130 km day and we were very happy to arrive in Sagaing. This was a smaller city across the river. The river is over a mile wide there. The town was more peaceful than most . The hotel we had made reservations with on the internet never answered. We found out when we got there that they were tearing it down by hand. They will rebuild it soon. Fortunately there was a hotel right down the block.
We spent the day visiting the many temples and exploring the market .We rode to see the 1200 year old teak bridge across the bay but left before sunset as all the tourist buses began to arrive to watch the monks walk back to the monastery. There are so many monks here and even a group of female monks that wear a pink robe under the monks robes. There are a lot of very young girls as young as 5 or 6 out walking with their offering bowls. They have their heads shaved and it only makes their smiles brighter. We get a lot of smiles as we pass by and say hello back. Many say the few English words they have learned from TV which include “I Love You” or “kiss me” most often we have hello and Bye Bye as we go past.
Today we rode to Mandalay and it was small towns all the way. it seems like the women do most of the work. The road crews are mostly women and even mixing cement and carrying it to the site is done by women and then the men place the bricks.
When we have passed road construction and we have seen a lot of it… rocks are broken by hand to be fed into the crusher which runs off the engine of a truck. Then they are hand sorted to size. The piles are left to the side of the road every 20 feet. There they are sorted again and placed by hand to cover the road.
These first are 4 inch rocks then tar heated by wood fires under the barrels is hand poured over the large rocks and it is filled in with 2 inch rocks and then more tar and small gravel sprinkled on top before the road roller rolls over all of it to flatten it. This is done in small stretches with 40 to 50 people working each area. The crews live in tents near the site and the kids are hanging around while the parents work.
Tonight we are in Mandalay.
