Mandalay

Last Wednesday 5th Dec we left Siem Reap and flew to Yangon. Nearly all the cars are RH drive, but the traffic drives on the right. The cars are secondhand from Japan and probably Singapore. Yangon is ready for Christmas with plenty of street decorations.
Aung, our guide arrived at 8.30 and we set off walking around the colonial city

  The City Hall

 Repairing/Repainting the Baptist church

 

 Sula Paya. The British made this the centre of the city with a grid pattern of streets starting from here and all road distances measured from here as well as most buses.

Lots of S/H books for sale. The dog was spoilt for choice, but seems to have given up on Marxist Philosophy and A course in Mineralogy amongst others.

Preparing Betelnut.

 We think this is the office of the Port Authority.

The lobby of The Strand -the Rangoon equivalent of Raffles in Singapore.

 

 The head of an enormous reclining Buddha complete with diamond studded headdress. He is 10 metres high and 70 metres long

  His feet.

 We then drove down University Ave past the compound of "The Lady" (Aung San Suu Khi) and the old campus of Rangoon University which was closed for four years after the riots of 2007 and has now reopened away from the city. A visit to a gemstone showroom came next and there were fabulous stones, but the one I really liked was a $19,000 sapphire ring (just as well I don't wear rings!)

 

Sweeping the Shwedagan Pagoda. This 2000 year old pagoda dominates Yangon. It has been rebuilt many times after earthquakes and other disasters. All that glitters is gold - more than 60 tons of it.

 

 Shwedagan side pavilions

 

 A Monk in front of Shwedagan.

Friday morning we were up at 4.15 to fly to Bagan (or Pagan). The Airport is a bit chaotic. There are no monitors. A fellow walks around holding up a board with the flight number.

 

 Pagan's glory days were the 11th to 13th 

centuries and there are about 4000 temples and we managed about 16. There is a certain sameness but an incredible variety at the same time. Bare feet are the order of the day and when there are stones and the ground is hot in the sun it can be a bit difficult, but I find the enormous steps more of a challenge.

This large gilded Buddha is jammed into his niche. The king who built the temple had been imprisoned so this reminded him of that.time

Some temples are decorated with fine plasterwork.

 Sulamani Pahto in Pagan from about 1181

 Engraving lacquer bowls. There are a lot

 of stages in making each bowl and it takes several weeks or months.

Novel method for clearing the tables at an outdoor restaurant.
 

The 'jetty' at Pagan on the Irrawaddy river
 

 Coming into land at Mandalay.
 

Ploughing near Mandalay

Horse carts at Ava. It is on an island and sono cars. It was the capital between the 14th and 18th centuries.
 

 The almost 200 year old Bagaya Monastery is built entirely of teak and decorated with fine carvings.
 

Queen Maenu built this brick monastery for her favourite monk, the Royal abbott in 1822, but it was badly damaged in the November 2012 earthquake
 

 This finely detailed carving is on the teak palace of King Mindon a 19thC king. The entire wooden building has been moved twice
 

 Another detail

A flower seller at the Shwenandaw monastery

In Burma the Internet tends to be agonisingly slow and uploading these photographs has been a painfully slow process so I am sorry it will probably be a week before the next post.

Still in Siem Reap

Tuesday 4th Dec

Yesterday we started the day with an hour or so drive to the temple of Boeng Mealea. The rice has been harvested and all along the road there were bags of rice waiting for transport to town. The temple is surrounded by jungle and so was pleasantly cool. The temple is largely chaotic heaps of perfectly squared large stone blocks some of which are embraced by the encroaching jungle. Pol Pot laid land mines here and the Germans only finishing clearing them in 2007 so it is relatively peaceful but for the Japanese who come apparently because a famous Japanese film was shot here.

We then drove on for another hour to the temple of Banteay Srei. This is a comparitively small temple but is built of a softer sandstone and is covered in glorious carvings.

Our last stop was at Les Artisans d'Angkor a government project to preserve the traditional skills that are rooted in the Khmer culture, such as stone carving, lacquering, gilding, silk painting and silk-making. It provides young craftsmen with an employment opportunity while giving them the possibility to work close to their homes. The shop had beautiful things at reasonable prices.
Today we hired a car and Ee the driver who had been with us previously drove us to the floating village of Chong Kneas where we took a boat ride through the village. It is on Tonle Sap Lake, a huge fresh water lake reputed to teem with fish. On the way back to Siem Reap we toured a silk farm run by Artisans d'Angkor. I had not realised that the mulberry trees would be kept to the size of raspberry canes, but it makes sense. The products are beautiful, but it is very labour intensive.
Back in Siem Reap we did not try the fish foot massage, although the fellow guaranteed there were no piranhas!

Our final excursion here in Siem Reap was to a Cambodian Dance Show.They were very professional and the costumes were gorgeous.

Only a little snake, but probably deadly

A library at Boeng MeaLea temple.

A deadly embrace by the jungle.

Another view showing someone scrambling over the ruins.

Time for a siesta.

Intricate carving above a door at Banteay Srei.

Monkey and Garuda guardians at Banteay Srei.

Although Banteay Srei is older than Angkor Wat it is more complete.

Silk Painting at Artisans d'Ankor.

Repousse on copper which will later be silver plated.

Stone carving.

Cambodian version of a Queenslander!

Mangroves around Tonle Sap Lake

Bit hard to see, but they were using bats like tennis racquets to gather the small fish out of the net..

At the crocodile Farm at Chong Kneas.

 

 A Cambodian wedding on the water

A Catholic Vietnamese church and school. 

Too watery a life for me!

 

Unwinding silk from the cocoons.

Complicated traditional Ikat silk weaving.

In Siem Reap the tuk tuks or Moto Remorque are very smart and great fun to ride around town.

Classical Cambodian Orchestra.

Classical Cambodian dancer following the style of the Apsaras at Angkor Wat but no longer topless.