Outside Mandalay

Today we had booked a day trip through the hotel to go and see some of the sites and old capitals of Myanmar that lie just a few kilometres out the city of Mandalay at Amarapura, Sagaing City and Inwa or Awa as the locals call it.
We had a nice car and driver all to ourselves and started off with a few temples on the outskirts of Mandalay and it was clear from the outset that our driver knew his stuff because he was telling us how long we had at each place. Fortunately we don’t dawdle so we came in under time at each. We then went to Mahaghandaron Monastery getting there in time to see the monks meal procession. Now I’m told they only eat once a day but I saw the amount of rice going in to each bowl and I’d struggle to eat just that in one session, let alone with the other bits and pieces that get served up so perhaps once a day is enough. After that we squeezed in a couple more temples before lunch.
Ah yes lunch, we had a choice of Chinese or Myanmar, Tanya wanted Chinese but I thought that as our driver said that both restaurants were very good we should try the Myanmar one. After all Chinese food is quite easy to get in most places but Myanmar is the only place we have found Myanmar food. Well the short version is I was wrong. There is a perfectly good reason that Myanmar cuisine is not renowned anywhere else and that is that it’s just not that good. We had a chicken curry that was just too oily and had very little taste, the rice was ok and with it we had some kind of fried green veg that was surprisingly ok, some purple beans that were just ok, some fish and tomato thing that was definitely not ok, some chilli paste that Tanya reckoned was okay, a tamarind soup that reminded me a bit of something I couldn’t place but again was not very good and some raw veg which was ok. So next time someone gives me a choice between Myanmar food and some other type of cuisine I’ll be going for the other one no matter what it is, sorry Myanmar. I should say though that the staff at the restaurant were lovely and couldn’t have been more accommodating to a couple of foreign visitors.
After the ordeal of lunch was over we made our way to the ferry over to Inwa and got a pony and trap for our trip around the area, where amongst other things we saw the Bagaya Monestary - a large wooden monastery dating from 1834, where apparently in the past abbots were involved in occult practices, the Nanmyint Palace Tower, or leaning tower as it is also known and The Aungmyae Bosan Monastery. As you can see from the photos we had been doing pretty well with the weather, especially as thunder storms had been forecast, but it caught up with us just as we were leaving the last monastery and we got absolutely soaked on the trip back to the ferry landing. Fortunately our driver was a lovely old chap who let us shelter in his house until the downpour died down a bit and the ferry could make the crossing, he even lent us an umbrella to get to the ferry.
We then had one final stop at U Bein’s Bridge, the longest wooden bridge in the world at 1.2km before heading back to the hotel. Normally people hang around for sunset at the bridge but what with the cloud and rain it was pretty dark anyway so we gave it a miss.
Ever so glad we booked a tour as even though we enjoy independent travel there is no way we could have seen even half the tings we saw today without the local knowledge of our driver. Looking forward to our half day tour of Mandalay tomorrow and might even try to squeeze in a trip to Mingun City - another old capital a few kilometres outside of Mandalay.Read more