The Golden Palace City

 In 1857 the Burmese King Mindon moved the kingdom's capital to Mandalay to fulfill a prophecy. An enormous 1020 acre palace-city was constructed, walls built around it, and moats dug around those to to create a grandiose abode fit for royalty. As it so happened, Mandalay proved to be the final stop for Burmese royalty, as the northern territories were finally captured by the British in 1885 and the royal family exiled. During World War II the Japanese used the palace grounds as a supply depot, and it was subsequently bombed and burned to the ground by allied planes. Thanks to the plans commissioned over 40 years earlier by Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, a detailed reconstruction of the palace was possible in a city that over a million people now call home.

Inside the Palace walls the compound was rather barren and a bit unkempt, it being off-season for tourists in Mandalay. The picture you see above I took from the watch tower, which provided an excellent place to examine the palace buildings as a whole. Down below, you can walk into most of the buildings, and believe it or not you still have to take your shoes off in the throne rooms despite the current lack of Burmese royalty wandering about or the actual authenticity of the structure itself. Toward the back of the complex there was a little museum displaying some very intricate and appealing effects salvaged from the original palace, including a bed frame made entirely from glass.

As far as salvaged buildings go, there is one, but it isn’t within the palace walls. It’s called the Shwenandaw Monastery and is movable and made entirely out of intricately carved wood. Each piece of the structure can be disassembled and reassembled, allowing for its mobility. Mindon’s son Thibaw moved the structure sometime before the fall of Mandalay and there it resides today. The woodwork, when examined up close, is impeccable, and the structure has weathered remarkably well, possibly due to its teak material. Every piece has its place, and the joints are all flush but visible, testimony to the building’s claim. According to Wikipedia, King Mindon actually died in this building, but I can neither confirm nor deny that.

Something else that resides in Mandalay, that you may find surprising, is the world’s largest book. When I was told this I imagined some enormous Buddhist text with pages as large as rooms being turned by a battalion of faithful monks. What I found instead was this:

The world’s largest book is actually a collection of 729 stone tablets, each individual tablet surrounded by its own white stupa. The space taken up by this elaborate show of dedication could probably easily house a couple million regular volumes, but instead is reserved for just this one, the subject of which is of course Buddhist scripture.

Mandalay is one of those exotic sounding places that you probably won’t ever find yourself in unless you make a real effort to get there. I heard it was cleaner than Yangon, and I’d have to agree, although just as congested due to the swarms of motorbikes (which have been banned in Yangon). I actually had the displeasure of seeing someone dead on the street after an accident, and with the way people drive in Burma I’d imagine similar incidents are pretty frequent.

The final thing I saw on my first of two days in Mandalay was the U Bein Bridge, longest teak bridge in the world (lots of teak in Burma). The bridge stretches 1.2 kilometers and is one of the more popular destinations in the city. The pictures I’d seen of the bridge looked a lot nicer than the real thing, but the weather was a little gloomy so I’ll give it a pass, it was an enjoyable walk across.

My second day in Mandalay was pretty uneventful. We took a day trip to outdoor gardens and a waterfall but honestly I was too sick to enjoy it much. The real treat was in the evening. We drove up the large hill that overlooks the city and surrounding countryside, fittingly called Mandalay Hill, and the view from the top was really breathtaking. I was feeling much better by this time and so could actually enjoy the scenery. The city was on one side with the palace and world's largest book plainly visible, and on the other side stretched rice paddies and more distant hills that were just catching the setting sun at the time of our visit. This trip has really been testing my ability to fittingly describe great scenery, so just take a look at the pictures and judge for yourself.