Into Mandalay

After lunch we headed back out to the airport and had a painless 1.5 hr trip up to Mandalay.  At the airport we headed to the taxi counter and were assigned to a driver for the trip in.  We could have paid 4,000kyat each to go in shared taxi with 3 others plus driver or 12,000 for a taxi to ourselves. 

Our taxi was...unique.  A souped up Citroen, but the only modification was the raised back axle.  In return it appears all the suspension was removed and the drivers panel, door handles, window handles.  Air conditioning was au natural, which was good as I don't believe the windows would have wound up anyway.  So we bounced our way into Mandalay along a highway that has been purpose built and had a minimal number of vehicles on it. 


An hour later we emerged at our hotel dripping with sweat.

After check in we showered and headed out for a drink and some dinner.  Just around the corner was Manns restaurant where we quickly dispatched a number of Myanmar beers before ordering too much food for dinner. 

We ordered some chicken, some fried rice and 2 spring rolls. Only it wasn't 2 spring rolls rather 2 plates of spring rolls . Oops. We ended up passing one plate off to another foreigner who had wandered in and sat down.

While we sitting a young man struck up a conversation and showed us his paintings.  Yes, target the tourists, but he was lovely and created a scene for us using black ink, paint brushes and scraped the ink with a razor blade to create the white detail.  So we are now the proud owners of 3 small pictures