January 17 - Mandalay
Not a particularly awe inspiring day. Up at 5:00 am, straightened the room and went for breakfast. Today's fare was fried noodles, fried vermicelli, grilled tomato slices and some unidentified vegetable. Not bad, not great. We hit the road around 8:30 as planned and drove an hour and a half to another city (don't know the name and am too tired to look it up tonight but it begins with "P" and is a little way northeast of Mandalay). it was another hazy day and the plants were more brown than green so the scenery wasn't spectacular. We climbed to an elevation of 4,500 feet and some of the vistas would have been beautiful if there had been some colour. Once in "P" the group headed off to look around. I followed until my back got too sore and then parked myself on a seat and watched the people and the action. People there didn't seem as friendly as they are here but one gentleman of the ripe old age of 82 and former army officer stopped to chat. His English was excellent and he was obviously well read. We discussed global warming, the internet and a bit about Canadian aboriginal affairs. He asked if I had any English language books I could spare but of course I didn't have any as I had been dropping off the ones I read along the way to lighten my load. That was pretty much the highlight of the day for me although I did get a few decent photos of people and the street. When the group returned a few of us climbed into horse and buggy (two to a buggy) and took a brief tour around the town for 45 minutes. Couldn't see much and what I did see wasn't all that interesting. I shared a buggy with the tour guide (Ko Sai) so had him to myself to question for that period. After the buggy ride we boarded the bus for the return trip to Mandalay.
Lunch was at the Green Elephant (better than pink or white ones) restaurant. Very nice and we ate outside under a thatched roof. I had an excellent split pea soup in a broth that finally tasted of the chicken. I would have been quite happy to just have had a few more bowls of soup and skipped everything else. The main course was fish curry, unlimited rice, an eggplant salad with peanuts and greens of some sort. The curry was good and much to my liking. If they use cilantro in their curries here they hide it well because I have yet to notice it. Dessert was a banana fritter which, to me, tasted as if it was fried in oil that had been used to fry spring rolls. I only ate a bit of it. That dinner and a quart of beer was $9.00.
Once lunch was finished it was time for more pagodas. Not my cup of tea so once again I sat outside and people watched while the group went through. Bill from Perth came out sooner than anyone else so we chatted about various and sundry world affairs for a while. From there it was to a monastery which didn't interest me very much either although the wood carving that covered the outside was incredibly intricate. Finally we went to Mandalay Hill (on top of which sits another pagoda) to wait for the sunset. Unfortunately the sunset was a non event but I took some photos anyway as much for something to do as anything. Got a few good shots of monks however.
No dinner again tonight.
Tomorrow morning we leave the hotel at 6:00 to return to the jetty where will board a boat for the nine or ten hour cruise to Bagan.