Mandalay Hill

I've managed to upload three blips in 12 hours - click back if you want to see the last two.

Legend has it that Buddha climbed Mandalay Hill (now 801 covered steps to the top) and prophesied that 2,400 years later a great city would be founded just below. When that year came, in 1857, the town already existed, but King Mindon made it the capital and built a vast moated fort containing a lavish palace. It didn't last long. In 1885 the British - great civilisers of the world - took two weeks to overcome the Burmese then banish the royal family to India. The fort walls still exist but the palace was bombed in 1945 and the compound is now occupied by Myanmar's military.

For many people the name 'Mandalay' still sounds exotic and romantic and I imagine that for those 28 years it must have been a wondrous place. Now it's a hot, dusty, noisy city and sprawls too much to visit very much on foot. So  I hired an atrocious bike from my atrocious hotel and headed into the traffic. Scary at first but I soon learnt how the dodge rules work - there's  an informal give-way system at most junctions. In fact, I felt so adept by the end of the day that I went to an after-dark political/comedy show on the bike using the bike lights I brought with me - possibly the first lit bke in the history of Mandalay.

The highlight of the day was watching men beating lumps of gold into leaf with wooden mallets. 30 minutes for the first thinning, 30 for the second, then a further five hours of heavy work beating 750 leaves at once, separated with fine bamboo sheets. The gold leaf is sold to the faithful for gilding statues of Buddha, one fine leaf at a time. I saw one venerated statue that is unrecognisable apart from the face, so many leaves have been applied. The gold is now, I was told, 15cm thick.