The Esthetic of Lostness: Mandalay

After the previous day, I was wondering how I could top it off. I hired a driver for USD30 to take me to some of the outer sights of Mandalay. The tour consisted of:

Mahina something Buddha

Supposed to be something special about this Buddha. There were guys touching a gold leaf covered Buddha since women aren't allowed up close and personal with him

Wood carving workshop

Added in as a freebie since I spent all of 15 minutes in the previous place. It was interesting to see the craftsman just going at the wood and seeing what they had already achieved on the same piece of wood. There were also embroiderers in the workshop to make costumes fro wooden puppets and cushion covers. My eyes were hurting just watching how precise they were

Something Monastery

Have you ever seen 1500 monks ranging from young to old wait in lines of 2 (like the French cartoon Madeline) with bowls for their daily meal? If not, I have and it takes a freaking long time for the procession to end. The monks eat only once a day, which is usually a bowl of rice. I don't get why they carry such big alm bowls if they can't eat it all but anyway. Maybe it's symbolic or something.

Silk weaving workshop

Very manual and labour intensive. I can see how this could ruin your eyes, along with embroidery. I ended up buying a longyi for freaking USD20. I better wear it.

U Bein Bridge

150 year wooden (teak?) bridge which is around 1.6km from memory. I walked about 1.3km since the other side didn't look so great. It is rickety as hell, especially when you have groups of old, larger European tourists walking on them at the same time. Interesting to see the fisherman standing in the water fishing and the rubbish floating alongside them. Very pleasant.

Gold Leaf making workshop

Again very manual and labour intensive. It takes about 20+ hours to make a small piece of gold leaf about 5cm x 5cm. The Buddha in the photo (uploaded soon) needed 1000 gold leafs to cover him. F*&k. No wonder people are employed over there. With the amount of pagoda building and craftsmanship required, there's no job shortage if you can make gold leaf or carve ornate figureheads in roofs.

With all that out of the way by 12:30pm, I decided how to make tracks to Bagan. I ended up on the Shwe Man Thu 9:30pm bus, which as supposed to be the best way to Bagan. I did not sleep a wink as the bus driver was doing 70km/hr down dirt, bumpy roads. There was heavy braking at some points in which I saw he had almost missed a freaking gouge hole. The hole would've sit a hippo inside quite comfortably.

At 2:10am, the bus stopped and the driver told us to get out since the next bus station was about 17km out of Bagan, whereas this one was only 5km. I had made friends with a young Chilean couple who were just as confused and disorientated as me. We hopped of the bus and into a truck, which then dispersed us to lodgings (booked or unhooked). The stupid driver was going to leave me at an open, dirty, dark bus station where it looked pretty darn unsafe at 2:30am. A Thai group of 3 girls were also on the bus and said I could go back to their hotel and wait in the lobby. It turns out that they are super organised because they had just opened their own travel agency, so were doing a recon holiday. I happily accepted their offer, which leads us to now.

It's now 4:30am and my tour guide/driver is to pick me up at Kaday Aung Hotel at 5am. I hope he finds me...