To be honest, I don’t have a whole lot to say about Mandalay. We arrived right before the start of the Thingyan festival – Myanmar New Years – and ended up staying in town significantly longer than we anticipated because we could not find any affordable transportation out of town. 

The New Years festival is a 5 day long celebration that involves people throwing water on each other to wash away their sins before the new year begins. In big Myanmar cities such as Mandalay, there are stages set up for crappy techno music with hoses attached for people on stage to use to spray water on the partying people on the street. 

  
It was fun for us for a few hours, but after the first day we were kind of tired of the New Years festival. The streets become flooded with water near the music platforms, and the water got dirtier and dirtier as the festival continued. Tons of motorbikes and trucks drove through the water to get to the sound stages, leaving billows of exhaust behind, either from their vehicles being crappy in the first place or the water getting into parts where water doesn’t belong (or both). We would get stopped by so many drunk Myanmar boys to take pics with us that it became difficult to walk any distance on the main road. And we got water thrown on us everywhere. Which was nice at first because it is so hot, but after awhile having dirty water thrown on you at every turn gets annoying real quick.

We couldn’t take too many pics due to the water being thrown everywhere, so these few iPhone pics from Thom will have to do.

   
 
We did meet a really awesome couple from San Francisco that we spent a lot of our time with in Mandalay, and that was really the saving grace of our time in this city. Unlike many of the other travelers we have met, they were really easy to hang out with and felt like old friends. Drinking beers on the (somewhat secret) roof of the hotel was probably one of our favorite memories of Mandalay, as well as hanging out at the bar in front of our hotel with our adorably kind server who took care of us every night.

We also found a lovely street side Indian restaurant that served delicious chapati that was freshly rolled each day, and served with an assortment of veggies and curry to eat it with. It was ridiculously cheap and we ended up eating there three times because it was so good and cheap.

  
Another gem was the restaurant Mingalabar that served a ridiculous amount of side dishes with the curry we ordered. We also had penny wort salad, still not exactly sure what a penny wort is but it seems to be green and delicious. I’m really loving the salads here!

  
Next up, a ridiculously long horrendous train ride to get to Inle Lake!