Pagodas, Temples, and Buddha’s...and More Pagodas, Temples, and Buddha’s

PHOTO ALBUM - Bagan

From Yangon, we took an overnight bus to Bagan.  It was a much nicer bus than I expected – air-conditioned, with reclining seats, and even a movie. Although it was entirely in Burmese, it was actually quite easy to follow...I enjoyed the snippets of American TV theme songs that kept popping up - including, of all TV theme songs, South Park. According to the guidebook, this was supposed to be a 12-14 hour ride, meaning we’d leave at 6 pm and arrive at the respectable time of around 7 AM the next morning, give or take an hour. Instead, we arrived in Bagan at 3:30 am. Turns out a brand new toll-road leaving Yangon was built which obviously allows for much higher speed travel, and the bus operators have not adjusted the schedules.  Although 3:30 am was not an overly convenient time to arrive, we found a guesthouse willing to let us into a room around 5 am without paying for the previous night, so as always...it all works out in the end.

The reason to go to Bagan is to see the amazing number of temples and pagodas that were built in a relatively small area. The guidebook says that there are over 4000 temples/pagodas, and we only saw a fraction of them while we were there.  According to one of our 'guides' (ie, sand painting salesman), back in the day (11th, 12th century timeframe) the ruling dynasty would just built pagodas and temples upon pagodas and temples, probably to show their wealth, and then the following dynasty would build more to show them up, and the following dynasty even more. The result today is a breathtaking number of pagodas and temples spread out over arid farmland, with mountains and a river in the backdrop. We explored by bike, by horse cart, and by foot...some of the pagodas you can only walk around the lower level and see the ancient paintings on the walls and the Buddha statues (SO many Buddhas...each temple seems to have at least a few, and some seem to have hundreds). My favorites were the pagodas you could climb up the narrow, steep stairs to the top (the human species clearly used to be smaller in size than today), and then relax in the shade of the top of the pagoda and enjoy the view for awhile.

As with most tourist draws, the people who live in the area make their living as part of the tourism industry. It seems as though everyone in Bagan is a horse cart driver, a lacquerware artist, or a sand painter, and they all hang out in front of all the more popular pagodas to give a tour of the pagoda and then invite you to look at their wares. They are actually quite effective sales people...Brian and I are generally not souvenir shoppers, but we spent way more than we intended our first day in Bagan (even though they always ‘make us a very good price’). Our favorite guide/sandpainter was a university student we met while we had our map out on the side of the road (making us the perfect target). He is an English major at a school in Mandalay who sells sand paintings when he is home from school (this may or may not be true, but we liked him a lot so we gave him the benefit of the doubt).  He got us away from the more popular temples to a few more remote pagodas and monasteries...we had a pagoda entirely to ourselves at sunset, which was pretty awesome. Naturally, we added a couple more sand paintings to our collection (we apologize to our families if you don’t need any more artwork on your walls come Christmas...).

After Bagan, it was on to Kalaw, where we planned to arrange a 3 day trek to Inle Lake. Kalaw is around a 10 hour bus ride away from Bagan (to travel approximately 120 miles, to give you an idea the state of the roads we were on). Unlike our bus from Yangon to Bagan, this bus was more like a school bus in which they probably crammed 45 people in a space made for 30. If you didn’t reserve your ticket early enough, you got to sit on a plastic stool in the aisle; it was actually quite comical to look around the bus and see how they managed to fit everyone in it. Luckily we got two seats, but given that my knees were resting against the seat in front of me, I don’t know how anyone taller than me was fitting into the tiny rows (well, I do...Brian had me pretty smushed against the side of the bus, but it was really the only way his legs fit). If there is one thing I’m learning on this trip, it’s that sometimes you just have to say, “it is what it is” and just enjoy the adventure for the sake of it being an adventure.

Current events:

I'm going to shamelessly use this blog to announce the arrival of our brand new nephew, Jack Ganger, born on February 28th. 9 lbs, 1 oz, 20 1/4", and a full a head of hair. Congrats to my brother and his wife!