Mandalay is probably the best known city in Myanmar by virtue of its name. But there's no bay (as in the hotel in Vegas) and Kipling never visited here for his book. It's definitely less crowded than Yangon but still a bug city. Mopeds are allowed here (they weren't in Yangon) but things are spread out. There's agriculture interspersed here.
We saw more pagodas -- I'm already pagoda-ed out so I can't say much. The big one on the hill here was built by a king who was a reincarnated ogress who had cut off her breasts and offered them to Buddha. It is one of the for places that had been a capital here.
We visited a gold leaf shop here. They showed how it's made. They put gold between sheets of bamboo paper and hammer it for five hours to flatten it to very thin leaf. We felt the package they were hammering and it was very hot to the touch from the expansion. I bought my first souvenir -- a gold gilded leaf. The gold is generally used to affix to a Buddha statue in one of the pagodas as a form of worship.
We saw more pagodas -- I'm already pagoda-ed out so I can't say much. The big one on the hill here was built by a king who was a reincarnated ogress who had cut off her breasts and offered them to Buddha. It is one of the for places that had been a capital here.
We visited a gold leaf shop here. They showed how it's made. They put gold between sheets of bamboo paper and hammer it for five hours to flatten it to very thin leaf. We felt the package they were hammering and it was very hot to the touch from the expansion. I bought my first souvenir -- a gold gilded leaf. The gold is generally used to affix to a Buddha statue in one of the pagodas as a form of worship.
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