Mi Mi had wanted us to start our tour at 8 AM so that we could see not only Amarapura and Inwa but Mingun as well, but we pleaded for time (and our sanity) and started at 10. Our guide, Arthur (Win Myint), couldn’t have been better. He is a very tall, slender man, with a charming manner, given to giggling. He speaks very good English, learned at mission schools. We had asked for a tour to Amarapura and Inya, and didn’t know what else to expect. It immediately became clear that Arthur had an ambitious itinerary in store for us. We started at one of the gold pounding shops. Young men wielding very heavy mallets pound nuggets of gold into gossamer sheets of gold leaf: one ounce produces 18 square yards!
The gold is pounded while wrapped in bamboo paper produced on site, and then in deerskin. The young men are very well paid by Myanmar standards…as they should be. We purchased a bit of leaf for our next stop: the Mahamuni Paya, with its famous, and much venerated image.
Like most big pagodas, we entered through a long covered portico.
The vendors here were different: the target audience was worshippers and not tourists, as huge piles of Buddhas gleamed from every shop. This impression was certainly confirmed inside, where we encountered throngs surrounding the main attraction, the Mahamuni Image. The image itself sits on a kind of pedestal open on three sides.
This is perhaps the most venerated image in all Myanmar The statue was originally in Mrauk U, but a Burmese king snatched it, along with a series of temple bronzes from Angkor Wat, and brought them to Mandalay. The image now has more than one ton of gold leaf on it, making everything but the face so bulbous as to be unrecognizable. The face itself, however, is washed by monks every morning at 4:30 and unsullied by gold leaf. Women are not allowed to place the gold leaf, so Sue knelt on a prayer rug with the other subordinates. Andrew and I, guided by Arthur, went up a stairway and placed our leaf. An Indian man gave us some extra, and wanted us to place even more; this seemed odd to us, but we later learned that he could gain even more virtue by sharing his veneration.
We then had a look at the Angkor Wat bronzes, rubbing various parts for good luck.
The next stop was a marionette workshop. After much deliberation, I bought two figures form the Burmese version of Grand Gignol, the king and the giant, and we bought a horse for Vivi and a elephant for Evie.
With our purchases safely stowed in the ubiquitous Toyota van, we left the city headed for Amarapura, which had been the capital of Burma twice (1783–1821 and 1842–1859) before finally being supplanted by Mandalay in 1859. We stopped first at a very large training monastery (monks showing unusual abilities are sent here for specialized education)—Maha Ganayon Kyaung.
Arthur confessed that he had been a novice monk for less than a week: they eat only two meals a day, breakfast at 4:30 and dinner at 11:30, and he couldn’t stand missing his dinner. He is a big guy after all. Apparently the place is mobbed with tourists when the monks have their midday meal, the silence destroyed by the clicking of hundreds of cameras. There is much to see here, with its view into the daily life of the monks. And, like virtually everything in Myanmar, it is extraordinarily colorful: even the laundry!
And the kitchen!
The monastery sits right on the big river.
As it happened, there was a wedding taking place; we tried to be respectful, hiding our cameras…but the wedding party was eager to be immortalized!
From the monastery we drove to a silk weaving workshop, where we first saw the weavers…
And then the shop.
Andrew bought a scarf for Lucy and Sue bought two scarves, for Ariel and Emily Balter. Andrew had fun punching in offers on the calculator, and saved a whopping $2.95.
Amarapura behind us…for now, we headed for Inwa down a causeway along the river. Inwa had been the imperial capital of successive Burmese kingdoms from the 14th to 19th centuries. Throughout history, it was sacked and rebuilt numerous times. The capital city was finally abandoned after it was destroyed by a series of major earthquakes in March 1839. Little is now left to remind one of imperial grandeur.
A ferry boat took us across a small side river, where we landed at a small village with many, many horse carts and some fairly spotty eateries.
Here is Arthur manning the stern.
We ate at the Small River restaurant. The food wasn’t too bad, but it was pretty filthy: I saw them dumping the used dipping sauce back into a communal tub. Here is a review of the restaurant:
Over lunch, we learned a good deal about Arthur’s past. He was a mission school boy: an Italian priest gave him his name. His daughter is a student (or teacher?) at Purdue, and he misses her terribly. He seems to have been divorced twice, and has a teenage son by his second wife. He seemed less interested in him, but he came to the hotel the next day and left a note for Sue asking about educational opportunities for his son.
After lunch, we jumped into two horsecarts–the standard conveyance in Inwa–for the bumpiest ride of our lives. Arthur and Andrew got a racehorse, we got the bobtailed nag, the slowest horse on the course!
We bumped and rattled over roads and paths, ending at the gloriously beautiful 18th century teak monastery, Bagaya Kyaung (from 1822, the year of the founding of the capital).
It is set on massive teak columns; here is Andrew doing his best imitation of Atlas.
The carved teak is kind of amazing.
The high-ceilinged shrine was especially impressive.
This was also where Andrew got, free of extra charge, an extensive course in palm tree botany, with the aim of teaching him their sexual practices. Unfortunately, to this day he still can’t tell a male from a female.
Back in the cart, we left the roads and headed down a farm track; we had the sense that relatively few tourists took this route…or at least that few returned with their innards ordered properly. The mud at one point seemed two feet deep and I despaired of getting through without overturning. What a fate! Crushed by a horse cart and ground into bottomless filth! But our driver plowed on…only to find that he had left a good part of our left wheel in the mud. We then experienced the Myanmar version of AAA: our two drivers plus one behind joined forces to hammer a big section of rubber tire back into the groove on the iron rim.
With our conveyance as good as new, we trotted on to the ruins of the royal palace proper. Little is left beyond a swimming pool and a crooked watchtower, the “leaning tower of Inwa,” which we inexplicably walked around: through toilet paper, the ubiquitous plastic bags, etc.
We ended our tour at another nineteenth century monastery, Maha Aungmye Bonzan, this one brick covered with yellowing stucco.
It was deserted but for two Buddha images in marble, one standing, one in the posture of enlightenment. Better for its ensemble view than for any detail, but still lovely. And the views back to the Sagaing hills was terrific.
We were soon back at the jetty and on the ferry.
Our day wasn’t nearly over, though. Arthur led us back to Amarapura and its main attraction, the famous U Bein bridge; the bridge spans Taungthaman Lake. The 1.2-kilometre bridge was built around 1850 and is believed to be the oldest teak bridge in the world. The approach to the bridge is thronged with souvenir sellers, but we were left alone once on the bridge. A nearby monastery provides a good deal of local color!
We walked to the other end and turned back as the sun began to set over the lake.
The golden light brought out the age of the wood rather beautifully.
Once back in Mandalay, the indefatigable Arthur had our driver pass by two more things we “had to see:” “the biggest book in the world” (Buddhist scripture inscribed line by line on individual stupas) and yet another teak monastery. We told him we’d catch them on our next visit…which we did!
The Chinese food that night wasn’t bad, if very expensive. My Peking Duck was just fine!