DAY 2

I had set the alarm clock early in order to take a photo shooting of the local morning market, a few blocks away. There, barely at dawn, you can get a glimpse of ordinary Burmese social life. I covered the distance on foot, witnessing Buddhist worshippers partaking in early morning rituals at local temples, and the timeless processions of barefoot monks of different ages in red and orange robes, collecting offering from the locals inside their alms bowls.

The market area, covering several noisy and smelly blocks to the south of the palace, buzzed with energy and activities as hundreds of stallholders exposed their locally grown produce spread out on both sides of roads: meats, fish, flowers, fruits, veggies, rice and noodle meals, and other items, some never seen before, such as sweets, dried meat and fish, and exotic fruits and spices. Shoppers arriving by rickshaw, on motorbike or on foot negotiated prices and carried their colourful shopping in plastic bags. Monks walked through the market to collect alms or to purchase items needed in their monastery. I stopped at one of the several coffee houses and tucked into a bowl of Shan noodles, a chappati and a dark coffee, rubbing shoulders with the locals.

At 7:30 the sun was rising fast and the traffic on 4 wheels was intensifying: tractors full of vegetables, old trucks carrying iron, wood and people, rusted buses so full with locals returning to nearby villages that some passengers hanged precariously out of their doors, with ticket sellers and drivers shouting names of destinations. Dozens of bicycle rickshaws invaded the streets, waiting for passengers loaded with plastic bags full of food. It was like being at a theatre, and I enjoyed the convulsed sight while sipping another tea in an open-air tea-house, munching on a vegetable samosa, until the sellers started to pack up.

I was on my way again; I wandered aimlessly towards the east, block after block until, along a side road, a young chap in longyi, bare-chested, bold-headed except for a thin and long hair pigtail at the back of the skull, tattooed with Chinese motives and sporting a few short hair growing right in the middle of his right cheek, spotted me and approached to offer me, in an undistinguishable language, a bite of betel, skillfully prepared by his young wife at their derelict roadside stall. I admit I knew very little about betel nut (called kun-ya in Myanmar) apart that it made your teeth red, that it was an appetite suppressant, and that it could get you intoxicated. Oh, I forgot, and that while chewing it, lots of red saliva forms in the mouth and needs to be expelled from time to time. No wonder streets in Mandalay are stained with millions of red blotches.

The guy’s wife held up a vine leaf, laid it on a wooded board and started working on it. She first spread a little lime paste on the leaf, then added cloves, aniseed, cardamom, tobacco marinated in alcohol and some crushed betel nuts. She skillfully wrapped the leaf and handed it to her husband, whom handed it to me, a complacent smile in his face. I put the leaf in my mouth and started chewing on it, and an enormous amount of saliva immediately filled my mouth. I approached the side of the road and spitted the red liquid, with my new friends laughing approvingly. They packed two more pieces for me to take away, and did not want to get paid at all, not even a little tip, bless them. I finished chewing the lot and spit out the remains – after so much spitting it was not fun anymore in the end -, washed the mouth with water, and started walking again. I experienced a slight tipsy feeling and I guessed it was the effect of the betel nut. Not the best amongst legal intoxicants, I though. I later read that chewing betel nut regularly causes oral cancer, a growing problem in Myanmar…

Early that afternoon, I kept on walking the streets of Mandalay in search for the mystic Mustache Brothers. This is the art name of 3 comedian brothers that have been performing political satiric puppet shows for over 30 years. Their shows have often infuriated the totalitarian regime to the point that they have a collection of arrests, years of jail and forced labour (seriously!), and a total ban on performing in public. As a compromise the 3 brothers, now freed, have accepted to perform only in English and just from their home in Mandalay.

I met with Lu Maw, the only English-speaker of the three, whom has hence become the spokesperson for the group. He was spending a quiet afternoon with his wife and nephews and accepted to have an informal chat. We sat on modest chairs and I was offered tea by his wife; I observed the house walls covered with puppets of different size and clothes, political propaganda and framed articles of foreign newspapers and magazines featuring the comedians.

