We got to Mandalay at 6:30am, and found a cheap guesthouse called AD-1. Which at first we thought someone was telling us to go to 81, and ever since we've stayed there people always think we're asking for 81 lol.

We all showered, then went for a walk. Right near our guesthouse is this massive market!!! It's huge and sells loads of fruit, veg and other foods mainly, in particular it sells loads of onions and dried fish, which stink!! Yann bought some pineapple, so we sat down to cut it up and eat it and we ended up with about 6or7 locals watching us, really surreal.
Then we decided to head to Mahamuni Paya which is this massive buddha covered in so much gold leaf that it is 6" thick, it took us forever to walk there and it was so so hot that we stopped at a bar for a cold beer lol. After we'd drank it, a man in there asked us where we were going and when we said, he took it upon himself to walk us there lol.
The Buddha was pretty impressive, but because I was female I wasn't allowed to go right up to the Buddha, so I sat in this other area and it was so funny because the local people were there to worship the Buddha but they were more interested in staring at me lol.
The guys were allowed right up to the Buddha and for 500kyat you could buy gold leaf to put on him but they didn't: I so would have done!!!
After this, the guy took us round a little more and then told us to follow him to the cool tent... Hmm!! When we got there, there was about 5 or 6 guys playing what looked like keepy uppy with a ball with holes in. They also did tricks with the ball though, we learnt that it was actually the first day of a 90day celebration of this local game which is called chinlow. Was really fun to watch and I bought a chinlow for us all to play with at home on Mablethorpe beach :D
While we were watching, the guy who had took us there came over with a bottle of coke for each of us and offered us all cigarettes lol. In any other country I would definitely be wondering what this guy wanted in return but I know here that this is just their way of bringing us into their culture. After, we'd watched a few teams, we went to leave and he introduced us to his brother and nephew; they invited us out that night and said they'd pick us up from our hotel on their motorbikes, take us for a beer and then watch some more chinlow! I was so excited!!!! A little apprehensive but knew I'd be okay with the guys.
So, we arranged a time to be picked up and then went back to the place we got beer from earlier to buy some food as a way of saying thank you. After we'd eaten the guy gave me a wooden bracelet as a present, and then asked if I had a present for him so I gave him a pen and he was really impressed. Pen's seem to be a luxury here as the kids have to provide their own stationary at school.

Later on in the day we went up to Mandalay Hill to watch the sunset. It's basically a big hill with a temple on top that had a stupid amount of steps leading up to it!! Can't say I particularly enjoyed the walk up the hill but the view at the top really was beautiful (my pictures just don't do it justice) We met two guys from England, josh and ario, at the top and funnily enough bumped into Andrea aswell. We climbed further up the hill until we were stood on this flat rooftop where the view was even more amazing, and then a monk came out to join us and we helped him practice his english: as you do you know, everyday experience!!! We hung out there for a few hours and then decided to head back to make sure we got picked up ok by the guys from earlier. On the way down the monk showed us this sign by the rooftop that actually said in Burmese "do not enter" whoops!! Haha!!
Finding your way round Mandalay is pretty difficult and by the time we got back we'd just missed the guys who were picking us up so we got food and then decided there was no point trying to get to where the guys were. I wasn't very impressed because I was looking forward to it :( so just ate Chapati and went to bed...