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Published: September 9th 2007
rainbow over Bagan
Photo by Jeff Roberts
www.eyeballimaging.com/blog*
Many of the photos in this blog entry were taken by Jeff Roberts at www.eyeballimaging.com/blog ©2007*
Our flight to Bagan didn't leave Mandalay until late afternoon, so we slept in as long as the heat would let us, checked internet in town, then stopped for lunch at a tiny local place near our hotel. Judging by the stares, there might never have been foreigners inside the restaurant before. They were playing Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" on the small restaurant TV, and I don't think Jeff and I were the only ones to notice that our earrings and jewelry were suspiciously similar to the costumes in the movie. Despite the bloody drama on TV, we got a lot more attention than the film. We had practically no language in common with the waiter, but he did understand "chicken" and we were each brought a plate of rice, chicken and some sort of bitter salad. We've become pretty open-minded about what we'll eat, but we had a hard time choking down the chicken: it was rock-hard and cold, more bones and tendons than meat, and tasted like it was about a week old. After eating mostly rice and unenthusiastically poking at the chicken,
fields and temples in Bagan
Photo by Jeff Roberts
www.eyeballimaging.com/blog we paid and returned to the hotel to pack up and head to the airport.
We took a "shared van" to the airport instead of a taxi, since it was about half the cost. We were picked up first, then we headed to some high-rise-ish hotel in the middle of town to wait for another passenger. This passenger, a snazzily-dressed nose-in-the-air businessman type, apparently decided to wait to pack until the van arrived, because it took him nearly a half an hour to leave his room and climb into the van. He talked loudly on his cell phone all the way to the airport, while we fretted about missing the plane on account of his leisurely pace. Luckily, I suppose, the plane was delayed a few hours. We sat and chatted with an Irish couple we'd met previously while we waited to board. The flight was no problem, and we got into Bagan around sunset. We'd heard it was quite hot in Bagan during the day, and since we planned to get up for sunrise a few times and then nap during the day (which would be nearly impossible in the heat), we opted for an air conditioned room,
a rare splurge. We found a big room in the town of Nuang Yu (there are a few different villages tourists can stay in near the temples--Nuang Yu is the cheapest) for $15 with a mini-fridge (which smelled pretty rank but at least kept our water cold) and tiny TV advertising satellite channels. In fact, the hotel had one satellite box which controlled the channel in all rooms, which meant that only one satellite channel could be watched at a time by all guests, and it had to be changed by visiting reception and asking them to change it. The next few days a battle ensued, between TV Monde (a French TV channel--about half the hotel guests were French) and BBC or a movie channel (our choice). We did somehow manage to catch the first half of a U.S. Democratic debate on the news one evening, which was quite exciting, although halfway through the satellite stopped working so we missed the tail end.
After we arrived we wandered out of our hotel and ran into an eager horse-cart driver named Titi. We arranged for him to pick us up the next morning at 4:15 so we could view the
Bagan temple and cows
Photo by Jeff Roberts
www.eyeballimaging.com/blog sun rise over the temples. Then Jeff and I set out in search of decent food. There is a street that has turned into a sort of traveler-oriented restaurant row, full of candle-lit restaurants boasting pizza and other western food options. We headed towards the original pizza place in town, and ate okay pizza and pasta served by extremely eager waiters. Nuang Yu feels fairly green to tourism, not yet jaded by hoards of demanding westerners. The locals are still fairly excited to respond to our "min galaba" (hello in Burmese) and the area is still mercifully absent of postcard-touting children.
