96. Mandalay

Just when the scenery was moving from relaxing to monotonous we began to approach Mandalay, signalled by the big white bridge crossing the river. The boat docked across from Sagaing, just outside Mandalay. It's a series of hills that served as the capital of Burma after the fall of Bagan, for all of about fifty years during the 1300's. As usual, they busied themselves covering the hills with stupas, although thanks to its proximity to Mandalay, these religious buildings are still in use. The hills are covered with dozens of temples and monasteries, and the gleaming stucco and gold stupas are quite a remarkable sight.

The river did a great job of magnifying nature's beauty, especially at sunrise and sunset. And of course being in the middle of nowhere the stars at night were really spectacular as well. The mornings were surprisingly cold, and foggy, although the fog burned off by about 9 am.



As I said earlier, there was very little manmade along the riverbanks, just a couple of temples, pictured here.

There are about ten gays on board, and they immediately formed a clique on board. (I say they because we remained aloof from everyone as usual.) The Americans likewise gelled into one big clique, and true to form spoke very loudly throughout the trip. The bulk of the tourists were European, who by and large stayed with the people they came on the trip with. Their main function was to get up in the middle of the night and put books down on the deck chairs to claim them for the day. Their function off the boat was to come late to all the tours, get lost while on a tour, and generally give the tour guides heart attacks. So, at least in this case, everyone played to their stereotype.

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.