The Mandalay Royal Palace

 Entrance to the palace complex.

 A model of an audience chamber.

 Overhead view taken from...

 this observation tower.

 An old chariot.

 Models of traditional clothing.

 Part of the palace wall.

 Traditional farmer transport.

Village by the road.

Sunday, May 27^th.

We were to leave the hotel at ten for the five hour drive to Bagan, but I had asked Pu Pu if it was worth visiting the Mandalay Royal Palace. I already knew that the complex had been destroyed by the Allies in World War II but the government had built a reconstruction. She said that many of the local people didn’t like it, but since we were here only once, maybe we should go. So, we did, and she came along too.

We hired a taxi and drove the ten minutes to the site. A large part of the four-kilometre square complex is used today by the Myanmar military. There are also barracks for the soldiers and their families and shops and other facilities for them. As a result only the actual centre part where the reconstruction is, was where we were allowed to visit. We wandered around through the many buildings and worked our way to the rear where the museum was. The whole thing seems to be built in a very symmetrical design. While we waited for the little museum to open up, I climbed the observation tower and had a good overview. With a little imagination, it was easy to see how opulent and royal this could have been back in the day. But today the buildings are mainly just shells and there are no real artefacts, furniture or things on the walls. We took the same taxi back and then met our new van driver for the trip to Bagan.

We settled in for a five hour drive to Bagan. The roads were pretty good and we saw some slices of rural life in Myanmar, including farmers using carts with two white cows.

We arrived at our hotel in Bagan about 3:30 and Pu Pu gave us the rest of the day off. I used the time to catch up on some typing, relax, and use the pool (really nice actually), before we met up for dinner. We walked to a local restaurant that she knew in this area of town. We are staying in the new town of Bagan, where there are lots of hotels from guest houses to five star and dozens of restaurants. What is the attraction? Well from what I saw driving in today, this area looks similar to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. We saw dozens of temples as we drove to our hotel. Dinner was good and we walked back to get some sleep before visiting some of them tomorrow.