10-6 (Friday) Leaving Mandalay

I got up at 4:30 for our 5:00 departure. The streets were still flooded as we left Mandalay. It only rained a little in the night.

Once we actually got on the road it was smooth like a real highway. We made good time. It isn’t good to get excited about good roads because they don’t last long. We didn’t stop for breakfast until 8:30. The locals really gave us the once over.

As we continued on we came to more sections of the roadway that were completely flooded. At one point it was flowing so hard there was a current. We couldn’t get over how that ’84 Toyota kept going!

The next surprise was the mountains. We went up on huge mountain down and then up a second one right away. Of course the road, if you can call it that, wasn’t paved. It was hard, hard driving. Naturally we were passing other cars, motorcycles, trucks and buses on the way up and down. It didn’t matter if we were on a curve. There were small trucks like bemos going up and down. Some of them must have had 30 people in the back and at least 10-15 on top. Big boulders had fallen down in the road. At one curve a bus going up and a huge road making machine were trying to pass each other. They were too big to squeeze by each other. Everyone was having to stop while they tried to figure it out. Finally one of them backed up enough so that the mountain traffic could get through.

We finally got off both mountains and began heading towards Inle Lake. The road was only wide enough for one car. We had to pull over to the side everytime we met another car or bus.

There was a booth as we entered the Inle area. They told us we had to pay $3 US each. I said we didn’t have any dollars. That was too kbad, if we didn’t have them we weren’t getting anywhere. U Tin Wint said he was going to drive to his friend’s and get dollars. We said we would pay him back when we got to the hotel. We drove to the friend’s and came back with the dollars.

We parked our car at U Tin Wint’s branch office and walked to lunch. By this time it was 3:30 or 4:00. Joyce and I split a chicken dish over rice.

We went back to the branch office and planned our next day.

We got in a longtail boat with all our luggage and headed out to the hotel. It probably took 20 minutes to get there. It began to sprinkle along the way so we put up umbrellas that were in the boat.

The hotel was lovely. We had a room with a big porch overlooking the lake.. We sat outside and wrote in our journals for a long time.

I went with the “guys” to a ceremony that only occurs on the full moon of October. Hundreds of candles are lit at all the pagodas and in houses all over Myanmar. It was a beautiful sight. After we left we walked down the road just to stretch our legs. We ended up talking to some young kids and their mothers.