Road to Mandalay (Part 2)

The might Road of Mandalay boat is awaiting for us at the river bank.  We have to walkthrough this wodden flap which later on we know that it can be considered very luxurious in Myanmmar.

Once we were on the boat, we were greated by the Front Office Team including the Hotel (Boat?) Manager.   The Boat Manager is a Kiwi and other than him and the Head Chef, the rest of the crews are Myanmarese.

There are few types of room, ranging from Governor's Suite, State Cabin, Deluxe Cabin, Superior Cabin and Single Cabin.   I think the majority of the rooms ste State Cabin and follows by Deluxe Cabin.  You can get the comprehensive layout of the room from the official website.

Once we got our key, we went down to our room.  The receptionist is at the main level, and our room was in the basement.    This is the stair from the main floor to the basement level and the hall way to our room

 

 

Our room is a Deluxe Room.  The room, I think, is about 22 sqm.  It is very functionality nonetheless.  If you do not look outside, you do not know that actually you are in the boat.   It is equppied by a telephone and TV.  There is not much programmes on the TV anyway.  It has a fully functional bathroom also.  We have warned that the water used for toilet flushing is not treated.  Only the tab water and water for shower are filtered.  If I remember correctly, it is not recommended to use the tap water to even brush the teeth.

 

 

 

The view ourside the room.  There are quite some activities on the rivers.  Apparently, the river is used as a mode of transportation.  There are many pagodas also on the other side of the river.  Anyway this is a Land of Golden Pagodas.

 

 

 

 

 

So now, it is time to go touring the boats.   As the other guests were not arriving on the boat, we have the priviledge to look into other type of room.

 

Here is the State Cabin, Superior Cabin and Single Cabin

 

 

 

 

 

 

It has fully functional gym room to keep you fit through out the journey.  It also have spa for treatment and Clinic and Doctor on board.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to the main level which the receptionist is, on the other side, we have piano room and also a lecture room which is used for shows and presentations.   It has also traditional Burmese musical instruments.

 

 

 

 There is also a gift shop on board which you can get souvenir including the Myanmar Longji (Saroong).

 

It is time to go to the upper deck.  BTW, here is the boat name.

 

 

There is a swimming pool on the upper deck including the tanning bed. Here is the few of the upper deck.

 

The captain and his room.

 

 

And other of the crews preparing for our journey

From the upper deck also, you can see there are quite some activities by the local makinng use of the Road of Mandalay base camp for daily activities such as bathing and washing clothes.

 

 So once all the guests are on board, we were going for lunch.  After lunch we will go to our excursion tour to Mandalay town which I will cover in Part 3.

 

 

 

Road to Mandalay (Part 1)

This post should have been there sometimes ago, however, since I was quite busy I can only manage to put it now.

I had an opportunity to board this Orient Express "Road to Mandalay" trip.  It is basically a cruise along Irrawady rivers in Myanmar.   This cruise was taken place on 31-July to 3-August.  You can either take "one-way" trip either Mandalay to Bagan or Bagan to Mandalay or you can take the whole trip Mandalay-Bagan-Mandalay (this is recommended if you take full trip, as the trip will start from Mandalay and you will see also why I recommend this later) or Bagan-Mandalay-Bagan.

If you take Mandalay to Bagan trip, the package will also include the flight from Yangon to Mandalay.  As the flight in Myanmar will start from Yangan early in the morning (around 7am), the passanger needs to be in Yangon the night before.

As there is no night flight to Yangon from Singapore on Tuesday night, we opted out to fly to Mandalay by ourselves.  I flew to Bangkok on Tuesday night and on Wednesday morning, I and my friend flew to Mandalay from Bangkok.

The Mandalay service is a Thai Smiles services.  At that time it was a 4x/week service, I think it is still the same now.  

This is the plane that took us to Mandalay, HS-TXF, code name Samut Songkhran.  It was still quite brand new plane when we took it.  The flight was delivered on 13-March-2013, hence it was not even 6 months old.  As you may see, the plane still looks quite shinny :)

The A320 was park away, hence we need to take stair.  It also means a good opportunity to take pictures.

The Thai Smiles planes have a 4 rows of so-called "business class" seat.  It is actually the same seats as normal economy seat (perhaps with better legs room?).   It is seperated with a small curtain.  We were sitting on row 5, the first row of economy seat.   I think it the last row of the "business class" is not a good sits as the curtain may be quite annoying.

As you can see there are someone sat on "business class" cabin.  In fact there were 2 person.  Later on, we found out they are Thai employee most likely engineer as they were talking to the ground crew in Mandalay.

 

 

The legs room is quite ok, as I am 6" (180 cm) tall.

 

 

The flying time to Mandalay is 1h55m.  Once we are airborn, the FAs start distributing this bag and hot drinks.  The bag contain bottled water, sandwich and cake for your breakfast.

 

 

 

 

 

 The rest of the flight is just a normal affair.  And now we are landed in Mandalay International Airport.  It is very modest airport with no aero-bridge.  The building is actually not too far and we can simply walk into it.  However, we were fetch by the bus.  The bus looks to me like a pre-war era, however, it is quite clean and ok.

 

 

 

 



 Most of the flights are using propeller planes.   Some of the planes that I saw that morning.

 

 

The Asian Wings will be the flight that took us back from Bagan to Yangon. 

 

 

The airport is very basic and functional with automated bagage claims.  I think there are only few International flights serving Mandalay, TG, PG and FD from Bangkok and may be some other flight from nearby city in China (Kunming?).   I noticed there were also quite some number of  Chinese on my flight.

 

 

 

 

Air Asia provides free shuttle to town from airport.

 

 

We were then greeted by our guide which will send us to the "port".   The drive took us about 45 minutes on the modest yet good road.  

 

We arrived at Swee Kyet Yee River Station which is the base camp of the Road of Mandalay boat.  We were greated by the buttler that served us drink and the boat is waiting for us on the river.  At this pier, at least there is nice wooden path way for us to go to the boat. 

 

I think the boat is really pretty.  It looks mighty sitting on the river waiting for us.


I will continue on the next part as it will become too long if I out it on 1 post.