Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Mandalay & Around Highlights
Watch sunrise or sunset from the world's longest teak bridge,
U-Bein Bridge
(
Click here
)
Survey Sagaing's monastery-dappled hills and gilded pagodas from
Shin Pin Nan
Kain
(
Click here
) pagoda
Ponder unfinished
Mingun Paya
(
Click here
)
, reached by boat from Mandalay
Escape Mandalay's bustle with our
cycling tour
(
Click here
)
Potter around Mandalay's lesser-known monasteries, including the teak master-
piece
Shwe In Bin Kyaung
(
Click here
)
Arrive at
Mahamuni Paya
(
Click here
) by 4am as attendants wash the face of the
country's most famous buddha image
Discover crafts being made, including edible sheets of gold leaf, in the
Gold
Pounders' District
(
Click here
)
Witness the two-man 'elephant' dance during an annual festival at little-visited
Kyaukse
(
Click here
) or with free evening performances at
Mya Nandar Restaurant
(
Click here
)
History
According to Myanmar myths, the Buddha himself visited Mandalay Hill and, in an
earlier incarnation, had scuttled up the riverside bluff Shwe-kyet-kya (
Click here
)
in the
guise of a chicken. In less legendary epochs, the Mandalay region hosted several of
Burma's post-Bagan capitals. New kings often sought to create a legacy by founding a
new capital, transporting whole buildings with them such that little remained at older
sites. The longest-lasting of these capitals was Inwa (
Click here
)
, known to Europeans as
Ava. Mandalay itself only took shape as a city from 1857 and its brief, if momentous,
period as a tailor-made capital city lasted less than 25 years from 1861. Despite powerful
fortress walls that enclosed the gigantic royal city, the British had little trouble ejecting
Mandalay's elite from their teak houses in 1885. They deported King Thibaw and demol-
ished part of the original city to create a parade ground, turning the centrepiece palace
complex into a governor's residence and club. Much later, during fierce WWII fighting
in March 1945, the palace was ravaged by fire, leaving nothing of the original. New
Mandalay grew outside the original walls into the vast concrete grid city you see today.
The area within the walls was left as a vast tree-shaded army camp, and remains a
strange military-controlled dead-zone, out of bounds to foreigners apart from the central
palace. This was completely rebuilt in the late 1990s, reputedly using forced labour.
