Day 13-17: Mandalay, Puppies, Thailand, Dehydration, Buses
Day 13
Arrived in Mandalay at 0300. We were greeted by a well spoken Burmese man who took us to a hotel and also sold us on a tour of the city the next day. The car was quite nice and the price seemed fair so we agreed to a nine am start. In the meantime we crashed in our hotel room and got a good morning rest.
We started our tour with a visit to the largest monastery in Mandalay, home to over 1000 monks. Usually monks begin their day collecting alms in the form food and money, but this monastery is so large that the locals bring donations to the monastery each morning. As expected, the place was flooded with tourists and their telephoto lenses taking pictures, and Adam blended right in. Sarah found kittens and puppies to play with and was surprised to find the kittens were much more willing to come play. The puppies ran away when you got too close. Adam talked to a monk and learned that they are not too bothered by the tourists, they understand that we have never seen anything like their morning alms and get the fascination.
Next we went to a temple complex just outside Mandalay set at the top of a hill with many many steps, we luckily had a driver. It was amazing to see the amount of time and dedication that has gone into making the monasteries special. We have seen over and over amazing detail and care that shows in each piece. This temple had amazing mosaics of mirror pieces that really made it radiant. Adam has become quite adept at asking people to take their picture, today again we noticed people look away from the camera when you take their picture.
We stopped for lunch and while waiting found a litter of twelve new puppies that barely had their eyes open. We played with them for a bit then hopped onto a boat to go see the remains of some temples on a small island. The primary mode of transport was by horse drawn cart which while fun had Sarah's allergies reacting in no time. On the island we saw a wooden temple that was still in use partially as a school. The wooden temple was the most unique we had seen yet, with amazing detail carved into beautiful dark wood. Our driver seemed like the entire village's uncle. He had a comment and joke for everyone we passed and was very well received. On our way back to the mainland our boat broke down and we had to be towed by another back to shore.
Our next stop was a sunset from the wooden bridge. Adam played with his camera and Sarah people watched and enjoyed the sunset. It was a little funny to see the fishermen we could see from the bridge mostly turned out to be fisher women.
After our busy day of monuments and our air conditioned private car we called it an early night.
Day 14
We took a 0600 taxi to the airport to fly to Khung Tung on the eastern side of Myanmar, over the restricted area. We arrived in Khung Tung and immediately took a 6 hour bus to the boarder TOWN and walked across the boarder to Thailand, it was all very efficient and we soon found ourselves in Mai Sai for the night. We meandered through the markets and after iced coffee in cans and some chocolate snacks we decided to find a place to sleep. We spent the night in a sweet little bungalow type bamboo hut by the Mekong River. We quickly noted a more westernized environment, the women were dressed less conservatively, there was tesco (bought new nail clippers, Adam W!!!) and 7-11, things seemed more efficient with better infrastructure, and more people spoke English. At the market we tried waffle with corn, surprisingly good.
Day 15
We had some delicious food at a bus station, Adam is convinced it had MSG. We spent another 8 hours on a bus to get from Mai Sai to the Loas boarder. We got our visas and got across the boarder very efficiently. Adam started to feel like he was 'dying' and had some minor heatstroke. Sarah took care of getting checked into a nice AC room. Adam crashed and Sarah went to explore the night market.
Speakers were not in short supply and some booths had their own music going. Walking through I saw a group of young boys with mix tables and a DJ booth set up. They were doing lots of jumping around and fist pumping. They turned up the music anytime a girl walked by. There was all sorts of food, games, and trinkets being sold. It was interesting to see the different flavour of the market in comparison to those in Myanmar and Thailand. Tired as well I quickly called it a night.
Day 16
Today we relaxed in the hotel room. Adam was figuratively dying and he was concerned for his life. Sarah was not. In the two days, Adam went through 9L of water, took 5 ice cold showers, constantly had cold water bottles against his neck and watched Al Jazeera and BBC (the only English channels) non stop.
In town there was dragon boat racing, market, and general extra things going on with a festival in town. Sarah went and explored bits and pieces during the day. That night we had a nice supper. Sarah picked up some lanterns which seemed to be a part of the festival. Once it was dark you could see them across the sky. We lit ours off the corner of our balcony from the top floor of the hotel. There was something very special about making a wish and watching them fly away.
Day 17
We got on a bus headed for Vientienne, the capital, at 10am.
The logistics of Laos became confusing. We are currently in the NW, but want to go to the SE, and need to fly out from central north. The whole circuit would require some heavy backtracking. In talking to some Italians we were inspired to get of the bus early at Luang Prabang (where our flight home leaves from). We will take our time heading south and then take a bus from southern Laos to Bangkok to meet with our connecting flight.
We are currently stuck and have not been moving for the last 1.5 hours. Some sort of narrow road issues... Hard to understand. We are hoping to make it to Luang Prabang by 10pm. I mean 11pm. I mean midnight?
Make that 330am.