AROUND MANDALAY

We’re planning to spend four days in Mandalay, and it’s hotter than hell when we arrive on a Sunday afternoon.  Our modern hotel is an oasis in the midst of the downtown area, especially after our day long ride in the van.  Even in the late afternoon as we venture out to get our bearings, it remains oppressively hot.  A nearby place to eat has passable food, and we later stop for a semblance of ice-cream at a very busy corner spot called “Nylon”.  Seems an odd name for a place that mostly sells milk-based drinks and ice cream, but it’s a welcome change from the usual fare, and actually, it’s been quite some time since ice cream has been on our menu at all!

Continuing our trip tradition, we’re in bed quite early.  Most things—except perhaps the night markets—shut down early.  Light on the streets is minimal, and an unexpected quiet descends after sundown.  We’re also up early, although with a mosque next door with prayers beginning before dawn, that's a given.  After breakfast, we decide to head to the southern part of the city, to check out the Mahamuni Pagoda—considered second in importance after the great Shwedagon in Yangon.  The hotel quotes what we consider a gouger's price for a cab there, so we hit the streets.  On 84th street(one block over), we are swallowed up by the hordes of people getting in and out of rides to and from the central Zegyo Market.  After a bit of back and forth, we manage to get one of the touts to understand where we want to go, and this appears to be on his vehicle’s route, so we hop in to the back of the truck, and begin the wait.  A monk hops in, a youngish woman with shopping, we move up a block, wait again, meanwhile feeling a little off from the air around us.  Finally we make our way to within a couple of blocks of the pagoda, and hop out, deciding that this wasn’t the “express”.  Heat is beginning to intensify, dust swirls in the dry streets, and the customary smells of diesel, food interspersed with wafts of sewage are dulling our energy somewhat.

Shoes off, we’re in the pagoda complex, but unfortunately I’m feeling unwell.  The main Buddha is accessible only to men, and they are busy plastering his thighs and calves with tiny squares of gold leaf—the traditional offering.  It’s another impressive complex, but I find a shady place to rest, while Andres follows  groups of beautifully dressed and made up children who have been brought to the temple to undergo a ceremony for monk (and nun, we assume, since there are girls) novitiates.  The come with their families, bearing the traditional gifts and shuffle from place to place.  We subsequently discover that most Burmese do spend some time as monks or nuns, but this time can be very short—as in a week—or can last a lifetime.  There is always a way back to secular society. There are evidently a number of steps in this process of becoming a novice, and these children seem rather young, so we're not positive about what we're seeing, but from the scraps of information being thrown our way, it's the best we can make out. We do have to let go of our remaining plans for the day as I’ve taken a decided turn for the worse and need to just get to the hotel.  An easy truck ride back and I spend the afternoon in bed—; I think I’ve eaten something that doesn’t agree with me.
 
By the next day I’m far better, and we return to the Pagoda so I can actually see it up close.  We are lucky to catch an “express” and are in and out of the place having seen everything we wanted: the golden Buddha, the various prayer houses, the small library complete with hundreds of cassette recordings(?), and an area with statues that were originally pillaged from Angkor Wat in present day Cambodia.  I rub the statue’s belly, anxious to add to my positive energy for healing that particular body part!  Andres is working on his knees!

From here we walk through some of the backstreets where teams of workers are making metal gilded decorations of the sort we often see on pagoda roofs.  Packs of dogs and scrawny puppies lie in the sandy streets, monks scurry about with their begging bowls, and as we enter through a newish looking gateway, we discover some sort of recycling center for cardboard.  Eventually a man stops us on the street and says “Jade Market” while pointing down a narrow but heavily travelled street.  I’m still expecting an actual structure/building, but we are suddenly surrounded by motorcycles parked 4 and 5 deep and are beckoned into small covered alleyways where we begin to see a wide array of jade workers.  Initially it’s the cutters of big rough stones, then polishers and cleaners, and a bit further down we appear to have stumbled onto the set of a Chinese gangster movie.  Hundreds of men(I think we saw maybe 5 women doing this work) sit a small tables while others wander from table to table showing and we assume, trying to sell their wares—mostly rough stones.  They are silently checked with special lights, and while some must be accepted, we basically only see firm head shakes of rejection.  Never a word exchanged.  

The stakes increase deeper into the market where these same jade appraisers types are looking over small cut and polished stones that look “jewelry-ready”.  Interspersed we see narrow corridors where men lounge and watch TV, huge pool table areas, and plenty of eating and drinking areas where plenty of women flit about serving the men.  The whole thing is surreal, and honestly, a tad intimidating.  Not much in the way of smiles here.  It seems to be run by the Chinese, and we’re told that most jade in this area of the world comes through this market in Mandalay. 

After the stifling and baffling market, we make a stop at a nearby airy looking food/drink place, and after refueling begin looking for the Shwe In Bin Kyaung Pagoda, one that is made of teak and known for its fine carvings.  A couple of wrong turns and a lady calls from across the street, gestures that we need to go around the block, and we finally find it.  It's truly a peaceful respite from the dizzying madness of Mandalay’s streets.  A lone cat dozes in the upper terrace prayer room, while an elderly monk sweeps the grounds.  Another couple of tourists join us in marvelling at the expertly carved doors and eaves.  Time and poor air quality are eating at the artistry, but their beauty still shines through.  We sit on a bench soaking up the atmosphere of the grounds, enjoy the peace and quiet so lacking in the city outside the gates, but finally make our way to the hotel to escape the encroaching worst heat of the day.

