Mandalay

My impressions of Mandalay confirmed pretty much what the guidebooks described: a sprawling, noisy, dusty city with a number of "worth-the-trip" sights. Soon I will post David's impressions of Mandalay's monuments, temples, palaces and monasteries.These are the things that stick with me:- What a good idea it was to ban motor scooters and motor cycles from Yangon. In Mandalay the only thing that trumps the angry whine of cheap imported Chinese scooters and cycles is the call to worship blasting from loudspeakers both stationary and on cruising trucks.- Puppies and monks. No, I'm not in way equating the two. I'm just observing the lines of saffron-robed, shaven headed (I now think many men actually look better with shaved heads) men and boys walking in procession down the wide avenues, dodging the dozens upon dozens of puppies (some just a few days old) that scamper everywhere. The bigger dogs doze in the street as well as along the roadside, causing cars, buses and scooters to play dodge-em with the canine set. I thought when I got those painful rabies vaccine shots that I'd find the street animals irresistible. While some of the tiny pups are adorable, there's no way I'd be tempted to pet one.- Dust, litter and poverty interspersed with obvious evidence of wealth. At times we could have been in any city in India as far as everything being covered with a layer of dust and piles of litter (mostly plastic) strewn along the riverbank. While the inner city is a bustling metropolis, with substantial high-rise apartment houses and the occasional Lexus and Mercedes SUV, the miles of riverside shanties are proof that there's more than one socio-economic class here. The irony is that everywhere you look there are gold domed pagodas, some housing giant Buddhas that are covered with hundreds of pounds of gold leaf and encrusted with gems. It reminds me of the Vatican where nuns beg outside a place filled with priceless art owned by the church. But Buddhists (rich and poor) here believe that being generous to Buddha in worldly ways will help them achieve nirvana in the next life. Who am I to argue?- This is a country tremendously rich in natural resources - which is a big reason why the US is competing vigorously with China to become a good friend with this country. Rubber, teak and other hard wood, oil, gold, precious gems, tin, silver, to name just a few. The river supplies fish and shellfish. But the most obvious of the country's commodities come from the fields on both sides of the Irrawaddy, and on dry stretches of land in the middle of the river, where crops grow abundantly. Every year during the monsoons the land is flooded and enriched. Bamboo huts spring up again to punctuate fields of every imaginable fruit and vegetable. Broccoli, cauliflower, dozens of varieties of greens, cucumbers, pumpkins, potatoes, corn, tomatoes, peanuts and eggplant, to name a very few of the vegetables. Melons, grapefruit, oranges, pineapples, bananas, pomelo, strawberries grow here in great profusion, as do grapes that are used for making an extremely drinkable Myanmar wine. And of course there are the rice fields that furnish three harvests a year. Bottom line - there are certainly many poor people in this country, but in the places we have visited here we don't see hunger in the way we've seen it in India.For me the high point of our few days in Mandalay was the discovery of the wholesale produce market. It was a chaotic riot of blossoms in the sort of bulk I've never seen before. Thousands of bundles of gladioli wrapped in some sort of large leaf to protect them during shipping. Carts and motorbikes overflowing with mums and daisies. Avalanches of tomatoes and mounds of shallots filling woven baskets in stalls that back into deep shadows away from the harsh sunlight. Children work at sorting and trimming while adults load trucks and scooters with the bounty of this extraordinary land.The intrepid gentlemen in the trishaws below furnished our sightseeing transportation for our time In Mandalay.Stay tuned for David's post.