Bagan, Myanmar – December 14th – 18th, 2016

We arrived in Nyaung-U, the town outside of Bagan, before dawn. We walked the 15 minutes to our hotel and were warmly welcomed by the family that owns/lives at the hotel. Our room was not available, so they set us up with blankets and pillows so we could get a couple of hours sleep on the couch in the entryway. They even tucked us in, which was strange, but can’t say I didn’t like it. The room we were supposed to take was occupied by a traveler that was stomach sick (been there) so they eventually let us take over a different room to shower and do sink laundry (Andy’s least favorite traveling chore). Now around noon, we settled into our real room and ventured out for an afternoon of pizza, happy-hour drinks, and board games. We may or may not have played two rounds of Monopoly…

The next day was temple mania round… I don’t know anymore, we’ve seen so many temples. We hired a guide for the first day because we wanted someone to give us the lay of the land and explain what we were looking at before we ventured out on our own. Good idea in principle, but you must have a guide that’s useful for the plan to pan out. Our guide was not only the largest Myanmar person we had seen so far, but the laziest as well (coincidence? I think not). He truly did the bare minimum. On several occasions, he had us follow him on our electric scooters to the temple, where he told us to go in and come back when we were done, giving us absolutely no information. For the most part, to get him to be a guide, you had to pepper him with questions. Unfortunately, you also had to know what questions to ask in order to hear about the interesting features of the temples and/or artwork within. For example, I asked the question, “What’s that style of temple over there?” to which he responded matter-of-fact, “That’s the oldest temple in Bagan.” Seriously?!  We only learned that it was from the 9^th century from a local woman who happened to be telling a different group. Luckily, our penny-pinching ways over the past three months had enabled us to perfect the skill of casually following another group to listen to their guide. We had a lot of guide envy. About two hours before sunset (yes, two hours early), our guide dropped us off at large pagoda you can climb up to see the view and watch the sun go down. The wait was definitely worth it, even though we were there with about 1,000 of our closest friends. Just to annoy our “guide,” we stayed past dark, after most others had cleared out (petty, but satisfying).

Although a guide fail for sure, Bagan is absolutely stunning! The ruins of over 2200 temples and pagodas are sprinkled over a large area creating one of the most beautiful man-made backdrops in the world. The temples were mostly built between the 11^th and 13^th century and many have been at least partially restored. Earthquakes and about 1000 years of erosion have caused some to collapse, but there are still a handful of large pagodas that you can climb on to get a view of the surrounding area. The inside of the pagodas/temples are predictable: a large Buddha image (statue) at the east entrance, surrounded by a variety of smaller Buddha images. The original ornate artwork, when still intact, is painted on plaster covering the brick walls. The main downside to entering the temples is the necessity to take your shoes off. This is inconvenient at best, given that many temples are also the home to bats and guano often covers the floor. Ahhh the aroma of guano accompanied by the feel of its squish between your toes…

Day 1 in Bagan. 

Day two at Bagan went much better than day one. Although, thanks to a fun night out with two very entertaining Englishmen the night before, we did not make it up for sunrise as we had planned. Instead, after breakfast, we rented bicycles from our hotel and explored on our own. We stumbled upon many equally impressive and less touristy temples. Most of the day we were so isolated from other people that we wondered if Bagan was closed on Fridays and we had missed the memo. At sunset, we climbed a temple and enjoyed the company of just one other traveler.

Day 2 in Bagan. 

On our last full day at Bagan we decided to rent electric scooters again rather than bicycles. Although the bikes were great exercise, Bagan is very spread out and connected by dirt roads which are more like sand roads in places. We made it up for sunrise, which was well worth the effort it took to venture into the cold morning air at 5 am. As the sun peeped over the horizon, about 15 hot air balloons meandered through the sky, created an absolutely spectacular scene! As always, the pictures do not come close to doing it justice. During the day, we attempted to take it easy. As usual, this backfired. What was meant to be a relaxing day, quickly turned into a frustrating one thanks to terrible service at a restaurant, electronic scooter problems galore, and overall trouble finding anything we set out to find. After returning our first scooter due to faulty brakes (faulty in this case means nonexistent), we received one that, unbeknownst to us, had a faulty battery. Why they gave away the scooter we had taken at sunrise is beyond us! The battery stopped giving juice at the best (sarcasm) possible time: well after sunset, about 6 km from the hotel, on a dirt road with no traffic, and with a dead cell phone. The scooter was not strong enough to haul us both, but was able to go about 3 mph with only Andy on the bike. So, I walked for about 45 minutes until a very nice local offered to take me to my hotel on the back of his motorbike (how we managed to communicate without using a common language is a mystery to me, but we pulled it off). When I arrived, the staff was relieved. Apparently, they knew the bike was going to die and were waiting for us to call to have them to come rescue us. Communicate much?! Also, quick side rant about the hotel: In the mornings, breakfast was served between 7 and 9 am. All good, except, apparently, you come to breakfast when they want you to, because they would knock on your door and insist that you go to breakfast now. Sleeping or not, “You come to breakfast now!” If you didn’t go (because it was 6:55 am and I can decide for myself when I want to eat breakfast thank you very much), you got another knock 5 minutes later again insisting you go. So aggravating!

Day 3 sunrise and sunset in Bagan.

All in all, Bagan was amazing, although we were thoroughly templed out by the time we departed for Mandalay. To be completely honest, we were also pretty traveled out. Moving around every four days or so is exhausting and it had been about six months since we had been in one place for longer than a week. Between epically bad bus rides, planning where to go, what to do, and how to get there in an undeveloped country is a full-time job (a job that costs you money). Enough bitching though, we were, after all, just in Bagan and are in the midst of a one year trip around the world (still seems surreal)!