Bagan #2

I dived head on into the Pagoda (/temple) experience today. Up for the sunrise again (not that there was much sun to be seen) I've been on them, in them, over them, through them, up them and down them, with small ones, big ones, plain ones, elaborate ones, touristy ones and empty ones. All of them with their own unique charm and characteristics.

My favourite was a collection of 3 small temples I came across well off the main tourist trail, down by the riverside in old Bagan. The 3 entrances each guarded by 2 beautiful and imposing mythical beasts. Combined with the riverside setting and a solitary old man with two dogs, gazing out over the river, I rapidly fell in love with the place.

Exploring further I was amazed to find a busy village nearby, packed with tethered cows up and down the sandy streets. It was like discovering a lost tribe and I did feel a little self conscience wandering the streets photographing cows. As is the Burmese way however no one paid me much attention but those that did, did so with a smile.

It was a bizarre surprise given that all the residents were relocated (not voluntarily) from old to new Bagan around 20 years ago, to preserve the heritage for high end hotels and tourists.

Luckily I didn't leave the village thinking the people had secretly moved home; a local informed me as I was making my exit that the people here were not locals at all, but had been displaced by the floods (of around a month ago in western Myanmar) - hence all the cattle unusually occupying the streets.

Old Bagan has the greatest collection of big Pagodas and temples and the most variety in style and design. I was still expecting a village of sorts (despite knowing everyone had been forcibly moved out) but it is just an area of temples and hotels with a cluster of restaurants outside the town walls. Still quite spread out though and I surprisingly had to check the map a few times to find the main attractions.

The pick of the big ones was the Anonda Pagoda. A blinding white in the sun, the inside was dominated by four giant standing Buddha's and high cool passage ways.

Outside of old Bagan, I was expecting more from the Sulamani Paya given that it's apparently rated by many as the most beautiful in Bagan. The outside was nice but nothing (relatively) spectacular, but the large inside walls were painted with largely intact original murals. I'd seen better in the morning however.

I went in hunt of an 'underground' monastery in the  late afternoon and think I found it. Not quite as exciting as it sounded however. No longer used and the underground element comprising of some sunken, brick parade type areas. That is of course, if I was really where I thought I was. It did have a nice temple you could climb however so I stayed there for sunset and had a lovely hour to relax and read a little although the sunset was as spectacular as the sunrise. The experience only slightly tempered by one of the two other people there convinced his whistling was communicating with the birds.

Bagan is undoubtedly touristy (by Burmese standards) and you do get hassle from people trying to sell you things. They're often so damn friendly about it however that I've found myself repeatedly buying things. Something I don't really do that often. Even if you don't buy, the people are still friendly and like to give you a mini tour of whatever temple or Pagoda you're visiting at the time. It's the low season and the 'lucky' tourist money they're all looking for is hard to come by. The Burmese charm has absolutely won me over today, though I expect it's quite a different experience in the peak season.

Bagan #1

So here I am, sat high up on a Buddhist temple, watching the stars come out, with a golden Pagoda lit up in front of me and a scattering of other spiritual beacons shining across the plane.

I'm in Bagan: a magical expanse of Buddhist appreciation, with more than two thousand temples, pagodas and shrines littered across the flat, lush green plane. Buddhas are everywhere, big and small, golden and plain, some surrounded by beautiful faded murals, others sharing their home with bats and pigeons. The peace had just been somewhat shattered however by some terrible, and terribly loud, music coming from the nearby town of New Bagan.

I arrived in New Bagan bright and early at 4am after taking a night bus from Kalaw. The bus left an hour and a half late but still somehow got here on time. Not the most comfortable of rides but managed a few hours sleep. Enough to get me through a day of cruising around the roads on an electric scooter (the de facto mode of tourist transportation around here), a little motor cross on the dusty side tracks, watching the sun rise from another majestic temple and watching the sun go down from my current seat of contemplation.

The e-bikes are fun. They don't go very fast but they're quiet and obviously emission free so a nice way to cruise around and relax into the ride. There aren't exactly any major highways you need to open up the throttle on.

Lake Inle

Lake Inle, in Shan state, is one of the corners of Myanmars tourist triangle; a big lake with silted houses, floating villages and traditional fishermen.

I flew up with Dhe from Yangon and had the honour of sharing our plane with the probable future president of the country Aung San Suu Kyi. I even got a smile as she passed by us. She's particularly popular in Shan state and there was a raucous crowd there to greet her and a big convoy of cars following her out the airport.

Shan food is meant to be some of the best in the country (Shan noodles are particularly appreciated) but while the food we ate was good, we were both a bit ill to appreciate it properly (possibly my fault by only washing a lettuce in tap water in Yangon).

Nyaungshwe 

Life is centred around the lake we had a pleasant afternoon zipping down to the far end to see some of the sights and with the particular goal (of Dharini's) of playing with the cats at the Burmese cat sanctuary.

The stilted houses are very pretty, and it's great that they all seem to have electricity. The power lines casually strung across the open water are a little disconcerting though.

Something about electricity and water...

