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Burma 1979
Burma 1979
Jacek Pałkiewicz2006-06-17 15:04:37
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to save your stamina for Pagan in the north.
In the meantime we made for Mandalay, Burma’s second city and the capital before the arrival of the British. There’s enough here to keep you busy for days, and its regular street life - trishaws, bustling markets and the goings on along the banks of the Irrawaddy River - offers more variety than any other town. Only from the summit of Mandalay Hill can the vastness of the old Palace be appreciated. In one of the country’s great cultural tragedies, this immense wooden structure caught fire in 1945 as the Japanese tried to hold off Allied forces. Only the wide moat and high walls remain, outlining a square of 2km-long sides.
Instead, I ventured to a collection of pagodas and monasteries south of Mandalay Hill. At the Shwenandaw Kyaung you can see traditional Burmese woodwork, large panels beautifully mottled and aged by the elements. The Kuthodaw Pagoda is known for its 730 inscribed marble slabs. Each is housed in a pavilion and together they make up one complete Buddhist text. These have spawned a host of bizarre statistics - 450 days to read the whole lot, and 2400 monks once read it in a continuous six-month relay.
Some of the best day-trips from Mandalay are to the sites of old capitals strung along the banks of the Irrawaddy River. Being built of wood, the palaces are long gone. However, the real appeal of these outings are not the palaces, but in discovering a more rustic Burma. Amarapura proved not so much a “city of immortality” but a quiet enclave of watery fields, buffalo and the charming U Bien’s Bridge. A ruined palace provided the teak for this one kilometre construction and I happily watched locals fishing off its stumpy pillars.
Mingun, on the other side of Mandalay, is another popular outing. Access is by boat, an 11km journey upriver past low, sandy banks, tent-like huts and a handful of villages. The Mingun Pagoda was never completed, in fact it never became
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See photographs from:
Burma (Myanmar) Gallery