Lu Maw proved to be an affable man, but understandably he did not want to go too much into details about his incarceration and hardship over several years of his life. After a few jokes about the military junta and their intelligence, whom he calls KGB, he suggested I bought a 10$ ticket to his evening show, and kindly saw me to the door. I had heard his shows were very popular amongst tourists, with audiences of between 10 and 50 people each night, all crammed into his small living room.

Sunset approached, and I felt worn out but satisfied of what achieved and seen in the 2 intense days spent in Mandalay, where I met lovely people whose source of happiness seemed to be based on their ability of being contented at all times despite the odds.

It was worth experiencing the magic of Mandalay before the hordes of tourists descend to the town. With new airline connections to the city, and that includes low budget Air Asia with popular flights from KL and Bangkok, and Air Mandalay proposing new regular routes to CM and beyond via Yangoon, the city is certainly on the way to an explosive success as a great travel destination.

THE END

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DAY 1

Back to my visit, after the practicalities in a newly decorated airport so silent you could hear a pin drop, my passport stamped by kind immigration officials, my baggage collected from the luggage belt, I walked out to an almost empty parking lot where drivers of old taxis and combo minivans sold their services without that pressure so present in other south east Asia towns. The fairly long journey into town was characterized first by a long stretch of a newly constructed highway used by very few vehicles, surrounded by countryside, hills topped by pagodas and farms. And later by the total mess of the town outskirts, where roads are pot-holed, pavements are disjoined and home to locals who check out goods in small roadside shops selling anything you can possibly imagine. As we approached the town, the road got smaller and busy with cars, bicycles, rickshaws (here called sai kaa), trucks – some literally falling apart – emitting unhealthy dark fumes, people, dogs; women carrying wicker baskets filled with food on their heads, and men dressed in longyis – the traditional Burmese long sarong worn by both men and women – in a cacophony of sounds that invade the eardrums.

After settling down in a downtown hotel, I started my visit with a walk around the corner where, near a fruit shake vendor and a few men sitting down on plastic chair and chatting the day away, I met who would be my bicycle rickshaw driver and guide for the day: Jue, a calm and smiling dark-skinned middle-age man whose slim body displayed the hardship of years of pedaling his three-wheeled Chinese-made bicycle. Jue’s English was good enough for simple conversations, so I agreed on the fare and hopped on the seat of his vehicle.

Jue firstly worried about my hunger and took me to eat in a modern-looking restaurant where I was served fish curries, marinated prawns, small side dishes of all kinds of vegetables, all accompanied by spicy and non-spicy sauces. I ate till I dropped! With Myanmar cuisine being influenced by neighbouring countries like Thailand, China, India and Laos, a generous array of hot and cold dishes can be enjoyed seasoned to your taste with condiments like chilli sauce, shrimp sauce, soy sauce or lime juice. Local markets are the perfect place to see (and taste) Myanmar produce such as okra, long and green beans, and the speciality mohinga dish, a fish soup with fresh rice noodles which locals love to eat at breakfast; Mondi, a Mandalay favourite, is a yummy rice noodle dish with chicken curry; Shan noodles are another must-try dish.

I hopped again on Jue’s rickshaw and we left for another destination. Mandalay grid-patterned roads are busy with a kaleidoscopic mix of thousands of bicycle rickshaws (the city have 13,000 of them registered!), and Jue negotiated the crossings (most having no traffic light) with Japanes mopeds, low riding jeeps and modern cars, with a raise of the right hand to ask for the right of way. He stopped shortly after in a gold leaf workshop where we were able to observe the city’s skilled artisans at work: the precious metal is still hammered by hand thousands of times to produce gleaming paper-thin sheets that are bought by locals and rubbed onto Buddha sculptures at the temples.

