The day started early, waking up at 4.30am to get a minibus at 5am to Phuket airport. Unfortunately, we hadn't slept well. Going to bed rather too late and being woken up by drunken Germans having a loud chat outside our room at 2am didn't help. Tired, we made it to the bus, and bumped our way to the airport, in good time for our domestic flight to Bangkok.

Except that the airline, Air Asia, was treating it as an international flight, because of our onward connection to Mandalay in Myanmar/ Burma . We joined a queue whilst Jack and El got some breakfast. We eventually made it to the front of the queue to check in for both flights, where airport officials checked that we had both a visa for Myanmar and an onward flight ticket. We got a nifty sticker to show that we had an onward connection, and headed off to security. Not before Jack and El had to get their online check in boarding passes pre-authorised, which made little sense to any of us. Soon, we were through security which this time wasn’t heinous, and into the immigration line to get our stamp out of Thailand. We found some water and croissants in the airport and pretty much then had to get on the flight. It was a good job we hadn’t arrived any later than we had.

The flight was uneventful. We were met off the plane by an Air Asia official, who took us through the airport to our boarding gate. On the way, we had all of our documentation checked again – boarding passes, visas, onward flights – and we were security checked again, which meant that the water we had just purchased was confiscated . In the boarding gate, we had a little more time, and purchased coffee and fruit to keep us going. We also had time to find another neck pillow for Jayna, whose neck pillow had sadly developed a leak and was no longer supportive. We weren’t sat together on the next flight, did a little napping and completing of documents for entry to Myanmar, and rode out the quite spectacular but thankfully short lived turbulence.

Tired and cranky, we’d made it to Myanmar! We passed through immigration quickly and with no problems, picked up our luggage, and got a pre-paid airport taxi from the airport to the centre of the city. In the minibus taxi, a nice woman from the UK shared some dried seaweed with us. Small things were keeping us going at this point. None of us had been to Myanmar before, so we weren’t sure what to expect. Our first impression of the country was that it was littered with golden stupas. Our first impression of Mandalay was that it was a smog filled dusty city, not dissimilar to Kathmandu, but with logical straight grid lines of streets, rather than the twisting mess of Thamel .

We arrived at our guest house, Sabai Phyu, and checked in. This involved us moving rooms because the air conditioning didn’t work, filling out a form and having different forms of payment rejected. The guest house was okay, but a bit run down and definitely a bit smelly. In our new room, we would later discover, the toilet did not drain or flush properly and the sink was also having troubles. The beds were comfortable though. Once we were settled in at last, we headed out for some delicious thali (Nepalese food) with a whole range of curry options, and when back at the guest house, wrote Jack and El a note and sank into bed for a nap.

Three hours later, we were ready to get going for our new years celebrations. We decided to walk to a place which sold beer and cocktails, as recommended in the Lonely Planet. It didn’t look like it was far away, but it took quite a while to get there as we dodged traffic and crossed busy roads . We ordered some drinks and settled in, petting the kittens as they scampered around, and were quickly joined by Will. Will was a very nice guy from London, travelling on his own, and who came over to introduce himself and see if he could hang out with us for the evening. We were very glad of the company and welcomed him heartily. We were also joined by a very drunk Burmese man, who was pleasant enough at first but didn’t really take the hint that we didn’t want to engage. He shook our hands and spoke enough English that we could see he had a good grasp on the language, but we couldn’t understand much of his drunken talk. We did however understand his emphatic insistence that El was a very beautiful woman (very true) and that she looked like Margaret Thatcher (very untrue!)! With us continually ignoring him, this simply led to him getting physically closer and interrupting our conversations, until he started to put his arms around Will and Jayna and the bar staff intervened at our request and obvious discomfort at the situation .

Not long after we decided to move on, and paid a very reasonable amount given we’d had pizzas and several drinks (we think the bar staff gave us a discount because of what had happened with the drunk man), we headed back towards our hotel. We picked up a taxi on the way where we sat on the floor of the back of a pick up truck, and sought some advice on a roof top bar for drinks from which we could watch the new year’s fireworks over the nearby palace. Everyone denied that such a thing existed. We went to one which we knew should exist, but it was closed. We walked about a block away, sought more advice, and were told to go about eight blocks north. Instead, we found just what we were looking for a block away, and had more drinks and merriment until the New Years rolled around. A series of small fireworks exploded around the palace, including some very dangerous looking handheld ones, held by children, and we did the traditional round of hugging and kissing .

After the bar staff 'accidentally’ turned off the lights on us, we took the hint and went our separate ways, saying a fond farewell to Will. Bed was very welcomed and we slept greedily, oversleeping our alarm to wake us for the free breakfast the following morning.

On New Years Day 2016, Friday 1st January, we woke up late. After getting ourselves together, we were surprisingly productive. We took a taxi to a breakfast place near the entrance to the Mandalay Royal Palace. Whilst we were staying very near to the palace, the palace complex was huge. To get to the entrance, it was a three mile walk from our guest house. After breakfast, we headed into the palace and past the signs which talked of 'crushing’ enemies. The palace was bombed during World War 2, so the buildings in the area are reconstructions. We enjoyed the structures, gilding and mirrored walls as we wandered through. Our favourite bits were the displays of the royal family’s paraphernalia, including the royal chin rest, and a glass bed. We also enjoyed climbing up a tower which looked like a helter-skelter, to get a view over the palace buildings and surrounding countryside.

