The Mandalay Sedona Hotel provided us with quite nice accommodations. They even served us High Tea every afternoon in the Club Lounge with tea, coffee, and some delicious snacks. The High Tea is no doubt a holdover from the British days in Mandalay.

1. I took the first photo from our hotel room. We looked directly at Mandalay Hill, the Royal Palace, and the Royal Palace Moat. I loved that view.

2. Lots of interesting things happened at the hotel. In this photo, this couple was getting married. They are on the entrance walkway to the hotel and you can see lots of koi in the pond behind them.

3. Mandalay was our half-way point in Burma and several of us asked our guide about laundry service. He made special arrangements for us at the Sedona Hotel. The special arrangement was not having the hotel do our laundry as he told us it would be too expensive. He had a nearby local family come to the hotel, pick up our laundry, launder it and return it the next day. You can see our laundry crew in the photo. Much to our surprise, and right in the middle of the hotel lobby, the first thing they did was to dump all of our laundry out of the bag and onto the hotel floor. They then separated our laundry by shirts, pants, bras, panties, etc. Then they totaled each item and calculated our billing for us. Once I got over the surprise of seeing our laundry spread out on the floor of the hotel lobby – and with other guests all around it, I recovered enough to give them some very specific instructions: I told them that I only wanted my clothes beaten against the very smooth rocks, no granite or rough stones. Our laundry came back the next day, in fabulous shape, and we were only charged US $3.

4. The grounds around the hotel were quite nice. In the back gardens, they had quite a few interesting seating arrangements, very much on the artistic side. You can see Vicky sitting in one in the fourth photo.

5. We also went swimming two afternoons at this hotel. The heat and humidity were enough to drive us into the pool, but we managed to drag ourselves away each day in time for High Tea.