Jue then pedaled along the city moat to catch a glimpse of the walled off Mandalay Palace, and stopped at an open air tea shop where we enjoyed a steaming and spiced Indian tea and I smoked my first Myanmar hand-made cigarette: a cheroot. Aromatic and spiced, these conical, slim and green cigarettes were very popular amongst the British during the days of the British Empire, with travelers through the ages referring the Myanmar people as “having the air of princes as they regally go about puffing on the cheroots”. Jue told me that a local woman can make up to 1500 cheerots per day.

Jue kept looking at his watch and eventually informed me that it was time to head to Mandalay Hill. On the way we made a stopover at Kuthodaw Paya, a unique and amazing temple compound that features a large gold pagoda. But the main feature are the 729 intriguing marble slabs inscribed with the entire 15 books of the Tripitaka, the sacred scriptures of Buddhism to be learned by all monks.

At the foot of Mandalay Hill I faced a dilemma: hike the 1729 steps to the top, or take the easy way. As the sunset was pretty near, time did not allow for the first option, so I paid the fare to a local motorbike-taxi who rode at an amazing speed along the switchback road, narrowly avoiding locals descending on foot, and let me off at the departure point of an escalator that covers the last few meters. I finally got to the top right on time to enjoy a bird’s eye view of the city below, as well as the amazing sunset with its palette of colours painting over the town and the surrounding countryside.

It is there at the top of the hill, at 240 meters above sea level, that the Buddha is said to have made a prophecy that in the year 2400 Buddhist Era, a great city would be founded at the foot of the hill, a prophecy that came true when Mandalay was founded by King Mindon in 1857. Once my Canon was happy with the shots taken, and my eyes content with the stunning sunset views, I started the descent of the hill on foot (barefoot!), which took me about 30 minutes. On the way down, I was rewarded first by a huge standing Buddha, his outstretched hand pointed in the direction of the royal palace, then by the sight of many temples, spirit shrines, places to stop for a drink and a rest, and souvenir stalls, which by that time were closing their trade for the day.

It was pitch dark by the time I got to the bottom, my feet swollen from the effort, and Jue was patiently waiting for me at the entrance, smiling, ready for the 4km ride back to my hotel. I paid him his fare, a tip, and waved goodbye. I went to have a meal of Indian chappati and mutton curry in a local roadside stall before hitting the bed early, totally knackered but filled with images and memories of the long and exiting day…

PART 3 FOLLOWS…

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No! you won’t ‘eed nothin’ else

But them spicy garlic smells,

An’ the sunshine an’ the palm-trees an’ the tinkly temple-bells;

On the road to Mandalay . . .

“Rudyard Kipling”

Burma, Birmanie, Myanmar. The country conjures up serene cultural and tropical images on the traveler’s mind. My memories floated to the past for days, after a friend from Bali proposed a short trip thanks to Airasia Airline new route: Kuala Lumpur to Mandalay.

Myanmar is often on the news nowadays. Its once totalitarian regime opening up to the world has given way to unprecedented growth fuelled by both International investments and the arrival in flocks of tourists.

Mandalay in itself reminded me of the many times I have tried to imagine it as a romantic place, before I realized that Kipling never visited Mandalay, that the poem was about the nostalgia and longing of the British Empire for Asia’s exoticism, and finally that the place at the time was not romantic at all but rather small, dirty and dusty.

Located on the banks of the mighty Ayeyarwady River, Mandalay, a town of 800,000 inhabitants, the country’s second city in size after Yangoon, and the capital of the last independent Burmese kingdom, is indeed one of the main travel destinations of Myanmar. Mandalay is renowned for a rich history despite being only 150 years old in a country of a thousand years old towns, and is undeniably the cultural center of Myanmar. Attractions include stunning sunset views from Mandalay Hill, traditional music performances, skilled craftsmanship, and incredible out-of-town destinations.

I felt I had enough information for my short Burmese adventure in Mandalay….

PART 2 FOLLOWS…

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