May 4, 2012, afternoon
After our morning boat ride to Mingun, we headed to the bustling Zegyo market…
…where my guide bought marbles for his two girls. (I told him that I used to also play marbles when I was a little girl growing up in Kentucky).
After a wonderful Thai lunch, we headed on towards Ava, the capital of Myanmar from the 14th to 18th centuries. On the way, we encountered this parade of oxcarts, which we learned were taking guests from a wedding back home…
Then a little short boat ride over to Ava…
….where we picked up a horse cart, the only mode of transportation available to see this ancient city…
The palace was moved to amarapura in the 1800’s, piece by piece. Portions of the wall do remain, such as this…
…and this old teak monastery was built in the 1600’s completely out of teak wood.
These students were under the monastery with their teacher, learning the Buddhist scriptures…
We stopped to have a refreshing drink of sugar cane juice, which they pressed for us fresh (yes, as you would guess, it was a bit too sweet, so just a few sips).
After leaving Ava, we proceeded to Sagaing, which boasts over 600 white painted pagodas.
We visited a few of them, such as this one with its line up of Buddhas…
At this one, we found a group of nuns giving their respects…
After dinner at A Bit of Mandalay restaurant, we called it a day. Tomorrow I will fly to Heho and go to Pindaya to see the cave with close to 9,000 Buddha images.
Location:Mandalay, Myanmar
