Dust, diesel and a bad curry

Today was the big sightseeing day to Amarapura, Sagaing, Shwenandaw Kyaung, and the Mahamuni Paya, one of the top three in Burma (the other two being the Shwedagon in Rangoon, and Golden Rock).

Shwenandaw Kyaun is an old teak monastery that used to be located within the grounds of the Mandalay Palace but was dismantled and moved in the late 19^th century. That turned out to be fortuitous because it escaped the WWII bombings. It is now used as a meditation centre and not a monastery.

The Mahamuni Paya, after Shwedagon and Bagan, didn’t thrill me. But there was a really big buddha that people (read: men only) donate gold leaf to so this thing is getting bigger everyday, and rather strangely shaped. You can see the men going up to apply the gold leaf to make merit, while the women are down the back praying and offering leaves and flowers.

The drive out of town was gorgeous with beautiful fertile plains and small farming communities producing all kinds of fruits and vegetables using old fashioned and traditional farming methods. You don’t see any machines around here, bulls drag carts loaded up with whatever needs to be loaded up. People are in the fields with hoes and traditional tools.

Sagaing has over 600 golden stupas on a series of hillsides on the banks of the Irrawaddy. It is a stunning and peaceful place where many Buddhists come to spend time meditating with the monks. Sagaing is a big monk centre with a population of over 6,000.

Just down the bottom of the hill and across the river is a small port where they load up the beautiful old teak logs for transportation to Singapore. The paradox of peace and destruction wasn’t lost on me. Considering teak is such a fast growing hardwood, and Burma has around 70 per cent of the world’s teak wood resources, you might think they’d consider sustainable forestry. But no.

Finally we headed to Amarapura which is a beautiful old town, and a former royal capital. The streets were full of traffic and people. It turns out that a very famous monk died the day before and this was the ceremony for his funeral. The road was so jam-packed with thousands of people, with singing and a big elephant creature dancing up the street, that we turned back and found another road to our destination – U Bein’s Bridge. This is a 200 year old, 1.2 kilometre teak footbridge that crosses the Taungthaman Lake. It is absolutely stunning – and very rickety to walk along. There were loads of people down on the shores, and men fishing with old bamboo poles, up to their waist in the lake.

Tun Aung suggested we wait nearly three hours there for sunset but that was a bit too much for me feeling as I was. So he agreed to pick me up earlier tomorrow before my bus to Inle and take me there at sunset. I forgot to mention that earlier in the day I told him I needed a bus ticket to Inle so he pulled over at one of those places where there’s a phone on a table under a tree and you pay the lady a couple of hundred kyet to make a call, and he booked me on a bus for tomorrow night.

Anyway, leaving the bridge we headed back through Amarapura and ran into the funeral procession again. By this time they had the body down at the river, where he would soon be burned and the ashes taken to one of the pagodas. Seeing so many people out for the ceremony was quite moving. Obviously revered in the community, his funeral was attended by several police and government officials.

So I returned to the hotel, crashed for a couple of hours, then ventured out for my fateful mutton curry at the chapatti stand, after, of course, my beer at the ice-cream shop.

No need to go into specifics but food poisoning is never fun, particularly when your throat feels like you’re swallowing razor blades.

Optimistically I checked out of my room at 1pm to lay on the hard wooden bench (Chinese style) in reception to wait for my saviour to collect me at 4pm to take me to the bridge, then the bus station.

At 1.45pm, I checked back into my room.

Tun Aung arrived at 4pm and, as I had no way to contact him, I couldn’t have let him know before now that I can’t get on that bus tonight. He made a quick call, postponed the bus, got the girls to get me some hot tea, sent me back to my room to rest and went out to get medicine.

About twenty minutes later he arrived with some tablets, rehydration salts and biscuits and ordered me to eat before taking the tablet, then sip the rehydration solution that he made up while also drinking tea. He set everything up in my room and when he was satisfied I should be okay he left.

I had a pretty rough night but convinced myself I was feeling better. At this point I really needed to get out of Mandalay, although spending time indoors was good from a dust perspective.

At 8am Tun Aung phoned to check on me and then I spent pretty much the rest of the day as yesterday, laying around, sleeping and watching movies on my computer, all while listening to the strange sounds of Mandalay out the window.

I popped out in the late morning for some more medication to make sure I would be okay for the bus tonight. Then I checked out at 1pm to spend three hours on the hard wooden bench but the staff generously gave me my room back after 15 minutes, feeling sorry for me laying on the wooden bench.

The bridge at sunset was truly beautiful and after getting out and about (and taking a lot of medication), I was feeling a fair bit better.