The a Road to Mandalay

The mention of Mandalay always conjured up images of a rather sleepy colonial jungle outpost to me. And  when we encountered the vintage auto road rally in Singapore named "the Road To Mandalay" , this further cemented that imagine in my mind. 

Shall I tell you of our experience of Mandalay? Yes, of course, because I know you're dying to hear the story.

We flew from Bagan to Mandalay on an early morning flight and were lucky enough to see the sky filled with 10-15 hot air balloons as they were just about to land and pop the champagne corks! It was a beautiful sight, and made us wish that we had looked into doing that. 

After only about 35 minutes we were in Mandalay, at a rather deserted airport. I never like it when people are clamoring for our business, which is how it was there, with several young men trying to steer us to their taxi business, thereby getting a little tip for carrying our bags. We got to our taxi, which we we had paid $12 for, and it was unmarked, I noticed. The drive into town was nearly 45 minutes, but the driver took us to a nice looking hotel and young uniformed(!) doormen gathered our bags and the taxi was off. However, when we went to check in, we discovered that this was not, in fact, our hotel. It had a similar name, and we told them them we paid at the airport, so they helpfully called the taxi rank, but they did not have a listing for our cab. Hmmm. Gypsy cab? Or maybe just a mistake. They said our hotel was very far and we would need another taxi, which they called for us. 

Turned out, our hotel did NOT have a Trip Advisor Travelers Choice award as the first one did, and it was also not in a nice part of town. The staff, with limited English was very young and helpful, though. Elevator was not yet installed, but we were on the first floor. Ah, did I mention the twin beds? At that point I didn't even care anymore. 

We were hungry so asked at the front desk where we might find a restaurant. Ah, Golden Shan they suggested. She gave us directions which we tried to follow, but walking in that neighborhood was unpleasant to say the least. It was kind of an industrial area, and the narrow dusty roads were choked with traffic, from motorbikes to cars, trucks and busses that had loud horns which they blew to let you know they were passing. Startling! Added to that was the gobs of beetle nut juice everywhere , which to my western esthetic was pretty gross. Lots of the men in Myanmar chew beetle nut, which stains their teeth red, and they spit out the juice, which is a rusty dirt color. 

Jim was sure the restaurant was right close by, but we never found it, and finally returned to the hotel, a bit defeated. He looked at the map and decided they sent us in the wrong direction. So we spent nearly 30 minutes trudging around on these mean streets, in the hot sun. At this point, I may have told Jim that I hated him. More than once. To his credit, he tried asking directions, but people just don't speak much, if any English. Finally we found a cab, and tried to make him understand what we wanted, but gave up again, and had him drive us back to the hotel where we got written directions. It ended up being not far from wher we first turned around...although we read two decent reviews of it, it was pretty awful. I didn't even want to take a photo because it was basically a buffet filled with trays of things we didn't want to eat. But we had a few dishes that were stir fried chicken and beef, or? And we got into our cab who waited for us. He took us to a gold leaf pounding workshop and we parted ways.

After that we didn't really have a plan for what to do. Big mistake! Cynthia's travel rule #12

You need to have a plan. It doesn't have to be the best plan, but a plan is better than no plan.

We discovered that it is a mistake to hit a city, especially a big city, and just wander around( or in our case, drive around aimlessly). Jim told me to wait in the shade and he took off down the street, for who knows where!? Did he have a plan? 

I waited, and waited...eventually becoming kind of frantic as I didn't even know where he went.

He finally appeared, apologetic for worrying me, but said he stopped into a hotel to ask about the possibility of changing our air tickets so that we might leave the next day. They called our travel agent in Yangon who booked all our air travel. He said he would send an e mail later. 

By the time we got back to the hotel, he had changed our flight, so we were leaving a day earlier than planned for Inle Lake! The decision was made for us.