Using the Nylong hotel in Mandalay as his base for his travels, the author presents a series of vignettes of the extraordinary people and characters who retain their energy and enthusiasm for life, even while living under a military dictatorship.

Cycling Myanmar, Mandalay, and the Nylon Hotel over three decades, Daniel Ehrlich opens a series of windows onto people and places held captive in time. Through beautifully crafted vignettes of coming and going, meeting and waiting, we are invited to get to know a prince among sidecar drivers, and anglophile living on the banks on the Irrawaddy, a long-haired freedom fighting musician, an octogenarian English teacher who might have been a princess, and the inventor who built a helicopter out of teak. Each story, in its own way, reflects the tragedy of a country trapped under military rule. But each contains human possibilities, fragile hope for the future, and the connections to deeper traditions in which darkness is a necessary counterpart to the light.

“Ehrlich writes with warmth, insight, and a good deal of humour. This book should be required reading for all who are friends of Burma and who wish a better and free future for the Burmese people”. Richard Axelby, SOAS, University of London