Arriving in Myanmar, Mandalay

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After an exciting time in Bangkok I was finally meeting up with my sister again. I hadn't seen her for a whole month, since she had been traveling through the north of India.

Monks crossing a wooden pedestrian bridge across a waste polluted channel
1/400 Sek. f/5,6 150 mm

When we met at the airport in Bangkok, I learned that she was sick. Very sick. While we were waiting for boarding she laid down on the seats shivering eventhough she was wearing her sweater and my jacket.
When we arrived in Mandalay she was too weak to stand in the line for immigration so I was starting to get very worried. I asked her about her symptoms and googled around for a bit only to find out that all of her symptoms fit perfectly for malaria!

One of the many beautiful houses made of woven wood. Also the back of my sister's head ;)
1/250 Sek. f/4,5 16 mm

As soon as we arrived at our guesthouse, we asked for the next doctor. Untreated malaria can be very unpleasant to put it nicely. When our host led us to the doctor I felt like we traveled back in time. The office was tiny room crammed with cupboards and shelves which hosted hundreds of pots. The hunched old and unbelievable kind doctor fit perfectly into the picture. He agreed with us on our suspicion that it's malaria.

Pagodas like this one are scattered across the whole country. Myanmar is the country with the highest density of temples in the world!
1/320 Sek. f/11 14 mm

Since my sister was still very weak the next day we got a taxi got to a private clinic to get a proper bloodtest. After waiting 2 endless hours we came back for results. NEGATIVE!

In case you didn't know: In Myanmar most men, like this fisherman, wear long "skirts" called Pa Soe (thanks to @kachinhenry for correcting me)
1/640 Sek. f/5,6 150 mm

I can not tell you how relieved we were! Having malaria is already bad but having it in a country with ether bad or unbelievable expensive healthcare is terrifying. After the good news my sister was soon feeling well again and we finally started to explore this exciting country we landed in. We made a bike tour through Mandalay to get a feeling of the city. Mandalay doesn't feel like a proper city since there are hardly any modern or large buildings or big stores. It feels more like a village spread out over several hundreds of streets. Everywhere are markets and streetfood places.

Biking through the burning sun, no wonder my sister waited in the only shadow
1/250 Sek. f/10 14 mm

This is what the back alleys of Mandalay look like. I never felt safer in a foreign country!
1/250 Sek. f/7,1 14 mm

After the sweaty biketour we decided to check out the famous U-Bein bridge at sunset. Since we both were on a budget we traveled like locals on top of the roof of a crowded mini truck. They are what we would call public transport. You just hop on if you find room anywhere, sitting in the back, in the front or on the roof or even standing on the rear bumper it doesn't matter. We opted for the roof to get some fresh air.

This is what most trucks look like in Myanmar: bare engines and choking exhausts
1/400 Sek. f/5,6 47 mm

Looking down from the roof of a truck on our way to the U-Bein bridge
1/40 Sek. f/5,6 14 mm

It took us about one and a half hour to get there but it was well worth it! The bridge itself is 1,2km (0.75miles) long and spans the Taungthaman lake. It is pedestrians and bicycles only so you can take a relaxing stroll across it.
After talking to some of the many monks who stand there to chat with tourists and improve their english, I had to shoot some pictures. In the end I had over a hundred of them only of this one bridge I will spare you looking through all of them but a few of them turned out quite good.

My sister trying a few ballet poses on the U-Bein bridge. (She never was a ballet dancer)
1/640 Sek. f/6,3 39 mm

This dead tree was too cliché to not photograph it
1/640 Sek. f/6,3 54 mm

The sunset created some amazing backlight!
1/3200 Sek. f/5 20 mm

The next day we were lazy and only checked out a few pagodas and temples. In the evening we went up the Mandalay hill to see the sunset one more time but it was too cloudy, so I ended up shooting the beautiful temple on top of the hill.

Since you are not allowed to wear shoes inside any buddhist temple, the floors are always clean
4/5 Sek. f/4 14 mm

We went to sleep early because we had to catch a train at 4am the next day.
More about our travel through Myanmar and the best trainride I have ever had in my life in my next post, so stay tuned ;)

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All shots in this post were made with my Olympus OMD EM-10 Mark II with a 14-150mm lense in manual mode.

If you want to learn more about my travel through southeast Asia you can read the previous post here:
Traveling to southeast Asia: Bangkok

I am planning to post one travelpost every Thursday and some smaller posts on a non-regular basis in between.

If you want to know more about me check this out:
My introduction to Steemit

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Steemit Worldmap Data:
!steemitworldmap 21.949580 lat 96.090928 long Traveling to Southeast Asia: Myanmar, Mandalay, Malaria? D3SCR

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