Mandalay Hill – amusemusings

If Yangon introduced me to the country, then Mandalay really introduced me to the people. I stayed double the time in Mandalay, the former Myanmar capital & supposed cultural heart of the country. The city is home to 1 million people & has a different feel to it than Yangon… smaller, dustier, motorbike-crazed & real sweet. The locals just openly stare at me wherever I go. I can’t really blame them. There’s very few other white people around & I think they’re newly thrilled to share their country w foreigners. Perhaps the blatant staring would make some feel awkward. I just flash them a big smile, say “hello” & throw ’em a Burmese greeting & they burst into a wide grin & giggles & if they know a lick of English, they immediately approach me for conversation. Hearing I’m from the US evokes an even wider grin & an “Obama. I love Obama. He’s visited Myanmar 2 times.” On a few occasions, I’ve even heard a twist… “Obama. Jordan” to which I tell them I live in Chicago & they are both from Chicago. Jaws agape. Each day I hired a taxi driver for the day to tour the city as the key sites are very spread out & it was 103 degrees. I’m typically pretty efficient viewing sites, in & out & on to the next as it’s just me at my own pace so there’s no lingering. My efficiency took a big hit in Mandalay. I was stopped everywhere I went, multiple times, by locals to chat & take photos. I think I posed in more photos than I took & I take a shitload of them. I go over big with females of most ages. I’m real popular w teenage & university age males. This includes my favorite men of the cloth. Myanmar monks are, BY FAR, my favorite. In my brief experience, I’ve found that in other countries, monks tend to keep to their own kind. You see monks interacting & hanging w other monks; you rarely see outsiders breaking into the inner circle. That is so not the case in Myanmar. These guys are super social, hanging w other non-monk-locals & even, dare I say, socializing w me. They approach me just the same, ask for photos & I in turn ask questions too (where they live? Are they in university? When’s the last time you ate today? Are you allowed to have girlfriends? Etc). The bravado they summoned to ask an initial question & request a photo typically fades quickly & they fall into awkward giggles. But there have been amazing exceptions.
Day one was spent in Mandalay proper visiting the sites including your standard pagodas, the old royal palace & Mandalay Hill, the highest point in the city reached by climbing 1,700+ stairs or a taxi up a switchback road (clearly I opted for the latter bc it was HOT). In a pagoda at the top of Mandalay Hill w a beautiful view of the city, I ran into a chick from New Zealand. I almost stopped dead in my tracks when I saw another solo female traveler & she did the same. We instantly came together & started talking about our trips & experiences & routes. I was going to call it a day before I saw her but then she invited me to do some additional stops at a tapestry shop & silk shop so we used my driver to do so. Found out she was still recovering from food poisoning courtesy of Myanmar food. She’s the 3rd person I’ve heard this from. You’d think that would make me cautious & perhaps take her up on her offer to hang out & eat boring rice & water that night. But no, I thanked her for the time & we exchanged info to hopefully meet up in Vietnam later, but despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, perhaps against my better judgment & most certainly rolling the dice, I was still going to dive into Myanmar cuisine. I never broadcast to you folks bc it’s my blog & not Amy’s & I didn’t want to speak for her but she did give me her blessing to reveal that she came down w a brutal case of food poisoning in Laos. It took her out of commission for a couple days & she almost considered skipping her flight to Cambodia. Thankfully she made it but was still in pretty bad shape. And the real interesting thing about it is that we ate the same goddam thing that night at dinner. Shared every little thing. So whatever sent her system into hysterics, I enjoyed both going down & thereafter. A similar experience has happened to Amy before so we agreed that perhaps she is super sensitive to something while I may have a stomach made of steel. I would’ve hoped teleportation would be my superhero power (although lately being an omni-linguist seems pretty dope too) but a steel stomach isn’t that bad I guess, as much as I like to eat. So bring on Myanmar cuisine I say (& fingers crossed). I gave it my best shot in Mandalay, after average-at-best food in Yangon, but restaurants were hard to come by & food was average. The new de facto president announced she’d oversee the construction of over 1,100 hotels in the next few years to boost tourism. I’m hoping restaurants will soon follow.
I spent day two touring 4 ancient cities surrounding Mandalay. Stops included yet more pagodas (closing in on my saturation level), another great hilltop viewpoint & a real special treat at a local monastery. This monastery allows visitors to enter & witness a ceremony & then a lunch procession. We are talking like 1,200 monks participating in this ceremony. A girl’s dream. Sunset was spent on a 200 year-old teak bridge, the longest in the world. I found a spot to take it in, took a seat & read but was often interrupted by fans wanting my photo. Haha.
Overall… I really enjoyed Mandalay but the people made the city.