We went to bed early after our dinner, and woke up at 4 a.m. to meet up with Titi to see the sunrise. We waited in the dark and quiet dusty road, watching stray dogs scamper by, noses to the wind. 4:15 came and passed, with no horsecart. He finally showed up a little after 4:30, and we hurried to clamber aboard the two-wheeled wooden cart, hoping we still had time to see the sunrise. The horse took off and we clopped along the quiet streets, out of town and towards the countryside. Titi took us to an
Buddha
Photo by Jeff Roberts
www.eyeballimaging.com/blog area fairly nearby, but there was no good place to await the sun so we had him take us elsewhere. He took us to a perfect spot, atop an old brick rooftop balcony. He waited down below with the horse (whose name, we were told, was Rumble) and we sat on the roof and waited for the darkness to melt away. Very slowly the sky began to lighten, and we began to make out the silhouettes of ancient brick temples around us. Soon small thatched houses appeared out of the darkness, sitting peacefully amidst a patchwork quilt of fields. Before the sun had fully risen, women emerged from the houses and headed to the fields to gather some sort of gourd. A man led two oxen into an adjacent field and began plowing. A boy on a bicycle passed on a dirt path. And everywhere were temples, dotting the horizon in every direction, their spires pointing at the sky. The sunrise itself wasn't particularly colorful, but it was still amazing to watch beautiful Bagan emerge from darkness.
We returned to the hotel to eat some breakfast and get a few more hours of sleep, then rejoined Titi and Rumble
Bagan temple
Photo by Jeff Roberts
www.eyeballimaging.com/blog to begin to explore the thousands of temples. Titi took us to the largest and most-frequently-visited temples, but along the way we stopped often to wander through the countless unnamed and generally ignored temples standing proudly amongst fields and small homes. Although the large famous temples were often amazing, I much preferred the quiet unknown temples, where we were alone to explore and gaze at the stunning horizon. Inside almost every temple was at least one Buddha figure, all of them unique and most in decent repair. In most temples it was possible to climb through dark narrow stone stairways to the rooftop balconies, although a few were too crumbled to do so safely. At one small temple we met a husband and wife who made a living making sand-paintings. They showed us around the temple area, and we bought a few paintings. As we were leaving the woman stopped us and shyly asked if we might trade a painting for our watch. We had bought an extremely cheap plastic watch in Bangkok, so we were happy to trade. Her eyes lit up with joy as she put it on her wrist--I highly doubt she had ever owned a watch
before, and it's quite possible she'd never owned anything electronic. It was an ugly black plastic digital watch, but she looked at it like we'd given her a pearl-studded bracelet.
As evening came on, we joined Titi for some tea at a local spot full of other horse-cart drivers. We could hear the melodic chanting of monks in the temple next to the cafe. We kept an eye on the sky but it was too cloudy to give any sort of decent sunset, so after our tea we returned to our hotel. We had dinner at a restaurant called "Aroma II", which turned out to serve fantastic Indian food. We probably ate there five times in the week we spent in Bagan.
The next two days were endlessly rainy and gray, which meant visiting the temples would be a wet and photo-less affair. We decided not to bother, and spent a couple of listless days struggling with excruciatingly slow internet connections, eating Indian food, and watching movies on TV whenever we managed to change it from TV Monde. After two days of waiting, we decided we'd better stop wasting our time in Bagan, rain or not. We decided
temple sand painter with her new watch!
Photo by Jeff Roberts
www.eyeballimaging.com/blog to take a shared taxi to nearby Mount Popa, a cylindrically shaped mountain which was home to countless nat shrines and quite a few disgruntled monkeys. Nats are spirits still lingering in this world. They can be troublesome, but generally leave people alone if appeased with offerings of food and drink. Small nat shrines appear inside and outside of most Burmese homes and restaurants. Mount Popa is the center of the Burmese belief in nats, and the hike up the mountain is supposed to offer glimpses of countless nat shrines, as well as stunning views. We shared our taxi with two French girls from our hotel. The taxi was in fact a very old conversion van, not exactly ideal for rough mountain roads. It rained pretty hard during the ride, and we were anticipating a very muddy and wet hike up the mountain. A little while before we reached Mount Popa one of the van's tires went flat, and the driver crouched in the soaking rain to change it. Then we were off again, arriving during a brief lull in the rain at the base of the mountain.
