Myanmar/Burma: The Magical Kingdom of Bagan!

Our adventures continued in the ancient Burmese capital of Bagan, Burma’s greatest architectural site, which features over 2000 stupas and temples in a 40 square mile radius. 

 Some of these sites date back to the 11^th century and probably even earlier. As far as the eye can see there are magnificent structures with pointy spires that are reminiscent of Buck Roger’s spaceship.

 We based ourselves in Old Bagan area for a 3-day exploration of the region, because it was nearest to the largest and most impressive of these temples. 

 We began with a day of self-guided walking under cloudy skies, which later that afternoon turned to an unseasonable rain storm – helping to cool the warm air and making the walking quite enjoyable in this normally hot and humid town. 

We climbed narrow, steep stairways within some of the temples to get some fantastic overviews of the sea of stupas, winding through inner chambers, and often being tailed by local salespeople hoping we would buy their handicrafts and lacquer wear. 

 Some of the structures are massive, while others are smaller in comparison, yet each had their distinct differences. Virtually every temple had several, if not dozens, of carved deities, spirit images, and Buddha statues of all sizes in the nooks and alcoves fashioned in the walls within. 

At almost all of the temple sites there were vendors selling their wares, and we haggled and bargained for locally made sand paintings, bought postcard-drawings from adorable kids, and spent our kyat (Myanmar money) on other various exotic-looking trinkets from the men, women and children. 

We also found a fabulous restaurant across the dusty street from our hotel grounds, where we ate almost all of our meals. It was named “The Moon” and their motto was, “be kind to animals.”

Supposedly it was the first all vegetarian restaurant in the area, and their meals were prepared with love and care (and everything was washed and made using clean mineral water). The food was far and away better than anything we had eaten and it was fun to be regular customers. We especially loved their homemade guacamole made with locally-grown avocados and served with Indian-style and pappadom chips.

The town of Nyuang U is at the northern end of the area, and there we visited the local market and saw rows of vendors selling all kinds of food, a lot of which we couldn’t recognize or discern. 

 Beetle nut is found everywhere, which is very common in Burma. It’s “chewed” in a quid wrapped in a small green leaf, giving the user a pleasant buzz (and staining their teeth blood-red). 

That same day, we explored more of the area’s temples, and then had a lovely lunch at a restaurant on the banks of the Irrawaddy, which is Burma’s largest and most important river. Still later that afternoon we went to New Bagan to see Bob’s hotel, which was surrounded by many smaller temples, so we could lounge around the cool pool, a welcome respite to this sunny, hot day.

Enjoying relaxing massages at our hotel during the mid-afternoon heat, late afternoon and evenings were spent climbing some of the larger temples to get the view the glowing sun setting in the mountains beyond the plains. 

 

This was usually the time when we saw the most tourists and travelers, but compared to other places, like Angkor Wat or Machu Picchu, it was still rather untainted by hordes of foreigners. 

 Our favorite sunset was an afternoon trip via horse cart over the dusty roads to some of the outer temples, with our excellent driver Ugo, (and his trusty steed Thu-Thu), who took us down paths with fewer people and less vendors interrupting the otherworldly splendor. 

 

Our three days in Bagan were our last travelling with our ever-amusing friend Bob, who set off for Vietnam the following morning - while we will continue onward to the Inle Lake area further east in Burma. Stay tuned for more adventures and photos from the Grateful Globetrotters!