We left Bagan midday and began our leisurely two day cruise to Mandalay. The trip is, as expected, extremely relaxing. Departing from Bagan the riverbanks are of course dotted with temples, but soon the temples fade away and we chug through the vast flat grassland of central Burma. The river is very wide and still, and occassionally a passing boat or small village provides some visual variety, but mostly it's just very relaxing. I guess the mega cruise ships compensate for the boredom of ocean crossings with glitzy entertainment and activities directors, but for our mini-cruise entertainment consists of reading, drinking and staring blankly at the Irawaddy river.


The evenings were more organized, with a formal dinner and then some entertainment. One night they had an acrobat, a young girl who basically stacked up a bunch of bottles, stood on top of the bottle pyramid, and danced around and juggled. We couldn't watch as we were convinced the whole thing would come crashing down and she'd be cut to ribbons, but she was actually too talented for that. On the second night, the end of our cruise, they organized a lantern ceremony reminiscent of Loy Krathong in Thailand. We were each given our own lanterns to float into the air, then they released thousands of small floating candles behind the boat, which was quite a beautiful sight. Somchai took some photos, but I think he was drunk because they just came out squiggles of light.