We had been anticipating a muddy footpath up the mountain, but
me and a BIG Buddha inside a Bagan temple
Photo by Jeff Roberts
www.eyeballimaging.com/blog in fact there were covered stairs all the way up. This didn't prevent the stairs from being slick with rain, but at least we weren't crawling through mud. Shoes were prohibited, so we climbed barefoot, clinging to rusty railings to avoid slipping on the wet steps. Monkeys were everywhere, chasing each other up and down the stairs, climbing up railings, scolding us from roof rafters. Their poop was everywhere too. Climbing Mount Popa became an obstacle course of avoiding stepping in something unpleasant, avoiding slipping, and avoiding the angry monkeys who were not the least bit afraid of people. There were indeed nat shrines along the way, along with rows of bored-looking souvenir sellers. The shrines were interesting but after twenty minutes of climbing they all started to look the same. A group of apparently drunk Burmese teenagers stumbled by us, laughing loudly, nearly tumbling down the wet stairs. We hurried to get to the top so we could come back down. On top were a few more shrines and temples, with an old guy begging for money. The rain and fog eliminated any chance of views. Monkeys screamed if we came too close. We took a few pictures and
headed back down. We ate lunch with the French girls at a restaurant at the base of the hill, then climbed back into the van for the ride back. We were joined by an older couple, whose taxi had broken down. We all stopped a little ways down the road to try to get a photo of Mount Popa from afar, and we ended up wandering down an incredibly muddy path. Our shoes got sucked down by the mud, and by the time we got back to the car we all had thick sticky layers of mud on our feet. We stomped and scraped until we were relatively clean, then it was back to the van to head back to Bagan.
As we neared the temples the sun began to set with vibrant colors and beautiful clouds. Jeff had been desperate to get a sunset shot since we'd arrived four days ago, and now that there was finally a decent sunset we were stuck in a van. When we got to the temples he asked if we could please stop, and took off running through the fields to find a good vantage point from which to take his photos.
girl with Burmese face paint
Photo by Jeff Roberts
www.eyeballimaging.com/blog By the time I got out of the van to follow him, he had disappeared. He ran through fields and climbed the dark gecko-filled stairs of a temple, making it just in time to get a few good shots before the sun set completely. He left the temple to return to the van, and realized he had no idea which way he'd come from. He ended up asking directions from a confused Burmese farmer, who spoke no English and had no idea what "road" meant. We waited at the van, getting nervous as it got dark, and then finally saw him half-running down the road towards us. Relieved, we all piled back into the van and returned to the hotel. Jeff and I got dinner that night at a place on restaurant row that advertised pesto. In fact, the "pesto" turned out to be pasta with peanut sauce. Jeff's order was bad too, a flavorless and generic chicken dish with rice. Burma really wasn't proving itself to be a land of glorious food choices. In the end, though, food is food, and we went to bed full enough, if not completely satisfied.
The next day was the day we'd
Mount Popa
Photo by Jeff Roberts
www.eyeballimaging.com/blog been waiting for. The skies were clear and blue with just a few puffy white clouds. We set out on Titi's horse cart around 8 a.m. We spent almost the entire day visiting and photographing various temples, big and small. We finally had some good food for lunch, at a tourist-oriented hotel restaurant, which wasn't cheap but was certainly worth it after so many bad meals. We returned to exploring temples after lunch, and around 4 p.m. we sat down to relax on top of a temple and watch the clouds float by. We were just about to move on when a bright rainbow appeared in front of us, arcing beautifully over the countless temples dotting the fields. We nearly fell off of the balcony in our haste to get the right camera set up, but we managed to capture the rainbow before it melted away. It was a fantastic end to our time in Bagan, and made the days of waiting out the rain entirely worthwhile.
The next day we would head off to Inle Lake to see the floating villages, explore the area by boat, and enjoy the cooler lakeside weather.
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