Just hearing the name Mandalay conjures up images of old British colonial Burma, and nowhere is this more vivid than in Rudyard Kipling’s poem of the same name:

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ eastward to the sea,
There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me;
For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say:
“Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!”

Kipling’s poem was written for a bygone era that has been romanticized in literature. Nowadays it’s best not to bring up past British colonialism unless you want to cause a diplomatic faux pas.

Continue reading “The Road to Mandalay”