Dana peeked in and saw the guests having cake and ice cream - at 8:00 am. The celebration was to go through most of the day, a Sunday.
We were driven down to the Mandalay jetty on the Ayerwaddy River...
and boarded our own personal boat for a cruise upstream to Mingun...
a tourist destination by virtue of a gigantic unfinished pagoda...
which, if it had been finished, would have been the largest in the world. As the LP says, it is now known as the world's largest pile of bricks. We escaped the crowds by walking around the back.
The cracks and collapsed sections are due to a 19th century earthquake.
There is a miniature version of what the finished pagoda was to look like.
Also of interest was the pair of unfinished lions that were to face the visitor who arrived from the river.
They also suffered in the earthquake, and about all that can be seen now are the haunches and tail, and part of a front leg of one.
The second attraction here was built by the same King (Bodawpaya), who attempted the pagoda (construction stopped when he died in 1819), though he succeeded in creating what at the time was the largest working bell in the world (now second largest), 13 feet high and weighing 90 tons.
The thing to do is to stand inside it when someone rings it.
The third attraction was an unusual pagoda...
built in 1816 by a prince who wanted to be different. It's white, rather than gold, and has seven wavy terraces, representing the seven mountain ranges around Mt. Meru, the center of the Buddhist universe.
We rode the boat back to Mandalay and had lunch. We decided we are not great boat cruising fans - gets a little boring for us after 20 minutes or so. For those who do like it, there plenty of opportunities on the Ayerwaddy between Mandalay and Bagan. We saw several of the "floating hotels" on our ride, and some looked pretty cushy.
After lunch we were driven across the Ayerwaddy to Sagaing...
a power center after the fall of Bagan in the 13th century that later became a center for prayer and meditation, with now nearly a thousand pagodas, monasteries and nunneries scattered over Sagaing's rolling hills.
Although no pagoda stands out, the two most visited are: 1) the Uminh Thounzeh (literally "30 caves"), actually entrances, that were intended to represent the 30 altitudes of the Buddha.
Its main pilgrim and tourist feature is a colonnade of 45 Buddhas.
And 2) Swan Oo Poonya Shin pagoda ("no one can donate the first rice to the Buddha" according to Yan - could be a humility message, or one of subservience.)
Of particular interest, a much handled rabbit - there to signify one of the Buddha's previous lives as chief of the rabbits, according to Yan...
and an executive summary prescription for achieving nirvana through meditation.
Quick trip to the airport, and after a somewhat chaotic wait (the regional airports have a kind of generic disorganization), a quick trip to Yangon, with a meal - I don't believe a domestic East Asian airline could compete without offering meals. On the short flights the attendants have to really hustle, and they do it extremely well. The meal wasn't much, but presumably it met some minimum expected standard.
Which meant that when we got to the hotel I was still hungry, and went down to the dining room, where I joined 80 to 100 boisterous French middle schoolers and their chaperones. They celebrated three birthdays of students with cake and a spirited rendition of Bonne Anniversaire. The good news - no devices were in evidence, likely a supervisory prohibition.
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