Mandalay redux

I know I left Mandalay on a rather sour note, and not a single photo! But wifi is so poor in many parts of Burma that I just didn't want to risk more blog posts that disappear...

Here is that parting image from Bagan, with the hot air balloons just landing...pretty good shot from the taxi window, eh? I did a little research on these balloon adventures in Mandalay, thinking that we might just go for it. When I discovered that the price was $385 US each, I realized that was an extravagance that we would not indulge in. 

There was a little rainbow at the end of that day in Mandalay, however, as Jim did his reasearch and found a nice place for us to see the sunset and have a drink at happy hour. The top of the Ayerwaddy Riverview Hotel was like being in another world. And wouldn't you just know it, but a big group of Swiss tourists showed up at dinner time. 

It was a lovely place to watch the activity on the river from one side, and the sprawling city on the other. So, that day was salvaged at the eleventh hour! We knew that we could have made lemonade out of being in Mandalay another day, but we were leaving now, so that was that. 

One more taxi snafu before we departed...we had asked our hotel to call a taxi for the morning ride to the airport, then liked our driver who waited while we had drinks the night before so asked him to come pick us up. We told the hotel to cancel the other taxi. They agreed- or so we thought. 

In the morning a different guy was there with a taxi, so we were just getting in when our guy arrived. Ack! I slunk into the backseat to leave jim to sort it out. They came to an agreement , with our guy bowing out graciously. I'm sure he was counting on that big taxi fare, and we both felt bad. 

Here are a couple more views as we left.

Flowers hanging in the taxi. Most of them had some form of fresh offering, and our cab driver played soothing morning prayer chanting on his radio. 

I call this " monks coming and going". That was one nice thing about Mandalay- lots of monks around. We saw a row of probably 50 as we drove to the airport, just collecting their morning meal. These monks are carrying their alms bowls.

These monks at the airport reminded us of a certain son of ours when he has a short haircut. I used to say he looked a bit like a skinhead, but I think I will change that image to think of it as a monk haircut. 

On to Inley Lake.