After a quick few days in Bangkok we departed to Mandalay, Myanmar. In under two hours we arrived to a very different scene. Like stepping back in time, the airport terminal was reminiscent of the 50’s. Many petite, darker skinned men and women were dressed in longyi, a sheet of colorful cloth about two meters long wrapped around their waist. The taxi we took to town was old and without shocks, which bottomed out on the potholed roads relentlessly as the driver raced around like he was Mario Andretti to our hotel. The town itself is nothing special, and when you get a real look at the dirt and crowded streets and traffic your tendency is to think “What am I doing here?” Not a great place to walk as there are no formal sidewalks, just odd blocks of cement covering the sewers, most missing and others broken and wobbly. The busy streets are full of small businesses, parked motorcycles, groups of men sitting on little stools around small tables sipping tea from tiny china cups. I was amazed to see the old habit of chewing betel nut was still in fashion, and the disgusting habit calls for a lot of spitting of purple saliva into the streets. Most people smile and their teeth are permanently stained with the dye from the nut. We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at our hotel and it was set back from the noise of the street, in a tropical garden with a nice pool and clean rooms that were very comfortable. We spent hours and hours reviewing hotels and travelers’ trip advisor opinions preparing for this trip, and it is nice to be vindicated with a good choice in a place like Mandalay. A sanctuary to escape to. Seems like most tourists don’t spend too much time here. Most hire a guide and spend a few days looking at the old temples and monasteries. We had a great guide named Ko Soe Soe, who was recommended to us by our friends who had used him the year before. He planned to pick us up at our hotel the next morning at 8:30 and as we had negotiated a full day we hoped he would prove to be a good guide. And he was! Such a tall man and commanding in his stride. I mentioned this to him and he explained he was of a tribe of people who were “mountain men” and were taller than most Burmese. He had a great stained smile and we got into his old van with his driver, a young sweet silent boy, and drove through the city and into the countryside. But before we did that Soe Soe took us first to change money, and then to a new modern store, a kind of Verizon store. We bought SIM cards for our phone and iPad, which cost a dollar each. Then bought approximately three weeks of 4 G data for another $8 each. The hip kids in the shop had our phones up and running in minutes, and away we went. We saw so many temples and monestaries that I cannot remember them all, but they were filled with gilded Buddha’s and colorful neon lights which seems a bit strange to me but the Burmese like the flashing auras around the statues. The best was just being in the countryside and seeing real life. Rows of veggies, rice paddies and peanuts. White cows, oxen, and geese. Horse drawn wagons, and pony carts. We went to an orphanage where all the kids are from poor villages and the girls are trained as nuns. They all dress in pink, while the boys are in monk robes of orange. They all seem shy and curious. Used to seeing tourists taking their photos but still innocent and smiling shyly. We walked around ruins from the twelfth century, and older. And since Ron had hurt his back and couldn’t take a small boat across a river and then ride in a pony cart to a wonderfully old wooden temple, Soe Soe had the driver take the van on dirt, barely drivable roads, that even a motorcycle would have had to bounce over. I was a tad nervous we would get stuck, but he sang out to my concerns, “ if a horse and cart can do it we can too!” We made it and became my favorite part of the day as we saw the real village life where no other tourists came. By the time we returned to our hotel, ten hours after we’d set off, we were exhausted! Ron and I just showered and laid down, too tired to eat. The next day we didn’t do much. Stayed around the pool and relaxed in the peace and quiet. Walked a block from our hotel for dinner, at a small family owned restaurant called Min Min. We were lucky they were so close, and the food was pretty good. The two sisters who ran the place while their mother set vases of flowers on the tables and their father hovered around, spoke good English and were pretty modern. The building was a real throwback to British design. Over a hundred years old, the ceilings were tall and embellished with a motif of swirls and the room was long and narrow. We ate there twice. The last morning we had tickets to take a boat down the Irrawaddy River, which runs north to south almost the length of Myanmar. The trip took almost 11 hours. We hired a taxi to pick us up at 6 am, and got settled in our seats and departed in the dark at exactly 6:30 after the young crew helped carry our bags and kindly lit the narrow plank of wood up to the deck. We paid for a newer boat which advertised comfortable reserved seats, and they proved to be very nice. Like good plane seats. On the upper deck there was a covered area with table and chairs for eating, lunch being served along the way. And bamboo chairs on the aft deck in the sunshine. All would have been really nice if not for the group of youngish German boys, who began drinking at 8:30 and took over the bar area with their music blasting from a large speaker they brought. Singing and dancing and cheering and doing competitive pushups, they never stopped. We all thought they would pass out by late afternoon, but they had the stamina of young fit men and certainly could drink endlessly. I was amazed and annoyed. As we finally arrived at our destination, Bagan, we were docking slowly and one of the boys decides to take his drone and launch it from the deck of the boat. He being rather drunk, it was the final insult to the day. The drone hovered amongst all of us, he lost control and it crashed into me, causing an immediate hematoma to my finger and a cut on my leg. It took all of Ron’s self control not to throw the drone, and possibly the young man, into the river. We were off on a new adventure and happy to be off the “party” boat...
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