Mandalay

Today I did some more Pagoda hopping. Mandalay is not really a tourist centric city. There isn't a lot of infrastructure like guides and drivers, or even very many taxis. In both Yangon and Bagan I was able to arrange a guide through my hotel with little trouble. Here, I asked about a guide and they looked at me like they had never heard such a request. So I plotted out where I wanted to go on my iPad, and when I left the hotel, a guy approached me and asked if I needed a taxi. I said yes, and showed him on my map where I wanted to go. He said 2000 Kyat (about $2) so I said fine. He disappears for a minute and comes back with a helmet for me. He doesn't have an actual taxi, just a motor bike. I've got my big pack on with my RED in it and a very large tripod which he says is no problem. Normally, this wouldn't be my first choice in transportation, especially in a re-incarnation based culture, but I thought, WTF, I've been riding around dirt roads in Bagan on an electric bike for a week, why not. So I hopped on and off we go. It turned out to be quite a pleasant ride. We went by Mandalay palace, the last royal residence in Burma. I had seen it on the sat map I was using and thought it reminded me of the old city of Chiang Mai, but as you pass by it, you get an idea of how huge it really is. It is square and nearly 1.5 miles on a side. It's about 4 times the size of the main Angkor Wat temple complex in Cambodia. It is surrounded by a moat that is about 50 yards wide. Inside the moat is a huge wall surrounding the whole site. There are massive gates in the middle of each side. There is a part that you can tour, but much of it is comprised of military installations now.

I went to the Kuthodaw Pagoda and the Sanda Muni Paya Pagoda. They are adjacent to one another at the foot of Mandalay Hill. They are similar in that they both have a large central golden pagoda surrounded by hundreds of smaller white pagodas. Inside each small pagoda is a marble slab about 3 ft wide and 4 ft tall that is inscribed with a single page of Buddha's teachings. In Sanda Muni Paya, there are 1,774 individual pagodas each with one slab of marble. It is supposedly the world's largest book.

When I was finished with my shooting, I headed back to the hotel with another motor bike taxi. It's interesting how traffic flows here. Nobody stops at intersections. Traffic streams just seems to flow through each other. It seems the only rule is to not hit something that is directly in front of you. You don't have to worry about whether something is going to be in front of you. Whoever gets to a point in space-time first, has the right of way. Traffic doesn't even seem to slow down at intersections. It's a little un-nerving at first, but with a leap of faith, it's not so bad. Of course they do believe in re-incarnation. Anyhow, we went about 10 miles through city traffic and only stopped twice for very brief periods, yet it all felt quite safe and sane at the time!

Here are some Images from today:

Kuthodaw Pagoda






These are some of the small pagodas housing Buddha's teachings on marble slabs




This is one of the marble slabs with a single page of Buddha's teachings inscribed.



A setup of my RED doing a shot.


Sanda Muni Paya Pagoda.


some of the 1,774 pagodas at Sanda Muni Paya Pagoda.


Looking through a row of small pagodas at Sanda Muni Paya with the stone tablets going off into the distance. There are row after row of these small pagodas.