Myanmar - Inwa City

During our first day we decided to visit the Ancient Inwa City.  I was craving to see some old architecture from the Burmese empire and eager to get out of the very populated Mandalay City. We hired a private driver for $40 for the entire day (arranged last minute from the hotel we were staying at called the Hotel by the Red Canal which I highly recommend).

Our driver, Thura, didn’t speak much English but had a good sense of the “must see” places as he took us to the Golden Leaf work shop, a wood carving shop, and a silk shop without our request as we headed outside of the city. We stopped for a few minutes to see how the gold is “smashed” with bamboo sticks and leaves to make the thin leaves people will buy as offerings for the Buddha during holidays. You can also buy gold covered souvenirs and decorations here.

Our favorite was the wood carving shop, filled with different sizes and shapes of Buddha, window and door frames with intricate patterns and designs telling a story or describing a scene. We didn’t take pictures here but made a mental note of where to go when we were ready to purchase a standing buddha for the house we are remodeling.

The ancient imperial capital of Inwa is a good hour car ride south from downtown Mandalay, making it a popular day trip for tourists. It’s a series of archeological sites in between rice fields and villages where you can get glimpses of the former grandeur of the Burmese kingdom (or Kingdom of Ava, the name by which Burma was known to the Europeans) where it sat for 360 years, from the 14th to 19th centuries until it was finally abandoned after being destroyed by a series of major earthquakes in March 1839 and before the British occupation.

We didn’t tell our driver which pagodas we wanted to see (more out of ignorance than anything else), he just took us to the ones he understood to be the highlights. We bought the “entrance ticket” for 10Kp/p at the first one which is good for the entire city and lasts 5 days. We visited around 8 pagodas with the time we had, none of them walking distance under the 30-degree Celsius heat (we were so happy we had a car!) and they weren’t crowded since it was already the afternoon. You can also hire a horse cart to visit the main pagodas for around 10K. I personally didn’t want to be exploiting a half-starved horse in the middle of a super-hot day. There are stands outside the pagodas where you can buy jewelry, paintings, souvenirs, and food. Some vendors are more aggressive than others but we just ignored them.

Important to note that you have to be conservatively dressed to be able to enter, can’t show knees or shoulders – pants or long skirt with a t-shirt (not tank top) should be fine. Also, it is very important to know that you have to take your shoes and socks off to enter the pagodas and they aren’t well maintained or cleaned, usually with a few inches of dust and dirt on the floors. We were ill prepared and had tennis shoes on so it was a little annoying to have to take them off and on at every site. We recommend wearing flip flops and carrying wipes with you to clean your feet after each site.
We visited the 4 most popular sites and a few other less frequented:

The Solitary leaning 90 feet Nanmyin tower (nothing special about it, you can’t go up since it’s about to collapse), and sadly is the only building that remains from King Bagyidaw’s palace complex.

- Bagaya Monastery made out of teak wood, impressive wood posts and door frames

- Buddhist temple Me Nu Oak Kyaung, the brick monastery was the largest site we visited

- Yadana Hsimi pagoda with the big tree and the Buddha under its canopy

- Our driver also took us to the less visited, Italian designed fort next to the river and to a group of smaller pagodas located behind Bagaya Temple: Winkabar, Myinmotaung, Lawkaduthamaraung and Kyaunglain pagodas. They have staircases that you can climb to the top for a delightful view.

- My favorite site gave me a sense of both sadness and wonder.  Le Htat Gyi Paya Pagoda is too far to be visited by horse-drawn cart, but I think it’s worth the visit. You can still see detailed architecture framing the entrances, large pieces of the temple that fell during the earthquake longing to be reunited, and you hear long forgotten stories in the wind as it passes through the ancient structure.

We ended our day in the Amarapura region, with a sunset at the U-Bein bridge, the longest pedestrian teak bridge in the world. More of a tourist trap than anything else, I was underwhelmed by the hundreds of people pushing their way through the bridge for a perfect selfie and the merchants trying to sell you something. I was happy to return to our hotel where we rewarded ourselves with an amazing dinner at the Spice Garden restaurant, ranked as one of the top restaurants in the city.