Tuesday, 15 February.

Up early to go back to the market for more money changing before we left for Mandalay, on another free day.  I had vaguely remembered that our guide mentioned the market opened at 9, but since we were up early, we headed out.  She was right - nothing was open at 8.15!  So we wandered around trying to orient ourselves.  Eventually people started coming to work, the money changer arrived, and we did our business.  I was also looking for someone to sew the fabric I had bought on the river boat.  Of course we’d seen lots of people with sewing machines on Sunday, but took a while to find them again, as the market is so vast.  Finally a nice young woman did it for me while I waited, for about a dollar.  Quite chuffed to have negotiated clothing alterations in another language

Then we crossed the road to the ‘other’ part of the market, much more local, where there are lots of Myanmar drug stores – stalls set up in the markets with piles of medicine boxes, a telephone stand for people to use, and of course lots of snacks being made.  We found another bottle shop, and sat on plastic chairs watching people carry huge loads on their heads, and on shoulder yokes.  While we were there the market delivery service went into action.  We were at the foot of a tall apartment building. Our guide had already told us that lower floors were preferred because these buildings either didn’t have an elevator, or it was out of service.  So someone on an upper floor dropped a string down, with an order.  The vendor tied it onto the string, and tugged it so that she pulled it up.  She sent the money down on the same string.

More wandering, and decided that we could skip the restaurant offering Mashed Potato hamburger.  We were tempted by a Myanmar pizza, but it was a little too early, so kept going.  We were struck during all this walking through wide and narrow streets that we never felt unsafe.  People were sometimes interested to see us wandering around on our own, but everyone was friendly – or just ignored us, going about their own business.

Back to the hotel and we decided to take advantage of their Dim Sum lunch.  Quite good, and the restaurant was cool and calm, which also was good.  Then an hour or two by the pool.  We had originally asked for smaller hotels, perhaps guest houses, and weren’t too pleased to find that the hotels William had suggested were mainly bigger, tourist oriented.  But since they weren’t too expensive, and all seemed to get good reviews, we agreed.  Once there we found that we really did like being comfortable after a long hot and sometimes dusty day of sight-seeing.  (We also found as we saw some of the guest houses in the smaller places we visited that we were quite happy NOT to be there.)

One of the things that had struck us while walking was the number of billboards and advertising for Valentine’s Day, apparently now a popular time, especially for young people.  So, since once again we didn’t need dinner, and we could hear music coming from next door, we went out to check.   Turns out there was a small shopping area the other side of the hotel, and in what looked to be the driveway there was a rock concert going on.  A very loud, amplified, well lit young Myanmar singer was belting out hits for a large crowd.  We hung around for a while, but since we obviously weren’t following the lyrics, gave in and went to bed.  We had to be up very early the next day for our flight.