From Bagan, we took a bus to Mandalay. While it normally evokes palaces and ancient charm, the actual city center was rather chaotic. We hailed a driver at the bus station who turned out to be a great host for the city and around. Jojo took us to the hotel where he worked, ET Hotel, which is listed in the guidebooks as well.

Here’s a pic of Jojo, our awesome guide

Jojo also does motorbike tours in Mandalay and around. We sat down for a little in the lobby and we ironed out the itinerary and agreed to meet up the next morning. He brought his brother to be the second driver and Shannon and I hopped on the back of our respective bike.

Before entering Mahamuni Paya (Temple), I had to don a longyi, which is the traditional clothes for men in Myanmar. There was a lot of activity at the temple

Here are some adherents putting the gold leaf onto a statue in the main hall – only men are allowed to do this.

The locals got a kick out of seeing a foreigner wearing the traditional longyi and several asked me to pose for photographs.

This was a ceremony for children who are about to enter the temple for study. It is very common for kids (and adults) to do this at least once in their lives, and the duration can be for weeks, months or even years.

Here’s a video of us riding through the streets on the way to the Temple.

After this, we got back on the motorbikes and went to several renowned pagodas outside of Mandalay in the former royal capital cities of Amarapura, Inwa and Sagaing.

All these cities are along the Ayeyarwady river (sometimes called Irrawaddy river) and the temples offer nice views

We stopped for a massive feast

We continued on and checked out some more sights

Around sunset we headed to the famous (and very popular) U Bein’s Bridge, which is the world’s longest teak bridge at 4,000 feet.

After a long day, we found a nice restaurant near our guesthouse. It had dozens of bowls of food and you basically point out 5 things you want on your plate which costs less than $2. We ate here both nights in Mandalay and it was pretty delicious.

We had a wonderful 10 days in Myanmar and were impressed with how easy it was to get around and get things done after reading the travel guides.