Minglaba (hey) Mandalay

We’re flying to Mandalay at 5:25 PM. There are so many people heading home after the festival that the buses are packed, and taxi prices have skyrocketed—it's almost as cheap to fly. A plane ticket costs $39, while a taxi is 32,000 kyat per person. This morning, we took a stroll around the local market, which was bursting with beautiful fruits, vegetables, nuts, flowers, cigars, and clothes. The locals are big smokers and have a hefty consumption of the local green cigars, which they keep hanging from the corner of their mouths—even the women. The cigars were incredibly cheap here, much cheaper than at the factory. Fifty cigars cost only 500 kyat! Our lovely hostess gave us hugs and kisses when the taxi came to pick us up. She’s so sweet—waving goodbye as we drove off towards the airport in Heho, which is an hour's drive from Inle Lake. We flew with Air Yangon, whose motto is "You are safe with us." This is a direct jab at the only state-owned airline, Air Myanmar, which has the worst safety records in the country. People barely had time to sit down before the plane started taxiing towards the runway—we took off right on time. Thirty minutes later, we landed in Mandalay. A bus ride would have taken about 10 hours. Mandalay Airport is the most modern in the country—actually on par with what we have back home. And we’ve arrived in warm temperatures again. Thankfully, there are still no malaria mosquitoes—nor dengue fever. We’re not taking malaria pills, but we do use mosquito spray since there are plenty of bugs around. Despite the risk of malaria and dengue, it’s just annoying to get itchy mosquito bites. At first glance, it seems like Mandalay is quite a modern city—much more developed than Yangon, which was the capital just a few years ago.