Mandalay

Mandalay has all kinds of romantic connotations. It’s mostly Rudyard Kipling’s fault (“on the road to Mandalay”). Kipling actually never visited Mandalay, and if he did so today he’d be unlikely to have such romantic views. In reality, the city is a bit grey and dusty and is mostly made up of cheap, soulless concrete buildings. Having been warned of this in advance, we decided not to spend much time in the city – just a night when we arrived and another before our flight out.

The road to Mandalay turns out to be steep and treacherous! Our bus from Pyin Oo Lwin wound its way down steep switchbacks, passing a truck which had crashed through a guardrail and was teetering over the edge of a cliff. Shortly after, we stopped for a few minutes while the driver hosed down the smoking brakes on the bus…

Myanmar has an elderly vehicle fleet. Many of the trucks and buses look like they belong in museums (or in the Soviet Union). The Burmese are masters of improvisation – almost anything can be (and is) made to run on cheap low-speed diesel engines from China. We saw these engines in tractors, on boats and bolted onto the front of old truck bodies.

Our main touristy activity in Mandalay was a walk up to the hilltop temple overlooking the city. It gave us a great sunset vantage point.

We had a laugh at this sign on the way up – 500 rupees is about NZ$10 in today’s money. The sign was affixed proudly to a single rusty column in a huge warehouse-like space.

In our last post, we promised a discussion about fake monks. While in Myanmar we were told that monks could not touch women, they renounced all material belongings and they vowed not to kill. However, one monk we talked to on Mandalay Hill not only shook Sally’s hand, he told her that she was so beautiful she could be an extra in a movie (a real-life Flight of the Conchords moment!) There were monks with ipods, video cameras and motorbikes. One monk talked to us about going into business. And, not too far from us, monks were among those committing violence against Burmese Muslims. We saw something contradicting almost everything we learnt about Burmese monks. We put this observation to a local, who simply laughed and said “yes, maybe they are fake monks”.

On our last night in Myanmar we enjoyed some 600 kyat (83 cent) beers, but decided against the deep fried sparrow. And with that we left Myanmar, mystery of the “fake monks” unsolved.

Written by Craig Drayton and Sally Robertson