Our next stop was Kyauk Taw Gyi pagoda; a collection of Buddhist buildings with a huge marble Buddha, standing 26 feet tall and carved from a single block of marble. After wandering around this building and a number of others, we climbed up to the top of Mandalay Hill . We took off our shoes and went up and up, past various temples and shops along the way, up to the very top. Where we found the tourists in Myanmar, as well as plenty of Burmese people. We took in the sunset views across Mandalay and the Royal Palace, and watched as the lights of the city started to come on. At the top, there was a continual chant by a Buddhist monk. This was initially charming but became grating as it was too loud (we are now officially old). There was a charge to enter the top, effective as of 1st January 2016. Happy new year.

We descended as far as the car park and took a taxi to a popular vegetarian restaurant near our hotel. Here, we had some great food in an upstairs restaurant, and walked back to the guest house along the dusty streets. We were still feeling tired after travelling and the late night of the previous evening but managed a couple of beers before bed. We drank these in reception whilst a chap on reception told us about his country, how he is Muslim and how not all Muslims are terrorists . Clearly. We told him he was preaching to the converted!

On Saturday 2nd, we hired a car with driver to take us to see some of the sights of outlying Mandalay. There were set itineraries which our guest house and the driver kept going back to, though we repeatedly told them what we wanted to actually see. Despite this, our first stop was not somewhere we’d asked to be taken. It was in fact called Maha Ganayon Kyaung; a monastery. The principle reason for visiting was to watch Buddhist monks eat, in silence. In fact, as we ended up finding out, what people see is monks queuing for food. It was a bit bewildering as to why this was a tourist attraction and so we quickly headed off to our first actual sight, the world’s longest teak bridge. U-Bein Bridge was not the prettiest of constructions. It curved around the river and certainly was long. We walked the length of it, taking in people cultivating the land as the river levels fell after monsoon season, and watching the numerous boats do their thing . On the far side, on the banks of the island to which the bridge is connected, we stopped for a nice cold refreshing drink and enjoyed being by the water. Here, El started to develop a cold.

We walked back over the bridge and hopped into the car for our next stop, the Gold Pounders District. Mandalay has a reputation for being an arts and crafts city, and pounding gold is one of the arts employed. We went to a workshop and witnessed gold being literally pounded into very thin sheets by men with big hammers, through deer skin. It looked exhausting. Like magpies, we drifted into the attached shop and witnessed some child labour with children separating the thin sheets of gold, ready for onward sale, and saw how many beautiful things were made with the gold. It was very tempting to buy everything in the shop, but we managed to restrain ourselves.

The next stop was Mahamuni Paya, a Buddhist temple with a giant gold Buddha . This is where the thin gold sheets were used by people – to add onto the Buddha. Only men were allowed up close to the Buddha statue to apply the gold. Ken and Jack went up to witness the gold application, which was not scientific, and left the statue looking very knobbly. Except for the Buddha’s face, which is apparently polished every morning at 4am, leaving it incredibly shiny. The place was exceedingly popular and busy with locals. Ken and Jayna had a chat with a monk, who was keen to practise his English skills and was concerned with our happiness, and we had a wander around a gallery of paintings as well.

We stopped for a late lunch at a vegetarian friendly restaurant, and headed off for our last stop with our driver, the Shwe In Bin Kyaung monastery. Made of teak, this old monastery was beautiful and in a very peaceful setting near the river. Again, Ken and Jayna chatted to a monk about Buddhism, and a black cat followed us around amusingly .

We asked the driver to drop us further up the river, with the intention of finding both the pier for our boat ride the following day, and somewhere for drinks whilst watching sunset over the river. We accomplished both, by finding the most glorious looking boat next to our pier for the following morning. (It later became apparent that the boat was a reconstruction of the royal barge, hence it’s extreme prettiness.) We consulted with the staff on the boat, and they said we could go in for drinks and food, no problem. The staff were very friendly and chatted with us whilst we watched sunset from the chairs of the upper deck of the boat. Later we would go inside for more very reasonably priced drinks, and even later for some food. Jack and El taught Ken and Jayna a dice game called Yams, which caused some hilarity. Jack and Jayna declared themselves to be feeling distinctly ropey by the end of the evening (not from excessive alcohol consumption), and with El’s developing cold and Ken’s prolonged recovery from his cold, we weren’t doing too well in the health department.

We said a fond farewell to the staff on the boat, and tried to flag down a taxi in the road. Unsuccessfully, as it transpired. A nice security man offered to help us, and rang a number of taxis until he found one which was available for us. Five minutes later, we were on our way back to the guest house for our last night in Mandalay (until our return at a later date).

Unfortunately, as soon as we arrived back at the guest house, Jayna was sick. We didn’t get much sleep because of noise in the corridor from other people, Jayna being sick throughout the night, and the early start the next morning for our boat ride. This was a disappointing end to a very nice time in Mandalay.

Next stop – Bagan!

* Pictures by Jack, El, Ken and Jayna.