Wednesday, 4 November 1998.
Rose early, flew to Mandalay and checked in at Sedona. First day of touring – The Mahamuni Pagoda with its bazaars on all sides and gold leaf covering of the image. A generous local invited Ged Ladd [Me] to apply some of his gold leaf to the Buddha. (See headline image also shown below). We see monks and nuns in the grounds and touch, healing Khmer statues.
Eat at Eternal Restaurant with pork bun and Tom Yum soup and fine Chinese broccoli and not much else of note. Then on to see a factory where the gold leaf hammering is done. Daisy [Janie] dispensed pens with reckless abandon. Then onto the grounds of the Old Palace, now containing a somewhat gaudy replica. (The British “did a Wurtzburg” on the original at the end of World War II).
Then onto Shwenandaw Monastery (part of the old palace, which had been built and moved “MFI/IKEA style”) with fine, old wood, carvings…
…then onto Atumashi Monastery with amazingly naff “gameshow” Buddha…
…and then on to Kuthodaw Pagoda, with amazing tombstone-like slabs of Buddhist Scriptures. There the local girls told Janie how pretty I am (as usual). Across the way to the Sandamuni Pagoda, where the unfortunately named U-Khanti translated, Pali scriptures into Burmese.
Home for a quick siesta before going up to the Mandalay Hill to watch the sunset
Another short break before going across the road for a Burmese meal at Pyigyimon Restaurant – mostly notable for a superb lentil soup and “sandal leather” beef – the curry sauces were good.
The photographs from this day are pictures 1 to 30 in this Flickr album – click here or below:
A placeholder piece which shows the full itinerary and has links to the albums of all our photographs for this trip can be found by clicking here or the link below: