Day 44 - Pleasant Return to Mandalay

Leisurely 8:30 am start, with a visit to what turned out to be my favorite monastery, the 250 year old Maha Nanda Kantha in Hsi Paw.




It is built almost entirely of teak, including 147 teak pillars, each 3 feet around.




The soft, worn-smooth floor boards, make you glad that you are barefoot. There are no nails - teak pins hold it together.

There is a bamboo Buddha...



with 1.6 foot ears.



Why the long ears? 1. As a child in India, the Buddha, then prince Siddhartha Gautama, probably had pierced ears with weights on them, a custom of the time (500 bc). 2. Long ears are associated with wisdom and knowledge of all things.

Arching over the Buddha ("Buddha" is a title, not a name, thus "the Buddha"), is a beautiful ceiling.



with many windows for light to affirm his enlightenment.

Across the road from the monastery is a small temple complex, with pagodas from the Bagan era (11th and 12th centuries), with some original stone carving.






Our last image of Hsi Paw was this very determined procession of nuns, perhaps on an alms mission.



Our next stop, several miles from Hsi Paw, was the Baw Kyo Pagoda, which was established in the 13th century.





Inside the glittering exterior pagoda is the original...



less flashy, but more appealing, somehow.

Still, the more modern parts had a distinctive style and beauty.










The inner pagoda contained 4 yellow champak wood statues, three of them a meter high, and this one, inexplicably, a foot high, and so covered with gold leaf its expression is lost, tho one assumes it involves a smile. The obscuring is entirely the fault of male pilgrims - women are not allowed into the interior.




We then set out in earnest for Mandalay, dropping to the bottom of the Gokteik Gorge and up the other side...


on a series of hairpins that were made all the more challenging by the presence of many super-long semis, as well as every other kind of vehicle, including countless motorcycles.




Our intrepid driver patiently worked us through, however, and we pressed on, stopping only for lunch at an open air restaurant in Pyin Oo Lwin, famous for its strawberries that are grown out back...


(we had great yogurt strawberry smoothies), and renowned for its Les Schwab style waiters.



vvvv





We nearly managed to take off without paying when D and I each thought the other had paid, but we woke up before getting back on the highway.
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Day 43 - Hsi Paw Trek to Shan Villages

We met our local guide,Wai Yan, for an easy morning trek to Shan villages around Hsi Paw (pronounced like "thay baw", sort of an unaspirated "t" with a lisp, and an unaspirated "p" or "b" - they sound the same to me). Interestingly, although he identified as Shan and spoke the Shan language, he was ethnically Chinese, and a Muslim, his grandparents having emigrated from Kunming in China due to religious persecution.

Fittingly, we started at a Chinese noodle factory, where the only activity was the setting out of the noodles to dry...



because the day before had been Chinese New Year. There were traces of the celebration in front of some buildings.



We learned the Shan for "hello" - mai sum ka (phonetic) - and used it liberally as we strolled through the villages, invariably prompting smiling responses...







I was again taken by the architecture of the homes.












They really look livable, tho quite humble.

We stopped by a blacksmith shop...



which had a cool bellows (you pull and push the handle on the tube on the left)...




as well as fire protection from both an ancient extinguisher and a Nat plant offering, side by side.



There were the usual Nat towers, which are built before the village is formed...



as well as this Nat flag pole at the edge of a field...




and a larger structure (at the highest point in the village), with horses...


carved by this man (eating lunch)...



And there were other village crafts in view, such as this semi-mechanized mud block operation...



bamboo fan making....



basket weaving...



and cigar making.



We took a break for lunch and then went to the Hsi Paw town Nat, which is a sizable complex with both Shan and Myanmar shrines.














And there were some intriguing drums in the Shan Nat...






which we also had seen elsewhere (e.g. over the shoulder of the carver's wife, in the pic above above).

We finished the day by being chauffeured to a sunset viewpoint, where there was a pagoda...



and great views...





especially of the sunset.









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Day 42 - To Hsipaw - Antique Train and Gokteik Viaduct

Plan for the day was to go to Hsi Paw, a hill town in northern Shan state...



in part by a train ride that crosses a 318 ft high viaduct for over the Gokteik gorge. When it was built in 1901, it was the second highest in the world.

The day began inauspiciously, with our inexperienced (one month) guide Yan arriving a bit late to tell us the train we were planning to take was going to be one and one-half hours late - apparently its modus operandi, unknown to Yan who had never ridden it. I'll try to avoid dwelling on Yan's foibles - we're adopting a tolerant training mode with him.

Since we had planned to skip the first part of the ride anyway, we headed out in the car, planning to catch the train at Naung Cho. Since we had extra time, we made a detour to a cave temple (yes, another one - Myanmar not only has the most pagodas in the world, it likely also has the most (and best) cave temples).

Once again the cave (Maha Nadamu) had real stalactites and stalagmites, and some cavernous rooms.



It also had a lot of water...



including on the paths, making walking a bit tricky.

There are supposed to be over 1000 Buddhas...



including this disturbingly voluptuous one..


and one with what appear to be scales.


There also were a number of fake trees, something we'd not seen elsewhere.




A short walk away from the cave was a rather nice waterfall...



that the local tourists were enjoying, particularly the folks of Indian heritage, of whom there are many in the area, due to the use here by the British of Indian soldiers.

Having used up much of our extra time, we took off for Naung Cho, only to have to wait there another hour, at the rather humble station.



Finally the train arrived...



and it didn't take long to understand why it has delays. It was really beaten up, and the cars swayed wildly, although that was probably due mostly to the track being in even worse shape. But it did have the inexplicable appeal of a train.



The viaduct came into view quite soon...



and everyone commenced a gross over-photographing of it. I opted for some videos.





When we reached the viaduct we were side-railed to allow an oncoming train through...





and then we crossed as well.





There was a tunnel on the other side, and it sounded like we were scraping the sides as we went through.



We got off the train at an even humbler station...



where we were picked up by our driver and taken to Hsi Paw, to check into the Mr. Charles Guest House with all of the other tourists, who, like us, had come here to trek - but that's tomorrow's story...


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Day 41 - To Pyin Oo Lwin

Like the Mandalay Brit colonials, we set off to Pyin Oo Lwin, their hill station at 3000+ feet, to enjoy some temperate weather. Along the way we stopped at a little wholesale flower market where growers sell to vendors, with the flowers taken by motorbike to Mandalay.









We went on, enjoying the separated road (that eased the anxiety of being in a right hand drive) climbing steadily. Our first site in Pyin Oo Lwin was its huge market, with the usual stuff, plus local specialty jams, a very interesting sewing machine...



and "worm fruit", so named because it looks like worms. Yan did not know any other name for it.




We were a little surprised to see a mosque in the middle of the downtown.


We visited the Maha Anhtol Kanthar pagoda...



which was built to house this Buddha...


when it fell from its transport on the way to China, and could not be remounted.

We visited a nearby waterfall...




and then a Chinese temple, which had some great Disneyesque statuary...










as well as an antique building.




We broke for lunch at a restored colonial building, and after lunch boarded a little stagecoach...



for a tour of other colonial buildings. We first went down "office road" where we passed old colonial offices that were now being used by the Myanmar government.







Obviously, red brick was the style of the day, even in the residential estates, where it looked to be wedged between timbers, giving the buildings a Tudor appearance.












As we approached the botanical garden, we passed several plant nurseries, and these enflowered figures...







Yan said that many folks come here from Mandalay (2nd largest city in Myanmar) on the weekends (perhaps like their former colonial masters), and they no doubt patronize the nurseries.

The Garden itself was pretty well-tended, tho a bit too decorative for our tastes.






But there was a surprising petrified wood display...




and an amazing bamboo section.




We did a vigorous walk around the accessible parts of the garden for some nice late afternoon exercise, and retired to our hotel, which is quite nice, with very good wifi.

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