washing through the streets. It is interesting to see this phenomenon. However, there is a dark secret about this event. There are probably more tourists watching monks than monks walking. The tourists, taking pictures, were actually interfering with the monks trying to walk. It’s a kind of tourist abomination, but, yes, we were there, guilty as charged, taking pictures. It’s one of those “catch 22’s” about traveling. Tourist visit other places. They bring money. The money helps the local people live better. But, eventually, when the the tourism gets too big, it begins to destroy the very thing that brought them there in the first place. I felt kind of sad for the monks.
The last thing we did in Mandalay was watch the sunset from the U Bein Bridge. This bridge is a 3/4 mile long pedestrian crossing over the Taungthaman Lake. It’s basically a boardwalk held high up on pilings, WITH NO HAND RAIL. It was built around 1850, made entirely of teak wood and really shows it’s age. Many of the posts holding it about 15 feet above the water are completely rotted away. However, some repairs have been made to it in order to keep it barely functional. None the less, every evening, hundreds of people (us included) walk out on it to watch the sun set. I could feel it lurching on the walk out with all the people moving around on it. We quickened our pace to get off it as quickly as possible. It was, however, a beautiful sunset. There is a lot of dust in the air here, along with some pollution, that makes for dramatic colorful sunsets every night. We have been enjoying them a lot.
That’s about it for Mandalay. The internet service was very poor here. I’ll have to wait until our next stop to post pictures. I’m writing this on a 10 hour boat ride down the Irrawaddy River, on the way to our next destination, Bagan. With any luck, we’ll have better Internet service there and I’ll be able to put up some pix and a couple of movies by the time you read this. Carol has also been blogging along the way.
Carol’s blog at: http://www.travel.carolpucci.com
Later…… your favorite travelers, Tom and Carol
Mandalay Photos
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