Images: Faces and Places Myanmar pic set 7 (click on image to enlarge)

After our arrival in Mandalay, our first task was to find a hotel room.
We had our driver take us to the Nylon Hotel,where we had stayed two years ago.
No luck the hotel was fully booked. This rush of tourists to the country has changed everything and the hotels are enjoying a unbelievable boom.
The Garden hotel next door had a room available it was on the second floor (no Lift) The price was $30 a night (the same room two years ago would have been $12)
We checked the room out and it had large windows facing into a very noisy street, but, with rooms being hard to get we took it. Our driver also took a room at the same hotel at a vastly different rate. The hotel had free Wifi, but, it was only available in the foyer . It was amazing to see all these foreigners sit around with every type of device on the net.
We were going to be in Mandalay for a few days so Teresa requested a room at a lower level as those stairs were a real killer. The next day they changed us to a room that was behind the dinning room and up a small set of stairs at the rear of the hotel, here traffic noise had gone and we could now pick up Wifi in our room.
Breakfast was included, and the first morning they sat us with a woman who chatted with us and we learned that she had been coming to Myanmar for years and had also written a book called Myanmar. She had adopted a family there and had regular visits to the country
There are plenty of interest points around Mandalay and things to see.
On our last visit we stayed five days and took in all these sights with a guide we hired named Meow (like a cat) I would have loved to have caught up with him again, but, in a city of about 1.2 million that did not happen.
We were in Mandalay to catch the slow boat down the river, but it only sailed twice a week Sundays and Wednesdays. So with only two full days in Mandalay this time we thought we would just look around the River and visit the U Bien Bridge again that is situated about 20 Klm south of the city. As every tourist knows you visit this 1.2 klm teak wooden bridge (the only bridge of its type in the world) at sunset. On our last visit we visited it twice once during the day and once at sunset, that time it poored with rain.
On our first trip there was only a hand full of tourists at the bridge, but, this time there were hundreds of taxis and about 30 big tour buses, as I said times have changed.