Too much of a mediocre thing

Mandalay palace

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I stayed 5 nights in Mandalay .. more time than I originally planned but I had to leave Yangon early because night trains no longer operate. It proved to be too long in this dusty commercial city. In spite of its evocative name, I found Mandalay to be a rather dull place. Perhaps I should have read the guide more closely ; page 236 ; ‘Not much of Mandalay can be seen on foot’. Distances were too long for comfortable walking. I found only one ‘taxi’ (a small pickup truck with planks in the back for seats) which was not overflowing with people ; I got a ride from the zoo back to the centre, following a 3 hour walk out there in the 35 degree (95 degrees F) sunny weather.

I had my one and only sighting of the power of the military while in Yangon. My room looked down on the roundabout outside the railway station and when I heard sirens I looked out to see all traffic in any direction freeze. (and I mean all … trucks, cars, motorcycles and bicycles all stopped - people even stopped walking). Soon police on motorcycles lead a convoy of 10 or 12 black 4 by 4 vehicles with dark tinted windows, with trucks filled with troops interspersed. You could not tell which vehicle had the Big Man, so I guess you would have to blow up the lot if you were a terrorist. The people did not seem to look at the convoy .. they just stared out into space. This convoy stood out because the vehicles were all new and very clean (quite a contrast to the other vehicles on the road).

Street scene

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While the city was not as polluted as Yangon, it was very dusty and I was coughing a lot. There also seemed to be a huge number of street children ; really wretched looking condition, filthy dirty in rags and often wrapped in a dirty blanket on the street in the mornings. There were many beggars and people going through rubbish tips (every corner seemed to have a rubbish tip). The biggest surprise to me was that monks were begging for money .. in Thailand or Laos, you might give money at a temple, but the monks beg for food in the morning, then go about their work (teaching, praying, whatever). These monks seemed to spend all day begging and were ignored by the locals so I soon learned to ignore them as well.