After visiting Sagarmyay Village, we headed through Mandalay to our river cruise on the majestic Irrawaddy River, through the aptly named Irrawaddy Valley.
Mandalay is Myanmar’s second largest city, with two million people. The Mandalay name is evocative, from playing a key role as the former royal city, to being the economic and cultural center for upper Myanmar. The Japanese destroyed 60% of the houses and killed 2,000 citizens with its bombing raids, and then took the city. The Brits bombed back, destroying the royal palace. Mandalay was the site of George Orwell’s first book (he was stationed here), a famed song by Frank Sinatra.
We were pretty underwhelmed by our drive through Mandalay, although to be fair, we didn’t stop or even swing by any of the various sites. It was plenty of fun, however, watching the numerous near collisions between motorbikes, trucks, and buses, including ours. Somehow, with all this chaos on the roads, I’ve yet to see an accident (well, I’ve seen accidents after they happened, but not in person).
We got to the river and headed down to our boat, the Ananda Sanctuary. Consisting of just 21 suites, the river cruise boat is luxurious. As I write this on the aft deck, we are cruising pagodas, villages, sandbanks, fishing boats, barges, and pretty (yet flat) landscape. We are definitely cruising in style). I feel a bit like Steve Goodman, riding on the City of New Orleans.
Anyhow, after being shown to our cabins (with bags already delivered!), we had a really good buffet lunch, dining with our fellow Inspirato-eans (Inspiratoites?). The ship cruised down river to Sagaing, a town famous for the Ponnyashain pagoda (and by “famous,” I had never heard of it before). After hiking up the riverbank, we hopped in a bus and headed to the xxxxx monastery.
We got there after school let out, so there were some orphan boys (no homes to go, so they live at the monastery) roughhousing in the dusty yard (yard implies grass, and there was none). Some were wrestling, others were fighting in a little tree. Soccer was being played with a deflated ball. The cutest of all, however, was a boy wearing a makeshift cape. He kept climbing up onto a ground floor railing, and jumping splat into the dirt. Runner up for cuteness was the boy who kept doing handstand flips, except he would land flop on his back! Then he would pop right up and do it again.
We then headed up hill to the Ponnyshain Pagoda (bare feet alert!). High on a hill, the pagoda had stunning views all around – of other pagodas, the Irrawaddy River, a beautiful bridge, rice fields, towns, and the general views into the distance sort of thing that you get with altitude. The pagoda itself is quite pretty, but, because of my error with the photo card, I didn’t get any pictures! (More on – or more appropriately – moron that later).
The next stop was at a textile shop where they were making silk wedding dresses, scarves. It’s amazing to watch these workers with their craft, working on machines that looked 100 years old. People have mad skills here on making things of beauty – and I doubly appreciate it because I have no ability in those types of fields. The pay is good, with the best craftspeople making $50 per day. That may not sound like much money, but it beats working on the farm – more money for “easier” work.
And that’s where I discovered my mistake. Each early morning I take the memory card out of the camera, and download the photos so I start each day with a fresh, clean memory card. For some reason, I left the card in the reader. At two points in the packing up process, I remember seeing the card in the reader and saying – I have to put that back in the camera. But I didn’t. So, no photos of the village, second monastery, the beautiful Ponnyashain Pagoda, or the silk shop. For a while I was scared that somehow I had lost the card – especially when we got back to the bus and it wasn’t on my seat (I was hoping it fell out by accident and I absentmindedly closed it without realizing it). Nope, I’m a moron and missed out on lots of great photos. Oh well. Carol took some with her iPhone, so she will forward to me when we have better internet.
