Mandalay

by Hla Min

Updated : Dec 2025

Old Capital မြို့တော်ဟောင်း

• Mandalay မန္တလေး is the old Capital of Burma. It was known as Yadanar Bon Nay Pyi Daw (ရတနာပုံ နေပြည်တော်).
• Fifth Buddhist Council ပဥ္စမသံဂါယနာ was held in Mandalay.
• U Khanti Kyauk Sar ဦးခန္တီ ကျောက်စာ was regarded as the World’s Largest Book in the Ripley’s “Believe It or Not”
• Upper Burma မြန်မာပြည် အထက်ပိုင်း including Mandalay was annexed by the British in 1885.

Schools ကျောင်းများ

• St. Peter’s High School : In the Matriculation exam of 1956, Peterites scored First (ရဲမြင့်), Second (သောင်းတင်) and Joint Third (ခင်မောင်သန်း).
• U Razak အာဇာနည် ဦးရာဇာတ် was Principal ကျောင်းအုပ် of National School အမျိုးသားကျောင်း in Mandalay.
• Other notable schools include Father Lafone school and Kelly school (attended by Sayadaw U Silananda ဆရာတော်ဦးသီလာနန္ဒ)

• Mandalay College ကောလိပ် was established under Rangoon University. It later became Mandalay University တက္ကသိုလ်

Visits

The first visit was see a friend who was teaching at the Agricultural Department in MASU before the department moved to Yezin.

The second visit was to give a short course at the Geology Department at the request of Saya Dr. Maung Thein (ဒေါက်တာမောင်သိန်း) mentor of Ko Soe Myint စိုးမြင့် (UCC Systems) during the summer holidays. Some sayas were disturbed. We overheard, “Why is Sayagyi inviting the two UCC guys here?”

During our UCC days, I accompanied Sayagyi Dr. Chit Swe ဒေါက်တာချစ်ဆွေ and Ko Myint Oo ကိုမြင့်ဦး (who later worked at Phaung Gyi) to Sagaing Hills စစ်ကိုင်းတောင်ရိုး to be temporary monks ရဟန်း for a week. After we de-robed, Ko Myint Oo and I went to Mandalay, where we met two friends of Ko Myint Oo. They had recently joined “Tourist Burma” and were assigned that day to guide a university student from US doing his project on some aspects of Burma. The student had prepared a list of items that he would like to see in Mandalay. I became an ad-hoc tourist guide for a day.

In 2016, we stayed at a hotel in the area (which used to be Chan Mya Thazi airport ချမ်းမြသာစည်လေဆိပ်). Things have changed a lot.

In November 2019, I was invited to be a Panelist at the 5th Irrawaddy Literary Festival ဧရာဝတီ စာပေ ပွဲတော် held in Mandalay.

In January 2020, I was invited to join the 2020 PSA Tour (of six cities in Upper Burma).

Book စာအုပ်

• Saya U Tin Maung Nyunt ဆရာဦးတက်မေုင်ညွန့် (M60) gave me a book by Ludu Daw Ah Mar (လူထုဒေါ်အမာ). She wrote about Mandalay Thu and Mandalay Thar Myar (မန္တလေးသူ နဲ့ မန္တလေးသား များ). She wrote about notable residents of Mandalay.
• Kyar Ba Nyein (ကျားဘငြိမ်း where Kyar not only means “tiger” but also “checkers”) was National Boxing Champion and competed in the Olympics. He trained boxers. He also promoted Myanmar Let Hwei (မြန်မာ လက်ဝှေ့).
• Naga Daw Oo နဂါးဒေါ်ဦး is the elder sister of Ludu Daw Ah amar
• There were philanthropists (e.g Daw Oo Zunဒေါ်ဦးဇဇွန်း) from Mandalay.
• Myanmar Pithuka Saya Saing မြန်မာ ပိသုကာ ဆရာဆိုင် is the father of Sayadaw U Silananda (GBNF) and grandfather of architects U Than Tun (GBNF) & U San Maung.

Mandalay Hall မန္တလေးဆောင်

• During the early days of UCC (ကွန်ပျူတာဌာန), we were housed on the Third Floor of Mandalay Hall in RASU.
• Some (from outside Rangoon) spent nights at the Mandalay Hall.
• A few supposedly heard “footsteps of the dead”.

Mandalay Gazette မန္တလေးဂေဇက်

• Myanmar publication in Southern California, USA
• U Maung Maung Kyi ဦးမောင်မောင်ကြည် has three passions
  Swimming
  Medicine
  Journalism
• I was interviewed by Myanmar Gazette.

Mandalay (known by outsiders)

• “On the road to Mandalay” by Rudyard Kipling
• Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA