Thingyan 2016 – water craze in Mandalay

April 2016 in Mandalay, Myanmar

Thingyan is the biggest holiday of the year in Myanmar – the Burmese New Year combined with water festival. This was my fourth new year celebration this year and, if the truth is to be told, I do hope it’d be the last one. Enough for one year.

During the period of 10 days, the whole country shuts down. All state and most private companies, including bus companies, close down to let employees return home to their families and celebrate. Wherever you are, the chances are good you may be stuck there for 10 days if you don’t leave in time or buy a bus/plane ticket long time in advance. Well, this is not entirely true – the trains and taxis run as usual. At a price. During holidays prices skyrocket in Asian countries (at the same time quality diminishes) as most of the ‘regular’ vendors and hawkers go home and the more ‘shady ones‘ see the opportunity to make money and take over the commerce. You get less but pay more. 

With a maximum speed of 30 kilometers, the train takes some 20-30 hours and requires a lot of patience, a strong stomach, and very healthy kidneys. The trip is noisy and bumpy. Burmese railway, as pretty and colonial as it is, hasn’t been upgraded for at least 100 years, iow never. So if you’re not up to for an adventure you better look for other options, e.g. taxi.

Taxi prices vary depending on how far you’re going but the average is approx 100 USD (April 2016). The good news is you’ll be most probably sharing the taxi and even sharing the cost with other travelers that are stuck at your location just as you are. Ask hotel manager if there received any taxi (or other transportation) inquiries. 

The best part of being traveler, as opposed to being a tourist, is meeting other travelers and exchanging information with them. We all sit in the same boat and we all follow the same routes (though we may go in other direction). You can be certain of meeting someone just returning from the destination you are heading for. In no time you’ll not only get all the info you need but also find someone going your way – someone or someones you can share a taxi with. Then 100 USD isn’t all that much if you divide it by 4 or 5.

My travel options were to get stuck in Naypyidaw or get stuck somewhere else. I chose the latter. The front desk girls succeeded to get me the last bus ticket out of Naypyidaw. They had free hands as to my destination – it turned out to be Mandalay. It wasn’t JJ Express (fully booked) but it didn’t matter. The bus was just as good even though the decor was unfamiliar. And the price? 6.20 USD.

Mandalay

Mandalay is not a pretty town. It looks and feels like a small village or rather overgrown small village. All streets look exactly the same. If they weren’t numbered you couldn’t tell one from another. Orientation, on the other hand, is super easy as almost all streets run either horizontally or vertically making almost perfect rectangles. They are very logically numbered and easy to find/follow.

Other than the royal palace and Mandalay hill housing few pagodas and monasteries and maybe a market that looks just like any other Asian market there isn’t all that much to see or do in Mandalay. Nightlife is pretty much non-existent and the city, like the rest of Myanmar, goes to sleep at 8 p.m. Your only company after sunset is stray dogs walking the poorly lit streets. A rather spooky environment for a solo female traveler – not that I ever felt threatened, but it was rather uncomfortable. 

Myanmar’s largest river, Ayeyarwady, runs through Mandalay. Its bank, however, is a far cry from any riverbank I have seen so far as it is a home to homeless people and squatters.

Attractions of Mandalay

The attractions of Mandalay that bring so many tourists into town are not in Mandalay at all but out in villages around, some 10-20 kilometers away. The best way to get there is by taxi. You can hire a taxi for a day (approx 30-40 USD for 8-10 hours) and share it with other travelers staying at your hotel. I shared a taxi with two 18-year-old German guys and we had a blast.

The ancient cities such as In-wa (Ava), Mingun, Sagaing, and Amarapura are all worth visiting. Keep in mind though that most of them are religious sites and you need to walk barefoot not only at the indoor sites but also at the outdoor ones.  Climbing barefoot hundreds of razor sharp and boiling hot uneven and high steps in 40C heat is a torture. You may like to use branches to walk on – as the locals used to do. 

Make U Bein Bridge your last stop. Partly because it is closest to town and partly because it is a sunset spot. The bridge used to be one of top 10 best photo op places in the world. Unfortunately, it is not so today. (Don’t let my pictures below fool you) Today the place is overcrowded, over-exploited and filthy. What a pity. Capturing the silhouette of lonely monks crossing the bridge in the sunset belongs to the past. I came to Mandalay just for the bridge. As far as I am concerned – there is no bridge. Oh well.

Vendors and hawkers “lead the way” to every attraction. Tourists are still fairly new in Myanmar hence the hawkers are still pretty polite – but they are learning. Already now horse/carriage operator in Ava could give any hawker from Hue run for their money.

During my stay, we had a 6.9 magnitude earthquake on April 13 which I could clearly feel from the 5th floor of my hotel room.

Water festival

Even though I understand the religious aspect of Thingyan water festival, I have still to understand the fun of it. The general idea is to dance, sing and drench each other in water – cleansing of a sort. The city was full of makeshift stages on which people could sing and dance. Hundreds of pickup trucks, packed with young locals, were either parked by the stages and used as dancing floor or just cruising the streets. Music, mind you Western music, was streaming out from huge speakers and played on the highest volume possible. In addition, there were countless of private ‘water stations’ on every single corner and along the streets also playing Western music as loud as they only could.

And then there was water. Gallons of water, in tanks, barrels, buckets, hoses. One thing is sure – there is no shortage of water in Mandalay. Any passerby, on foot or wheels, was either hosed down or got a bucket of water splashed on his/her face. It didn’t take many seconds to get soaking wet once you entered the streets.  There was nowhere to hide. Tourists weren’t targeted as much as locals but even they got their share of cleansing.

If you can’t beat them join them. Right? After three days locked up in my hotel room, I decided to join. There was a huge water tank in front of my hotel and some of the hotel guests got right into the cleansing business. 190 cm tall, well trained German guys were having real fun cleansing 155 cm tall, fragile looking locals. Their water throw precision was right on target and their force was the one of a bull. The locals were in total shock.

I quite enjoyed watching ‘the fun’ from the comfort of my rooftop bar. Just as I was about to go down to join I noticed enormous ice blocks in the tank. The water was freezing cold. Oh no, not my cup of tea. Then another thought struck me – imagine what can happen if you get a piece of ice thrown at your head. A rather scary prospect. I stayed in.

Apparently, 22 people died during the festivities. In Mandalay alone.

At 8 p.m. everything stopped. Just like that. In a matter of few seconds, the whole town went from 1000 decibel to zero. From million people to none. Total silence and desertion. Spooky. Until the next morning when the cleansing began again.

The city

 

The People of Mandalay

Some of the Attractions

 

Water festival