Mandalay : the Tek city

To go to Mandalay we took the train from Hsipaw. What an amazing journey! 7 hours for…120 km! And it isn’t a « quiet » journey ! The train is moving from left to right and from right to left every times ! Fortunately we travel in upper class and at least we had comfortable seats. We chose the train only to see (and cross) the Gkteik bridge: it was built in 1901 by the British; it is the highest bridge in Myanmar and at the time of its building it was the highest rail bridge in the world. Even if the bridge was (is) repaired, the train goes very very slowly on it! It’s beautiful!

After that, we spent 2 days in Mandalay, the first one with a hired taxi shared with Moché, an Israeli met before; and the second day with a bicycle! We saw the well known U Bein bridge: the longest tek bridge of the world, and we also visited different temples, monasteries and pagodas! In a tek monastery we saw young monks playing with rubber bands and trying to shoot a wood stick on the ground!!! They shoot very well! Some of them were attending class: 3 levels in the same place: when one class is having a music lesson and the others are learning Maths, it can be very loud….!!!