Mandalay To Bagan
We decided to stay two nights in Mandalay before heading southwest to Bagan by boat. After an after midnight nap followed by a leisurely breakfast on the roof the Golden Dream. After turning in all my laundry I took a minivan to a series of palm sugar industries including palm wine and whiskey. It was strong stuff. There was a large diameter petrified forest we stopped in at from long ago when there were trees in the now arid area. Today it’s a dry place with Tamarin trees lining the one lane highway, concentrated around the villages and down creek beds. We got back in plenty of time to go to a travel agency, book tomorrows boat and head out to a wooden bridge by motorcycle taxi. When we got there, there were lots of tourist buses and people of all walks of life, especially around sunset.
The Golden Dream made a special effort to make us breakfast early to catch out taxi to the Irrawaddy boat jetty. There weren’t many people on board, maybe half full and almost everyone migrated to the upper deck before it got hot. The sun was on the rise and we pulled off the dock.
We heard it takes various lengths of time from 9 to 18 hours so we were prepared for a long haul. It turned out this was an express boat with no stops and even though we touched down a few times we never stopped forward progress and had a very scenic ride into Bagan. By early mid-day the upper deck had gotten too hot and most of the people on board found a purchase of shade to continue reading their books or chatting quietly amongst themselves and looking up periodically to take in the view. The crew took our order for lunch for a few thousand kyat and there was a refrigerator with an assortment of cool beverages.
We wove through some the other boats coming upstream but primarily stayed port to port when the captain could. Again a lot of logging barges some with wood on top and then the delivery vessels had the wood sunk and tied under pontoons because the logs are too heavy to lift without proper equipment. These type riverboats carry about 20 trees to a mass station where they are lifted on to barges or shore to dry out. Many of these vessels tie themselves together stern to bow and use a shallow draft riverboat tug to get up river. Bamboo floats are seen being towed and a few people live on the float keeping it together and take the bamboo to an industrial shipping point for manufacturing, resale distribution, international shipping and most importantly money.
We pulled into Bagan at sunset and took a horse and buggy to a guesthouse before we searched for cheaper accommodations. Eden guesthouse was $20/night with attached bathroom and the Ban Cherry Guest House was $7/night with bathrooms down the hall. We spent the first night at the Eden just to have a place and checkout is at noon so we had time to make the change the next day.
www.davidcdagley.com