The most attractive sight on the lake are the fishermen; hauling in nets, elegantly balanced on one foot, with the other wrapped around the oar, gently propelling the narrow wooden boat forwards and backwards.

Dhe had to go back to work on Monday so I dropped her off at the airport and with my private taxi for the day (inter town transport is far from easy here) did a little trip out to Shwe Oo Min cave: a cave full of Buddha's.

A big, high ceiling-ed cave with multiple caverns, packed with thousands of Buddha's of all shapes, sizes and materials. The first cavern is the most impressive, closely packed with hundreds of big and small golden Buddha's stacked so high you can momentarily lose yourself wandering the narrow Buddha lined alleys.

 

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the small town of Kalaw, waiting for a night bus to take me to Myanmar's biggest tourist draw: Bagan.

Yangon... Rangoon... Yangoon?

My friend Dharini is working in Yangon so I handily had a place to stay. And some place it was after 8 months of backpacking: a luxurious serviced apartment in Golden Hill Tower in Northern Yangon.

I stayed a few days in Yangon, with a bit of sight seeing and a lot of eating and drinking in the more upmarket (for Myanmar) establishments in town. Nothing too wild though as a recently imposed curfew was forcing bars to close even earlier than usual - the city was empty by 11.

Downtown

There aren't a huge number of tourist attractions as such but downtown is a beautiful grid of old monsoon weathered colonial buildings and apartment blocks. Myanmar is changing fast (every travel guide you read about a place seems to say "get there now before its too late") and Yangon, the de-facto capital is obviously at the forefront of that. A sign of the times is the amount of traffic in Yangon. The place is gridlocked for the morning, lunch and evening rush hour. Expected for a big city perhaps? Sure, but it was only 5 years ago that there was barely a car here and cycle rickshaws were king. Now there is something ridiculous like 40,000 cars been imported daily.

The first KFC opened a few months ago and the oversized looming face of Colonel Sanders makes an interesting contrast against the old Hindu temple next door.

Most people here appear indifferent to foreigners (decades of not being allowed to talk to foreigners probably has quite a lot to do with that) but every now and then someone will strike up a friendly conversation purely out of curiosity. English is not widely spoken.

I had a wander around Shule Pagoda in the centre of the main city roundabout; my first taste of the many, many pagodas to come. My most memorable sight from there was a monk sat down on the step smoking a massive cherootee. Monks form a large proportion of the population in Myanmar and you see them about everywhere. Seeing a robed monk doing an everyday thing like smoking a cigarette sparks a special kind of fascination.

The biggest and most important Pagoda in Myanmar is Shwedagon and I walked down there one sunny morning from the apartment. The mighty gold Pagoda is an impressive sight but it's the collective array of side temples and prayer rooms that make it such a relaxed and calming place. I love the way in which the temples are used: the expected prayer and meditation but mixed in with the chatting of friends, family outings, people playing games on their phones and even the odd card game.

walking up to Shwedagon

Shwedagon

  

It's the tail-end of the monsoon season (although they've had a relatively mild monsoon this year) and other than a few showers the weather was generally all right. On Friday we got some proper monsoon rain however and it teemed down for most of the day. A nice excuse to relax in the flat though and do a bit of planning and life admin.

Monsoon rains

On Saturday morning myself and Dhe flew up to Heho, in the centre east of Myanmar, for a weekend at Lake Inle.

Bangkok

The flight to Bangkok was 9 hours; a little longer than the 4 hours I'd somehow got into my head, which barely gets you over Australia. I was expecting a lot more chaos than what I found but it was an exciting change of culture and the first golden Buddha's I met were fascinating. 

I did a little sight seeing at the Grand Palace and Temple of the Emerald Buddha: a gaudy, opulent collection of big golden shrines and ornate buildings. The highlight was the vast mural that surrounds the main temple area, depicting the epic story of Ramayana.

 

I had a night out down the crowded tourist haven of Kho San Rd, enjoyed a couple of cocktails 63 stories up at the Red Sky bar and went for a little hand surgery in a hospital... 

I'd had this small growth on my right hand since I fell on a spiky tree in the dark in the Amazon. I thought I'd dug all the splinters out at the time but one remained slightly swollen and developed into a small hard white blob. I thought it was probably infected but a course of antibiotics in Peru made no difference and it didn't seem to be getting any worse. Still, with a few weeks in Myanmar coming up and Nepal to follow I thought I'd better sort it out while there was still good health care available. 

So I went to see a doctor at the hospital. He had a prod around and not sure what it was, advised to cut it out there and then. With a little local anaesthetic he did just that and removed what turned out to only be a lump of thick skin. A little non-plussed after cutting the lump open and finding nothing he had another look in the open wound. 

"Ah ha!"

And with that he pulled out a big splinter of about a cm length that had been deeply buried in my hand for the last 7 weeks. The hole left in my hand required stitches and I've been cleaning and dressing the wound daily for the 10 days since. 

My amazonian hitch hiker

Hand fixed I carried on to Yangon on the Tuesday for a few weeks holiday in Myanmar.