Gloomy Mandalay without camera

It wasn’t a the best day. We woke up in a very friendly hostel to see pouring rain, clouds and sleepy people, who had to wake up early for breakfast in spite of a long party last night. After a while we organized a group of people to visit the most important parts of the town. We know that Mandalay is very big, it is actually the second biggest town in Myanmar, but somehow, maybe because of the weather, nobody was really excited to visit all the temples, pagodas or payas.

We took a bus taxi and first went to climb the Mandalay hill. Somebody else was taking part of checking which entrance to take, where to park and what it to. Also, we realized that the battery in our camera was dead, so we could take photos only with our gopro. To be honest I was so glad I didn’t have to take care of all of that, that I got really relaxed, but I also didn’t check anything about the places we saw.

Despite the cold weather, we had to take our shoes off and started climbing the endless stairs. There were some temples on the way and a couple of shops selling souvenirs. Finally we got to the viewpoint. It wasn’t anything spectacular. The fog and clouds covered the view, we were tired and quickly went back down to the taxi.

The next stop we did next to U Bein Bridge. It is a long (supposedly the longest teakwood bridge in the world), 1200 meters wooden bridge that crosses the Taungthaman Lake. I think there is no gallery of photos from Myanmar without that bridge, photographed at different times of the day, usually with monks dressed in dark red robes.

Well, for us the weather was still gloomy and the views were not the greatest. We walked  along the bridge, went to some temple on the other side. It was raining, so we went back to the car.

On the way back to the hostel we still visited some temple, but to be honest, all I can remember from there are numerous shops with all the colorful, plastic, fake souvenirs and other fake products.

I must admit that the best part of the day was the cheerful group of people and the funny trips in the taxi-bus. It was a pity the weather was bad, but I think it was also our temple-crisis time, when all the places start to look the same and you start missing our european churches and castles.

Magda