10-4 (Wednesday) The Road to Mandalay!

It rained buckets last night. It made for good sleeping if only I could have!

The hotel staff brought breakfast to our room at 6:30 because we planned to leave at 7:00. U Tin Wint wanted to take us by a special place that was not on our agenda. Of course it turned out to be another pagoda. It was way up on top of a tall rock formation – Popa Mountain. It was very magical and impressive until we got there and found out we were going to climb about a million steps in our bear feet. There were monkeys all over the place but they didn’t attack us. We had to try not to step in their tee-tee and poop. Joyce wasn’t a happy camper about going up. She quit several times but somehow she made it to the top. More Buddhas!

When we got down the “guys” wanted to go to a restaurant and have tea. I was happy when we finally got back on the pot hole road. As we were bouncing along something happened to the car. Instead of speeding we drove normal speeds to some sort of garage. They jacked it up with some ancient jack and stuck something like a cut off tree trunk under it and another block of wood. Some guy climbed under it and I guess fixed it because in less than 45 minutes we were bouncing from on pot hole to another once more.

We stopped at some restaurant for lunch. Joyce and I split a plate of fried rice.

Further down the road I asked to stop so I could go into the bushes and wee wee. I did but was bitten by an ant on my toe since I was wearing flip flops.

We made it into Mandalay around 5:00. They must have had a lot of rain because several of the streets were flooded. We had a hard time finding the hotel but finally arrived. The traffic in Mandalay is like the traffic in Bangkok!

After putting our stuff in the room we were going to go out and do email when some man told us that all hotmail is blocked. That must have just been in Mandalay or else he was wrong. We decided to get foot massages instead right there in the hotel. These were the deep massages. Joyce and I were both screaming. For that hour of pain we paid less than $4. When the girls finished they did our arms, hands, necks, shoulders and back all for the same price. The next day we had bruises all over our legs especially Joyce – you could the fingerprints on her legs!