We loved the warmth of the Kyi Tin Hotel staff so much that we stayed there again. Fortunately, one of their bungalows with two bedrooms was available and we grabbed it. Nice!
Our plans for Mandalay this time around were to figure out how to send our booty of souvenirs back to the US, go across the river to visit Mingun, and enjoy the remaining time we had. Sounds simple enough.
It turns out that the Myanmar Post won’t send anything that is longer 24 inches (we’d bought larger things). The Post folks also assured me that what I sent via them would arrive broken. Hmm… However they did let me know, while I was being attacked by a small swarm of mosquitoes in the office, that DHL should be able to help. I hopped in a tuk tuk and headed over to the DHL.
At the office I learned that DHL was running a 50% off sale to the USA and that it would only cost us only… $500 to mail our trinkets for which I think we paid $175. Plus, in Myanmar DHL won’t send anything remotely resembling an antiquity without a letter from the archaeology department that I would have to go obtain personally. And that “archaeology department?” It didn’t come up on any Google Map. The DHL guy looked at my zoomed in map and said, “It’s somewhere around there.”
Random truck parked on sidewalk and car parked half sidewalk half street
This seemed like an expensive mess so I decided to change plans and look for some way to take our souvenirs to Bali. This involved walking up a large road and looking for all sorts of items. In the end I was able to find a very big suitcase and a carry bag to do the trick.
The next day, we took a tuk tuk (like how that rolls off the tongue?) over to the Irrawaddy River and met a guy arranged through the hotel to Mingun in a boat. This was cool. We had our own big boat, of course complete with upper deck, unstable plastic chairs. For about 30 minutes we sailed up the river with the wind in our hair. Our captain also sold some neat bracelets and we bought a couple.
In Mingun there was no Grab rideshare service and the tuk tuk mafia was in full force so we decided to walk the quarter mile from the dock to the first of two temples we’d see in Mingun. The Mingun Pahtodawgyi temple was started by King Bodawpaya in 1790 and was designed to be the largest stupa in the world at 150 meters high. This place is so large that it looks like it was carved from a huge batholith or mountain like Mount Rushmore was. However upon closer inspection you see that it's made out of millions and millions of bricks.
Mingun Pahtodawgyi, however, it was not completed because an astrologer at the time claimed that when the stupa was finished that King Bodawpaya would die. Building ended. Before learning this, the king had also commissioned the world's largest ringing bell to cast that would go inside his stupa. This bell was finished and the Mingun Bell and is housed nearby and weighs 90 tons.
A quarter mile further down the road is the Hsinbyume Pagoda. I know I keep using words like impressive, and amazing to describe things in Myanmar, but the Hsinbyume Pagoda was truly ethereal. It was built in 1816 by King Bagydaw and dedicated to the memory of his first consort and cousin, Princess Hsinbyume (Princess White Elephant). The princess had died in childbirth nearby. The design is based on a pagoda mentioned in Buddhism mythology - Sulamani on Mount Mero. The lower parts of the pagoda represent the mountain, with its 7 concentric terraces representing the seven mountain ranges that lead up to Mount Meru according to the myth. To me, it looked like the world’s largest meringue. Inside, the air seemed to glow from the reflections off the white waves, towers, steps, passageways, and main stupa. This was a fitting place for our last excursion in Myanmar.
As usual, it was hot and sunny so we bought some neat, foldable hats and wore them back to the boat. That night we found a dermatologist’s office while walking around the neighborhood at 7pm. It was open and had immediate availability so we had the doctor do a quick laser session and scooping session on Milagro and Vicente (molluscum contagiosum) and me (nose bumps). We’d had these things for a while (many years in my case) and had just been dealing with them.
Our flight to Denpasar, Bali, via Bangkok, left the next day. What a country!
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