The overnight bus ride from Bagan to Mandalay was kind of pleasent, except the usual inconveniences like a much much too cold air-con, just one break in 8 hours and the arrival time at 5 o’clock in the morning. But otherwise the bus was half empty and we had a lot of space. Actually, it was the first time at all that I had an overnight bus ride in Asia where a seat was free at all.
Thanks to Rudyard Kipling and his “The Road To Mandalay” this city has the image to be Asias most traditional, timeless and alluring place. It’s not. It’s just a horrible city, probably the city I liked least in the world so far. It has some attractions but other cities in Myanmar have them too and in general it’s just a booming economical city that provitates from it’s strategical good position. All trade Myanmar does with China is going through the city and it feels just like a huge dirty marketplace. I usually like 
dirty cities (Yangon is a dirty city, as well) but really not this kind of dirty. The whole city somehow looks the same everywhere, nothing special to see and just a few special things to do. Of course there are big temples to visit but there are big temples to visit everywhere in Myanmar. In my opinion, the only really good thing here are the famous “Moustache Brothers”, a comedy troop that is openly dissident to the government. Two of the three brothers were arrested and sentenced to years of hard labour not just once but they don’t think about to stop their program. They are very popular in Myanmar and the government maybe fears protests if they would stop the show so they let them criticise on a low level. Today the shows are just open to tourists, not to locals and in english, not burmese.
But beside all that, Mandalay functions as a hub to a few other old royal cities like Sagaing, Amarapura, Inwa and Shwebo. In the three days I’ve been in Mandalay I’ve just been to Amarapura, nowadays just a small city at the shores of the Thaungthaman Lake. The biggest attraction here is with no doubt the “U Bein Bridge”, the longest 
teakwood bridge in the world. It connects the Thaungthaman village with Amarapura and still is very frequent used by locals. BTW: Officially, if you visit the U Bein Bridge you have to buy the 10US$ combo ticket (the money goes directly to the government), but nobody checks. The combo ticket is necessary for a few sights in and around Mandalay but beside the Royal Palace, nobody cares about it. Travellers who try to act a little bit responsible in Myanmar will skip the Mandalay Palace anyway. It’s not the original Mandalay Palace which was destroyed in the World War II. The Palace today was build as a tourist attraction in the late 90s by the government and they used forced labour to build it.
Just skip this city, or stay there only for a day to see how terrible it is or use it as an accomodation point for the cities around. Leave early in the morning and come back in the evening. I know that I was not in the best mood in the days when I visited Mandalay and maybe reached my first real “down point” on my travels but I didn’t meet one single fellow traveller who liked Mandalay, either.