There may not be many bridges over the river, but those that do exist are generally mighty long. This one had 30 spans, plus kilometre long approaches on both sides raised on stilts.
Good cruising weather!
First stop – Yandabo, the pot-making village where we had a demonstration of potting. However, the game of football in the background being played with the ball Glenda had just given the boys of the village was attracting more attention!
The pots are hand-turned,
… decorated
… and beaten into the traditional round bottomed shape. Then 2000 of them are stacked in a big pile, covered with pieces of wood and straw and then sand. The whole thing is then lit via the straw round the base.
Then everyone retires for a rest, a drink, a game of whist and a cheroot. The whole village is involved in this game. When one family is ready to fire a batch of pots, all the neighbours come to help with the creation of the “kiln” – and presumably it’s dismantlement in a couple of days time.
Hopefully they get most of the pots out whole, but, given the piles of broken earthenware stacked into walls, they must lose a fair percentage!
We dished out more books and pencils on behalf of Jahn and Paul. Some of the children were pretty good with counting and writing in English.
That evening the crew decided that cocktails would be taken on deck to watch the sun set. All very civilised!
Later we all had to write a private wish on a piece of paper. These were folded up and (unbeknownst to us) put into little wax and paper floats. These were lit and set afloat just upstream of the ship. The current gently wafted them past us. Very hard to photograph but was lovely thing to watch. And a real surprise!
The only problem was that, in the morning we could see a number of burnt-out and sunk boats downstream of us! OK captain. Get the gangplank in and let’s get moving before there’s a riot!
This is sooo frustrating! It takes ages to connect and Everything has to be done several times. I’m getting so far behind. Tomorrow (in real time) we leave Myanmar after three wonderful weeks! Where HAS the time gone. Anyway post numbers 9 and 10 are now fully updated. So I’m stopping while I’m ahead of the Wi-Fi!
More to follow. Please let me know if you are seeing these messages. Always good to know who’s suffering! There are a number of folk who normally comment – but haven’t …
You’ve still got Inwa, Sagaing, Mingun and Mandalay to go, so pretty hectic from now on. We found the WiFi in Mandalay had the least access, so better to wait until Singapore to catch up. And of course lots of photos at sunset at U-bein bridge , just like your header photo. Enjoy the last few days, and look forward to catching up in Oz in a few weeks.
Am enjoying your travel blog. Appeals to the geographer in me to hear about far flung places. Such an adventure for you both.
Yes, I check in from time to time.
Glad you are enjoying it all.