The Road to Mandalay Part 5: Mandalay

:: The Final journey on the Road to Mandalay ::

I genuinely thought that the mystic "Road to Mandalay" line originated from the nursery rhyme where Nellie the elephant and the head of the herd "met one night in the silver light on the road to Mandalay". It's since emerged (after a couple of days of me humming the song) that Australians don't have that nursery rhyme and it was actually Rudyard Kipling who coined the line in his poem "Mandalay".

Anyhow we can vouch that the road to Mandalay is in dire need of resurfacing but it does get better the closer you get to Mandalay. One thing we forgot to mention before was that as a former British colony, Myanmar traffic drove on the left side of the road until 1970 when the military administration suddenly decreed that traffic would now drive on the on the right side of the road. However, there are still many old cars and buses and almost all the modern cars are second hand imports from Japan so virtually every vehicle is right hand drive. This creates a dilemma that requires someone literally hanging out the passenger window or bus door watching the road ahead informing the driver (whose view is completely blocked) on whether or not it's safe to overtake.

Hours later we pulled into Mandalay bus station, located a totally inconvenient 7 miles from Mandalay city centre. As expected we were quickly surrounded by taxi touts looking for our business and the haggling for the correct fare for the journey began. Suddenly as the price for the taxis was becoming reasonable two guys appeared out of left field to bid for the job only difference was that they were trishaw drivers. After explaining that we couldn't have them cycle us and our bags 7 miles into the city they protested telling us that they were having a slow day and needed the business .... and besides they did it all the time. And so the final 7 miles of the road to Mandalay was tackled at a leisurely pace right down the middle of a dual carriageway full of huge trucks, buses and taxis.
We got chatting to our riders...in between lung fulls of exhaust....and they provided us an interesting insight into their business. It turned out that these guys were trishaw drivers by choice, they had an education, had good English skills and had work experience but with the current state of things they earned more riding than they did teaching or working for the government. To rent their bike cost them 300 KYT per day (~.30c AUD). Their goal was to save and buy the bike (100USD) , which one of the guys recently had achieved. Rent is 4000KYT (4$ AUD) a month for a bamboo hut. These guys worked hard, but with their language skills they were well placed to get work from tourists which hopefully means more income for them.

Our first impressions of Mandalay can be summed up by the words hot and dusty. It's a relatively new city, only 200 years old, identifiable by it's modern grid streets numbered New York city style. From the number of Chinese hotels and businesses it's very apparent how important Mandalay is as a city on the main road to China. Undoubtedly it will continue to grow as the Chinese investment pours in. Around the centre of town each street corner is multifunctional acting as a trishaw rider station, a bike repair area and a couple of business who time share the space, i.e. a tool shop by day and street restaurant by night.

:: Chicken Curry ::

After a day or so we had identified Chapatti Corner, one such street restaurant cooking up out of this world curries and serving up piping hot chapattis. It was to be the first of many of our visits to that particular street corner. Every evening at 4pm a shop closed and the pavement converted into a full on busy restaurant serving hundreds of diners from 5pm onwards.

:: Fermented tea Leaf Salad ::

To escape the heat of Mandalay we took a side trip to the hill town of Pyin OO Lwin three hours pickup drive away. This is a charming little town with many imposing colonial buildings and a colourful fleet of horse drawn stagecoaches that provide a taxi service around town. It's like the wild west meeting the cool Mandalay hills. The highlight of our trip up there was finding a great tea shop with an amazing tea leaf salad and crispy naan bread.

:: Local Cabs ... ::

With our trip to Myanmar finally coming an end we had enough time for one more meal at Chapatti corner, one more draft Myanmar, some last minute souvenir buying and one last ice cream from Nylon Bar before heading for Mandalay airport for our flight to Kunming, China.

:: Chappati Corner ::