Bagan, Myanmar - January 24

street outside of the market

Mid 20s with little humidity

After what my new best friend (my Fitbit) tells me is 3 hours and 44 minutes of sleep (this is a good nap in my opinion) Chris and I are up and off the boat. Today we are on our way via a 1.5 hour flight to Bagan, Myanmar in central Myanmar. As soon as we step off the tiny prop airplane the air is cooler. I actually put a scarf on.

lots of feet cleaning is involved

Bagan’s claim to fame is its ‘four million pagodas’. There aren’t in fact 4 million, but closer to 2,000 pagodas/temples that were built during the Bagan Dynasty in the 11^th century.

market bananas

The first stop once we arrive in Bagan is a market where there are more fruits and vegetables that I am not familiar with than I AM familiar with. Here is where we see the bits of cut branches that are used to make the thanaka paste for their faces. At first I couldn’t figure what the small logs were and thought they could be giant sugar cane. Most of where there is here is in VAST quantities. The aisles are narrow and dark and the shop keepers are a lot of the time camouflaged amongst their produce because of this, the floor is dirt. There isn’t much smell until we pass by the dried fish stalls. The shop keepers don’t pay much attention to us until we pass the few trinket shops, I think they’re pretty sure we’re not going to buy any dried fish.

Bagan street

Waiting for our bus to take us to the next stop there are a few people who approach us to sell trinkets, but are very tame, not aggressive at all. A big thing to sell tourists here seem to be big, flowy pants (I want to call them Hammer-pants.) I think I might need a pair of these. They can be had for about 5.00.

Next is our first pagoda of many today – the Shwezigone Pagoda from the 12th century. As it is still the full-moon festival there are many people here. The large gold pagoda contains 4 shrines at the north, south east and west points, which we learn late in the day can be typical of pagodas. Each of these 4 points has a 13ft high bronze standing Buddha. Here we meet our first Myanmar people who have as according to our guide ‘never seen tourists’. I think what he really meant was white people. They wanted to pose for as many photos as we would take of them. It always feels weird taking pictures of strangers, but I suppose when they are posing they are giving permission.

Most of Bagan’s 4 million pagodas are what seem to be ‘out in the middle of a field’. We all board pony carts to ride past and take photos of these. This is a very cool experience, except for the dust and bumpiness.

After lunch we check in to our hotel and have a couple of hours to rest before the more pagoda visits.

Before we visit another pagoda it’s time for some shopping which has been in short supply since the beginning of the cruise. We visit a lacquer-ware which Myanmar is famous for – we don’t buy anything.

The last stop of the day is the Sunset Pagoda where we arrive…just before sunset. We decide not to climb to the very top, but to the second level. All of the pagodas are quite beautiful in the sunset light.

Dinner is at our hotel after a couple of happy hour beers…in the end we have 3 beers each (including one from our mini- bar and the total is 14.00 – finally cheap beer!

Sunset Pagoda

Chris' new friend