Later on we watch the local Indian population as they open their chapati stands, taking to the streets to see what we come across.  We meet a young street entrepreneur who takes advantage of our passing by to gauge our interest in an out-of-town excursion.  We agree to meet him in a couple of days to visit the outskirts of the city, visiting Inwa and Sagaing, another old capital, worth visiting for its many stupas and pagodas, and to make the trip to see Myanmar’s most famous bridgeway, across a lake in the town of Amarapura. Having exchanged necessary information, we continue on our way past the central market area to the Ein Daw Yar Pagoda.  A couple of wrong turns, but we finally locate it, and take a turn around the main pagoda.  We’re surprised by how quiet it is, but it’s always a treat to be in a sanctuary of quiet.  By the time the sun sinks into the smoky darkness, we have found somewhere to eat something, and then head home.

 We’re up early again and wander into breakfast as the sun is rising.  It’s nice and cool on the street, and most shops are still tightly shut.  Vehicles are sparse on the streets, so it seems a good time to do some walking toward Mandalay Hill.  We first come to the immense quadrant that is the Mandalay Palace grounds.  It a good couple of kilometers long on each side, and completely surrounded by a moat which is at least 100 meters wide.  We are walking along the southern edge of the area, which has the first bona fide sidewalk we’ve encountered anywhere in the country.  The water makes the air feel quite fresh, so we’re walking at a good clip.  About half way along this southern side, we are approached by a cab driver who speaks impeccable English, and in short, talks us into hopping a cab to the bottom of the hill.  He prides himself on telling jokes, which initially are quite clever and well-told, but when we finally arrive at the bottom of the hill, his humor turns off-color, so we’re glad to be out of the cab and trekking up the 40 minutes of stairs to get to the top of the hill.

Evidently there are just a few true-blue nutcases who take this walk, and for a reason.  The odd assortment of shops and dwellings, sleeping dogs and cats, lack of much in the way of visible people, --just the deafening blaring of their televisions behind bamboo plaited mat walls-- all add up to a feeling of a place that is abandoned.  There are perhaps three other people we encounter making the walk from the bottom.  There are periodic stops along the way for the standing, pointing Buddha, the woefully ugly cracked and peeling concrete pagoda, the under construction pagoda, and then as we begin to hit the upper levels, more people appear, and at the top we can admire the hazy and uninspired view.  I feel like we can check it off the list, but that this is one bit of tourism that is a combination of misinformation and overselling.  

We tramp down the many stairs back to the lion flanked entranceway and then visit a handful of neighboring pagodas and monasteries.  Since most have no English names listed anywhere, I find some in my guidebook: the place with the huge Buddha carved from a single massive piece of marble, the white pagoda with endless rows of stupas, the white pagoda with rounded stupas and so forth.  It’s a guessing game, with an occasional bit of help from a local who’s busy selling paintings, bells, postcards and myriad other souvenirs.  We find a few beautiful sounding chimes which we buy from a savvy young woman who speaks quite good English and is so happy with her sale that she promptly paints my cheek with a thanakha—the pasty colored stuff that locals smear on their cheeks, foreheads—, well, faces—both for beauty and allegedly for sunscreen—leaf.  It smells faintly of sandalwood, and brings more than our usual share of smiles from locals. 

The heat has risen to a few degrees short of suffocating, so it’s downtime for us until later in the afternoon, when we decide to take a look at the gold pounders of Mandalay.  We first hop onto a shared van, but the tout is so busy looking for business that after a respectable wait we finally jump off and walk.  We cross the railroad tracks, pass endless tea shops, motorcycle repair spots, and small businesses, but still haven’t come across the rhythmic sound of gold pounders.  Mandalay is the country’s center for the making of small paper packets that hold the offerings of gold leaf sold all over the country at temples for adding to the Buddha—usually his calves or legs—as that’s all most can reach.  It’s a substantial part of the offering/donation that people make at temples, and as a result, it’s an important enterprise here.  We expect—wrongly--, to find rows of these small shops, where young men pound booklets of bamboo paper with tiny morsels of gold between each sheet into gold leaf.  Our ears help us find one of the workshops, but honestly, I feel like I’ve stepped back about two thousand years into some sort of slave compound.  The men pound for hours, probably make miserable wages, and look like sweat-glistened slaves out of Gladiator—the movie.  One quick look and we’ve seen enough.

Again, dark is slowly descending, we take in a bit of the nearby night market(84th street moving south from 26th), which slowly infiltrates the road, stands springing up in the middle of the road, on the sides, and forcing anything not part and parcel of the market to move on or out.  Another forgettable meal and we’re ready for bed.

The night isn’t kind to A., as he’s taking a turn with some nasty stomach bug, and by really early morning we’ve determined that he can’t make a day trip we’ve planned on.  He’s weak and constantly in the bathroom, so I have the hotel call our driver-to-be and cancel, asking him to stop by for a tip for his trouble.  Our last day is definitely a lie low day.  A brief trip to a local pharmacy for some medicine and a stop at the market for some bananas.  As it’s early, the vendor has no change and offers the bananas as a present(his words).  A nearby shop gives us change and we return to give him the pittance he’s waived.  He is all smiles!  I run a couple of errands so we’ll have some stuff with us for our all day boat trip to Bagan the next day, and although I’m disappointed to miss the day trip, we catch up on reading and resting.  Tomorrow to Bagan!

As always, click the links for pictures.

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