holidays!

I’m currently enjoying the last days of my two-weeks school holidays for which I once again had to be quite spontaneous (as I only got to know about them a few days in advance), but still I manged to organise a very nice trip leading me from Bagan to Yangon and back to Mandalay ;-)

So two weeks ago, I found myself sitting together with two guys from Germany, who are now also teaching as volunteers in the PDO, on the sundeck of the boat heading from Mandalay to Bagan. Really relaxing way to start into a journey, enjoying the view and the food on board while getting a taint and watching life go by. We arrived in Bagan safe and sound and on the next day began to explore the ancient buildings of this beautiful area. I learned to drive a scooter within 5 minutes (never drove a motorbike before… just saying) and rolled over streets, ways and dusty paths and couldn’t get enough of those impressive sights and beautiful pagodas. The best part was to go off the beaten track, feeling like Indiana Jones, with no other people, but only nature and temples around – there you can really find some breath-taking spots and even climb up hidden stairs to the rooftop of some pagodas! Is there anything better than finishing a day like this with a cocktail at sunset? This stunning and relaxed stay in Bagan is certainly something I will never forget and something about which I’m going to dream about for a long time :-)

After three days in Bagan, the city of Yangon was almost a shock – being all busy, loud and full of hectic people! But behind this surface there are still a lot of beautiful and peaceful places – most of all the Shwedagon pagoda, overviewing the whole city and glooming golden, full of hopefulness, being like an anchor for the whole surrounding. On the next days we enjoyed some vivid markets, the river side, really good and stylish restaurants and (is there even another possibility?) nice temples. In one of them (to be specific, the Ngadatkyi pagoda – very beautiful wood carved Buddha inside!) an old man started to talk to me and didn’t only explain the building itself, but also showed me the colonial-style monastery, which is hidden in the garden around of it.

 

 

 

So after two full days in Yangon, I took the bus back to Mandalay and happily arrived there after only 8 hours. On the contrary to the bus to Monywa, it was like you’d imagine this kind of vehicle – it was really comfortable and quite big, the only disturbing details were the bullet holes in the wall. But as I said, the journey itself went smoothly ;-)

This amazing trip was followed by the next highlight only a few days later: the light-festival at full moon. For this occasion thousands of candles are lit all over the towns to guide Buddha’s way from the Nirvana back to Earth again. Together with all the people I met here in Mandalay I climbed up the Mandalay Hill this evening and became part of the probably most beautiful festivity in this country. On the top there were already prepared a sea of small candles and all together, side by side, we started to light them on by one – what an incredible feeling! Everything seemed so peaceful and joyful, the candles spread their golden lights, the city below us sparkled in silver and above everything there was a red full moon hanging in the sky. This atmosphere had something so unforgettable impressive in its own way, I really couldn’t compare it with anything else.

 

Monywa

Dorotka and I had planned to go to Monywa over the weekend and so we started our trip on Saturday morning by picking up our bus ticket and going to the bus station of Mandalay. Even though it really didn’t occur to me on the first sight, there has to be a certain and clear structure at the station, as we were directly led to our AC-Bus – which turned out to be a (big) car with opened windows. When we started soon afterwards we were only 6 people in it, but through the driver’s assistant permanent “Monywa, Monywa!” –shouting through the still opened doors, we picked up another 10 people throughout Mandalay. And they had told us that it was essential to book tickets at least one day before the trip! It is quite an achievement in itself to get 16 people into a car and even at this point they tried to offer even more people a ride. Most of them got off in smaller villages soon and by the time we stopped for lunch, everyone had a seat for themselves again.

In Monywa the two of us were welcomed by a group of eager taxi-drivers and after we bought the tickets for our return (which cost half the price to come here) we took a Tuck-Tuck and went out of town towards two of the biggest Buddha-statues in the world. On our way we stopped at a pagoda built for world-peace in which more than five million small Buddhas are praying for the humans on earth. Afterwards we climbed the hill of the two giant statues – quite impressive to be looked down on by a 114 meter high Buddha! Inside it the walls are full with paintings, through which one gets the impression to go from hell to Nirvana on the upper floors. So we started to climb those stairways to heaven but unfortunately we weren’t able to reach the top floor as they turned on speakers announcing that they were now closing the building and everyone should leave it. We tried to ignore it (we don’t speak Burmese either way, so why should we feel included?) and ran up another three floors, but eventually got stopped by a Burmese family. They told us that they were on their way down and we too really should do the same immediately. After getting out and enjoying the view in the golden afternoon light for a while we went back to town.

 

We had some delicious pancake-dinner at the night market later and were also quite successful in shopping very nice tissues. Monywa is the hottest and driest place in Myanmar, but it started raining at night and didn’t stop the whole next day. This wasn’t even too bad as we had our soft and comfy bed, a good breakfast and REAL coffee and cake for lunch in a bakery. The ride home was alright (real bus this time and it didn’t even rain in!) and at our arrival it even stopped raining for a while! So the whole trip has really been a success and very nice ;-)

Now it’s raining in Mandalay for almost three days with hardly any interruption and the strange thing is – it’s cold! We’ve only got a few degrees above 20° and even if I’ve been glad about the fresh, cool air at first, it would be nice if everything wasn’t that soaked and cold all the time now. Let’s hope it stops soon, because otherwise the water on from the balcony will flood into my room…

 

The Yankin Hill - hiking in Mandalay

Last Monday we had a holiday and one of the classes in which I’m teaching, decided to use this free day for an excursion to the Yankin Hill at the outskirts of Mandalay. For this occasion they invited their two volunteer-teachers (Dorotka, the Czech girl, and me) and four of their Burmese teachers to come along. At this point I have to say that I found it quite impressive that the kids organised this whole trip on their own – considering that back home it sometimes has been too complicated for a teacher to plan an excursion with a class… AND the organisation turned out to be really good: all the students (and teachers) knew where and when to meet and so we got picked up in the morning by cars and drove to the hill.

The sun was shining and promising to make it a quite hot day, as we started to climb up some really steep steps to the first platform on our way. Enjoying the great view on Mandalay and the surrounding mountains, the kids made clear that this hill was even higher than the Mandalay Hill and partly they wouldn’t even dare to look down! So after taking a short rest there we went on and made our way from one pagoda to the other until we reached a small monastery on the top. From here on we didn’t have to go any further up as there is a kind of loop road starting there. Every five minutes (or probably even more frequently) the kids asked Dorotka and me whether we were already feeling tired and somewhen around this time our answers slowly changed from “no, we’re fine” over “a little” to an honest “yes, very.” After enjoying the coolness of two very nice and mystic caves (with Pagodas in it, obviously) and some good wishes on different ponds and wells, we all sat down next to one stupa thankful for the shade and the soft breeze around us. Afterwards we went to another platform with an impressive view where we had a huge picnic for lunch.

 

 

Having finished lunch we slowly started our way back down again and after quite a few more pagodas, we eventually reached the parking lot safe and sound. While waiting for the Pick-up the kids cheerfully started to sing songs (reaching from ‘twinkle, twinkle little star’ to ‘I have a dream’) and we all welcomed the heavy rain bringing at least a little change from the heat on our way back home.