Two Nights at the Sedona Mandalay Hotel in Myanmar
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If you can't live like a King in Mandalay, what about living like the King's next-door neighbor?
The Sedona Mandalay stands across from the southeastern corner of Mandalay's Royal Palace walls. As a guest, you'll feel as if you can just pop over to the palace to borrow a cup of sugar (or whatever it is neighbors do in Myanmar).
Proximity provides real, non-imaginary perks: an unmatched view of the palace moat and the hill beyond, a central location in the middle of Myanmar's downtown area, and plenty of space to move around in, four hectares' worth of real estate providing plenty of wiggle room.
(For the Sedona experience in pictures, check out this image gallery.)
Luckily, space isn't the only thing that the Sedona borrows from next door.
The Sedona Mandalay's Club Suite
The Mandalay bus station is located some distance from the city center, but not too far for Sedona Mandalay's chauffeur service to come to one's rescue. I'd arrived about one hour ahead of schedule, in the dead of night - an apologetic call to Sedona's front desk and thirty minutes later, the Sedona's Mitsubishi 4x4 arrived at the station to pick me up pronto.
(I learned two things here: one, never count on the information on the Myanmar bus ticket, and two, a working prepaid Myanmar SIM is a godsend.)
The Club Suite more than made up for the scheduling snafu. The two-room suite takes up 64 square meters on the fourth-storey Club floor, with windows overlooking the palace moat and walls. Mandalay Sedona guests have a choice of palace and mountain views; the Ambassador Suite and the Royal Sedona Suite also boast of views from the bathtubs and an actual verandah to take the view in from.
A Place to Do Business
The living room and bedroom are separated by a sliding door; both rooms had 32-inch LED TVs with satellite TV access. The room décor bears just a suggestion of the local color, with earth tones and natural fabrics creating an impression of understated luxury.
WiFi was strong in the room, but the bathroom en suite was the room's best amenity bar none. It seemed like that to me, at least, showering off the grime of an overnight journey from Nyaungshwe and soaking in some hot bubbly water courtesy of the bathtub.
Like the rest of the Club Suite, the bathroom was also divided in two, with the bath facilities separated from the toilet by a lockable door. This is by design, as the setup allows executives doing business at the Club Suite to entertain guests at the living room (or permit guests to use the toilets) without allowing access into the suite's more intimate areas.
Dining Well at the Sedona Mandalay
The Sedona Mandalay caters mainly to executives doing business in Myanmar's newly liberal regime. Thus the hotel's F&B and amenities tend to be more middle-of-the-road, in deference to their appetites - luxurious but nothing too experimental.
Breakfast is served at the 80-seater Mandalay Café, where the breakfast buffet dispenses a combination of Asian and Western favorites. The hot dimsum table was an interesting plus. Myanmar breakfast favorites like mohinga are also available, as are other Myanmar dishes on an a la carte basis.
Dinner was even better: the understated 20-seater Shwe Li restaurant feels like a throwback to British colonial Myanmar with its rattan chairs; dignified oil paintings on the walls; and a menu of hearty dinners best paired with wine, as with the lusciously tender beef with baby potatoes I enjoyed there.
How close is the Sedona Mandalay to the city's other attractions? Find out in the next page.
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