Rygsækrejsen 2015-2016: Mandalay Palace visit and a very slow day

We both woke up this morning feeling sick - like some kind of food poisoning. No need to figure out where the source was we stayed in the room all morning, skipped breakfast and well, enjoyed the comfort of our own private bathroom.

So much for any plans, we just needed a bit of time to come back to normal. It also meant the we gave up on any plans to go for train tickets for the 4 AM departure tomorrow. Instead we forced ourselves on a very slow walk around 2 PM towards the Mandalay Palace which the nice people at the hotel told us would close around 4 PM. We didn't have energy to hurry, so we walked slowly towards the giant moat that circles the entire complex and headed down towards the main- and only entrance.

It almost took an hour to get there, the walk being way longer than we anticipated. To our joy the lady at the ticket office said that they didn't close until 5 PM or later, so we had plenty of time to walk around inside the palace area. And we didn't have to show our passports.

Most of the walled area is off limits to foreigners but the palace is great. We spent almost a full hour walking around the various buildings, the lazy afternoon sun breaking through the clouds and us trying to muster whatever energy was left in our bodies. Mikkel managed to climb the watch tower - all 121 steps and get some good photos of Mandalay from there.

Then we decided to take a taxi back to the hotel, go for a late siesta nap, and for dinner go to the big supermarket in Diamond Plaza mall to see what they had to offer. Much to our surprise it was amazingly we stocked with everything including yoghurt - from Germany. Must have for dinner, along with a few other snacks and some apples. Let's see if the stomach can come back to normal. Also on the list - try out the ATM's in the mall. The hotel ATM we tried in the afternoon was no success, but we had a few others in the mall that might give us money. Malene was to first to try and once she'd managed to go through all the prompts and entered the amount the ATM started to count down from 60 to 0 - and then nothing. Then it just continued to count up and after 8 more seconds decided to spew out money. Mikkel tried the same and somehow the transaction was only 5 seconds in total this time - still with money coming out.

Loaded with 600.000 Kyat in brand new 10.000 Kyat notes (yes, we fell quite rich here) we headed home with our expensive made-in-Germany yoghurt. So much for sustainability tonight. 8:30 AM shared taxi booked for tomorrow. To go to Hsipaw.