Life In Mandalay

Mandalay is a much more attractive city than Yangon. Many of the streets are lined with trees, and bustle with people who seem happier and a little more prosperous than in Yangon . Large portions of the city have good middle class houses. Downtown is more like a downtown as we know it, with many streets full of shops, and a few selling named brands that are definitely high end. There is even a small shopping mall and a few neon signs, although the latter seems rather superfluous because of the lack of power to turn them on.

There are many motorbikes and thousands of bicycles that appear to take no notice of the rules of the road.


Road junctions and cross roads often have a policeman in the middle directing traffic, but no one pays them any attention. Cross roads are quite terrifying, and we sit white knuckled in our car, clinging to the back of the seat in front of us. I try closing my eyes, but it is impossible to keep them closed with all the noise around us.

This is the first place we have seen taxis, but they are not geared to the tourists. They are Mazda pick up trucks built in the 1940’s. They are amazingly small, looking like children’s toy cars. The passengers sit in the back of the pick up truck. You could perhaps squeeze two Americans in the back, but they would be very unhappy. But up to 10 Burmese somehow manage to ride this way.


We are pleased to see that there are many more monks here than anywhere we have been so far. The Mayor of Mandalay refused the Generals orders to kill monks and so Mandalay escaped much of the crackdown. But once the uprising was crushed the Mayor was fired from his job. There are also many nuns, who wear pink robes, and, like the monks go out in the morning to collect food from the people. However nuns can only go out twice a week and can only accept rice and vegetables.

We visit several craft houses, all of them working without lighting. We watch as women stoop over their embroidery doing the most intricate work in semi darkness. Three men noisily beat gold into gold leaf. They will be deaf by the end of their worklife.


Like the rest of the country, electricity is limited. Here they receive power for three days, and then just for 6 to 12 hours on the other four days. Water too is problematical. Each household has to pay $200 for the connection, a large amount of money to most families. On top of this they pay a monthly fee based on usage, but during the dry season there will often be no water available. Few have hot water, and sometimes the mornings are too cold for them to take a shower. If they live in houses and apartments that are more than two stories high, very often the water will not pump up to the higher floors.

Touring Yangon

Paris takes us to Shwedagon Temple , Myanmar ’s most famous temple with its many surrounding stuppas.


It has become even more famous over the last couple of months, as the gathering point for the monks during the recent uprising, the start of most of their marches, and the scene of many arrests. It is somewhat over the top, to say the least, and even overshadows Paris, with its many gold Stuppas and the enormous gold temple, topped with a 76 carat diamond and many precious stones. It can be seen from almost everywhere in the city.


It is obvious why it is the focal point for the Burmese, and why the Myanmar people are so proud of it. But could the money have been put to better use? It is a pointed question that probably cannot be answered.

“Where are all the monks?” is another pointed question that we do ask Paris. We have spent two hours wandering around this magnificent temple and can count on both hands the number of monks we have seen? “They have all been sent back to their home villages” he tells us.

In fact, Yangon is no longer the capital. The government has built a new capital hundreds of miles to the north, in the middle of the jungle, cut off from the rest of the nation. All personnel and offices have been moved. The existing government buildings in Yangon have simply been shuttered and surrounded by barbed wire.

Everyone we speak to is horrified at this move and the costs involved.

Similarly the University Campus in the heart of the City of Yangon, set in the middle of wonderful grounds and spreading across many acres, has been closed and surrounded by barbed wire. A brand new concrete jungle of a campus has been built outside the city, an hour’s bus journey for most of the students. Paris explains that the Government announced that they wanted to enlarge the University and that this Campus was no longer viable. But he also readily admits that it would appear that the regime wanted to make sure that the students could be monitored more easily and kept well away from the City centre.

When we say to Paris that it is a terrible waste to see these buildings all empty, and suggest that they could be turned into apartments for the people, he explains that this would cost a lot of money that the government doesn’t have. Unclear on the concept only goes so far, until you are forced to say “DUH!”.

The city will have a hard time reinventing itself after the loss of the Government Buildings and the University. Interestingly, to date none of the embassies is willing to move to the new capital, despite repeated requests from the regime.

All of this, Paris feels free to discuss with us fairly openly, albeit in English which few people around us will understand. But it is a different matter when it comes to the American Embassy. We are forewarned that we are approaching it and under no circumstances are we to take photos. We get no closer to it than the nearest corner where we are told to take a furtive look and then leave. This seems particularly strange for an American tourist, but Paris clearly wants to stay well away from the Embassy.