Mandalay, Myanmar

We had planned a day trip to Mingun, a short boat ride up the Ayeyarwady, but after reading more about it (and having spent a full day on the river) decided instead to check out the jade market in town.

We walked down to the market on the busy roads (there's no sidewalks here). The streets are numbered in Mandalay which makes it easy to get around, except the Rough Guide had marked it incorrectly on their map. Fortunately the hotel map had it right, a couple blocks away.

We saw most of the finishing process for jade. Cut pieces are shaped and polished on foot-powered grindstones, holding the jade with one hand and constantly splashing water with the other.

It was more of a jade production center and wholesale market than a tourist market. We saw some bulk buyers (I'm guessing store owners) carefully examining the pieces with penlights over white tableclothes. There were a couple small stalls selling to tourists and we stopped into one to try to understand what made a better quality piece of jade. A high quality piece was priced about 10 times a similar low quality. Aside from generally being more consistent in colour, I couldn't really tell. Plus I thought the low quality ones looked better.

Anyways it was pretty interesting to see.

We had a late lunch at the top-rated restaurant from tripadvisor, Bistro 82, just up the street from our hotel. It served mostly western food, and we just wanted a break from the heavily-oiled local food. At first we thought it was just us, but anyone we've met who's commented on the local food had found it very heavy in cooking oil too. The food at Bistro 82 was great, although it charges western prices so we won't be eating there very often.

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The next day we took a day trip to Pyin Oo Lwin, a hill station about 90 minutes from Mandalay. It's at about 1000m and somewhat cooler, and less polluted. (Mandlay's pretty polluted, I would think thanks to the high volume of motorbikes and old trucks on the roads). Pyin Oo Lwin was recommended by my friend Elaine who had visited back in the day. When she visited there were no cars in Pyin Oo Lwin and just ox-pulled carts and horse-drawn carriages. Now there's way more vehicles of the horseless type.

There's a really cool market that we spent about an hour wandering about. We saw all kinds of fruits and vegetables, including baskets of avocados, long green beans, watermelons, tomatoes, corn, apples, chestnuts, various kinds of garlic and onions. Had a Myanmar tea at a stall, and watched someone preparing buns filled with coconut and sugar. He told us they'd be ready in 10 minutes so we wandered around some more, and then fortunately found our way back. The buns were deep fried (as opposed to steamed like we had guessed/hoped), and tasted excellent.

Next we visited the Kandawgyi Gardens, which was beautiful and well-manicured. My favourite was the 30ft tall bamboo.

Had lunch at Feel, overlooking the lake and gardens. They have three menus (plural), for local food, Japanese, and western. The food was pretty good, the noodles were a bit disappointing as the noodles have been quite excellent here.

Saw some more temples (we're starting to get out-templed) and a couple waterfalls on our way back to town.

We walked over to Simplicity Organic Foods for dinner, about 25 minutes. At first our hotel wanted to arrange a taxi, but we convinced them that we could walk. At night you can really see the pollution in the headlights.

The owner at Simplicity (who was Shan) said he found Burmese food pretty oil-heavy too. We had the river fish two different ways, one steamed with lime, the other crispy sweet and sour. Both were excellent, served whole. The mixed vegetable side was also very tasty. If our hotel was closer we would return but we didn't like the walk in the pollution.