Why not head to Burma – the land of the beautiful dragon ladies, home to the most beautiful pagodas you’ll ever see, with plenty of touristic and cultural experiences waiting to be discovered by local and foreign visitors! Head to Rangoon, the former capital of British Burma. It is a vibrant, bustling city with lots to do and see, both within the city and in the ‘wall like’ colonial administrative district. The people of Rangoon are warm and friendly and exhibiting a great amount of courtesy and gentleness.
If that is a little too ambitious for you, perhaps you would prefer a more cautious and controlled introduction to the fascinating country of Burma. In which case, a trip to the impressive Mandalay hill station may be more suitable.
Mandalay is Burma’s best known and most popular hill station, located in the Shan hills blending exotic Buddhism with hill-top villages and impressive rock-hewn churches. The town of Mandalay is also a great starting point for tours to the fascinating city of Bagan, which lies about two hours north of Mandalay, and is set amongst hillside villages tended to by the large number of Bagan refugees now settled in western countries.
The uniqueness of Mandalay is that it offers a respite from the throng of travelers found in other hill stations, with its lonely and deserted hill stations, lush and green forests, lovely beaches and clear blue oceans.
The people of Mandalay are among the most hospitable and reasonably friendly in all of Southeast Asia, and it is a great place to spend time on vacations with bargain flights to Mandalay that are available at very reasonable prices with online UK departure lounges.
However there is so much more to the city of Mandalay than just this pleasant city. The city is richly and culturally embedded with many Mandalayan traditions and treasures. For example, the two palaces, ‘The Grand Palace’ and ‘The Da Vinci Courtyard’, are rather notable, and the city has a number of interesting temples in and near the city. Like Ayutthaya, Mandalay is also a great place to take in some beautiful temple scenery, such as the Maha Muni Pagoda, one of the world’s largest pagodas, which is umbrella shaped and which has many of its construction completed in the 13th century.
Another interesting temple is the ‘Tholangpong Pagoda’, a relatively small temple whose architecture strongly reflects the design principles of the Chinese temples. The whole temple is covered in gold and precious stones, and this is extensively used to ornament the temple architecture.
There are many other structures in Mandalay that were created during the reign of the Pagan kings from well-known Hindu motifs with beautiful a luxury patio. An example of these temples is the famous ‘Hti Hal Thai Pagoda”, a world-famous temple, which is dedicated to the three leading gods in Hinduism (the god Shiva, Lord Vishnu and Buddha), and it was built in the year 1245, just at the time when the city of Mandalay was being invaded by the Burmese.
The1st and 2nd century templeperors of Pagan were relatively unbotable people, and they civilized the city a bit, but they remained basically tribal. As a result, they built structures, which do not bear a marked pattern that would interest specialists in the archeological scene, but which can be easily explained by simpler motives. These motives include pagoda structures, temple stupas, Hindu temples, and smaller to medium size structures, which were built for the performance of certain Hindu rituals. Famous among these are the massively reconstructed temples, which stand in the loose sandy soil of Mandalay’s west coast.
Over the years, as Mandalay’s popularity with foreign tourists grew, artisans and craftsmen started creatingendi, marble slabs with intricacies of Buddhist origins, depicting Gautama Buddha’s life from regarding his birth to his Enlightenment. These slabs amounts to more than hundreds of marble slabs, each of them as a work of art, in various styles and with diverse contents such as carvings of preached stories, genres of art, parables, songs and dances.
Another great example of old monument art in Burma is the ‘Leitutgyi Pagoda Sculpture’, the statue of Gautama Buddha commissioned by King Mindon this year (1884) as the chief Buddha at the city temple of Mandalay. The statue was finished in Bergama in November, 1884, and weighed 42.1 kilograms/88.5 lb. Gautama Buddha was presented to the Chinese emperor by the British in a postage stamp package. The statue was considered and taken to be the official chief Buddha of Mandalay until king Mindon Min put his own statue into the temple.