Myanmar (Burma) travel today shopping pictures jade ruby plus Yangon map & Irrawadd cruise: Irrawaddy River Cruises at Mandalay

Travel in upper Myanmar.

This are real highlights when visiting Myanmar. The concentration of old monuments such as temples, pagodas, shrines, monasteries and variants of it is overwhelming and a boat or smaller ship is often the best and fastest way to reach them. Mandalay is also the center of communication from lower into upper Burma and from west to east by road. Some routs are parallel to the railway.

Cruise tours are available between Mandalay and Bagan plus in the Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy delta. Ships are operating into upper Myanmar, on the Salween or Thanlwin river and at Moulmein or Mawlamyine. Some more interesting trips can be made on the Chindwin and the Haledan river in Rhakine or Arakan.

River tours were better and more easy during British colonial times, at that time the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company served most of the waterways with a reliable schedule and good vessels. Today, about hundred years later this is mostly gone.

Today most vessels are rather old except some imported passenger units and freight ships made in China.

Irrawaddy Mandalay Cruise opposite is Sagaing

Pulling this together the result is a busy tropical region in central Myanmar with plenty of businesses on the water and people around. Leaving the ships from time to during the cruise to visit famous Myanmar pagodas and temples at Sagaing, Amarapura, Mingun and some other places of interest can be a great day trip maybe for some more days.

The cruise ship above carries tourists in the luxury range between the city and Bagan. The company operating this river vessel is "Orient Express" which also operates the train with the same name and a similar between Bangkok and Singapore. They have added another carrier now with the name Orcaella.

Here was the historic center of the country for several hundred years which left it's legacy. There are plenty of other beautiful spots around which are not visible via a Irrawaddy river cruise.