Mandalay

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Leaving the Internet place yesterday, we found Yogi in a beauty salon getting a combination shave and foot massage. He looked very happy even though he said the shaving lady clearly did not know how to shave but the foot lady compensated.

The plane ride to Mandalay was horrible. We sat for an hour in a non-AC terminal and then for another 30 minutes or so in the hottest stuffiest plane ever. I was really afraid we'll get heat stroke. But His Excellency the Police Chief was on the plane with us with a whole retinue of officials, so that was a compensation. We had a stopover in heho which meant we had 2 take-offs and 2 landings in this very rickety looking plane but we survived.... Only 2 more flights planned in Myanmar which is a blessing.

The guesthouse we went to was full but the next one had a vacancy so we got 2 rooms - reasonably nice, for a total of $20. My main complaint is with all the bathrooms here - for some reason the sink drains to the floor which then drains to the sewer - that makes a big mess and I am half inclined to add my own piping to all the bathrooms. Oh well. We got rooms with AC, but as there was no electricity they did not work. The hotel has a generator so the ceiling fans did work and that was pleasant enough.

We went for a Chinese dinner... ha. I will be way thinner by the end of this trip. After that we took a 'cab' - a tiny truck ("Blue Taxi"), where the passengers sit on benches in the back facing each other - something like the tiyuliot we had in Israel 30 years ago but tiny, to the Mustach Brothers show. This is a local version of a standup comedy act - they are famous for being jailed , and they voice some criticism of the country but the whole thing was more bizarre than funny. All the extended family performs traditional dances and 'cutting edge' comedy, in something which sounds like English but is very hard to understand. Was great because it was so weird.

This morning we took a cab to the world's longest teak bridge. Next to it is a huge monastery with thousands of young monks and like all good tourists we went there to see them at their daily meal. Was rather depressing as it's like watching the feeding of dolphins in the zoo or something, but interesting nonetheless. Before that we talked to one of the monks - he was around 16 years old. He and Yogi had a lively discussion about soccer and then he showed us a book he bought about Israel - he claimed he was very interested in Israel as its people were very smart.

We took a long walk on the bridge to the village on the other side of the lake, visited the required huge Buddha and walked back. The hawkers were not too bad but I did buy a funny folding hat and got a melon seed bracelet as a gift. It seems ridiculous to haggle over prices with the people here so I did not.

Our cab driver had waited for us and drove us back to town. He claimed that new cars cost $300,000 and motocycles $20,000-30,000. As the Lonely Planet has a section about how the people here confuse large numbers, he probably was wrong (we hope). He also told us his wife had died on Feb. 20 and that his son promised her to become a doctor before she died. Was very sad.

We asked to get off at a huge mall we saw in passing this morning and again fell through a rabbit hole into a completely different world - very new, modern and relatively fancy shops, with prices which are not very different from the street prices (Einat bought a cap which cost about the same as my hat, but no bracelet!) We found a 'Japanese' Cafe here and had a decent meal - not great but the best so far. And the Cyber cafe next to it is amazingly modern with about 40 top of the line computers, decent connectivity and our gmail/yahoo accounts are not not blocked here. Go figure.

Many plas for the afternoon and tomorrow we are taking the boat to Bagan.

Riddle: Why are there no more night trains from Yangon to Mandalay?
Answer (according to the cab dirver yesterday): Because Yangon is the capital. ??!???