Pagodas, Temples, and Shrines in Bagan

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And so on to Bagan. While it may not be appropriate to compare it directly with sites such as Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, it certainly is up in that realm, with some 2,500 pagodas, temples, stupas and shrines spread over a mere 40 sq km area. These were all built during a 200 year period from around AD 1050 to 1250, and while neglect, looting, earthquakes, erosion and bat dung have all taken their toll through the years, over half of the originals still stand, and the crumbling nature of them is half the appeal, along with the sheer number of them in this concentrated area. Bordering the area is the famed Irrawaddy River, along which many visitors cruise from Mandalay, which is exactly what I did 36 years ago, and what particularly attracted me to return to Bagan after all these years.

The logistics arrangements are quite similar to Angkor, where you select your variety (and comfort level) of transport and do the rounds checking out the various individual sites. I chose horse and buggy, as this seemed most in keeping with the atmosphere of the place, and while enjoyable, what with the dusty and potted roads, I did feel like I’d been riding directly on the horse after six hours of touring around. ‘Tin-tin’ survived the course well, and that was the name of my betelnut chewing driver, not the horse! Fortunately, I had the foresight to set off very early, as I understand the thermometer tipped at 44 degC just after lunch. By then I was back in my air-conditioned room taking a nap.

I won’t offer any particular commentary on the pagodas and temples, because the attached pictures tell most of the stories. Suffice to say that most of them are over 800 years old, every one contains at least one Buddha, and the locals, as they do their rounds, spend a lot of times on their knees at each shrine. Two items that stood out very much among the locals - the majority of them (both sexes) wear the traditional longyi, which is a kind of sarong which is tied at the waist, and almost all the females, of all ages, cake they faces to various degrees with pale yellow thanaka, made from the bark of the thanaka tree. This is Burma’s traditional, natural skin protection and sun block. The number of betelnut chewers (my driver excepted) seems to have diminished significantly through the years. While the number of stalls and hawkers at each site certainly compensated for the lack of them in Mandalay, I’ve got to say they were always particularly friendly and rarely demanding, accepting after one or two solicitations that you weren’t going to buy, then leaving you alone.

Communications are a thing we tend to take for granted these days. While in Thailand, I was able to get a local SIM card for my mobile which then allowed me to call Australia for a baht a minute, which allowed me 300 minutes talking time for 10 bucks. In Burma, apart from the fact that it took me a couple of days to even find an IDD phone, it cost me 10 bucks for a single minute, or even part thereof! Internet, when available, was of the old dial-up type, and was like watching paint dry. At my pretty upmarket hotel in Bagan, they had no internet available at all, and when I asked if they had newspapers, I got a similar response. When I asked the receptionist how we were supposed to know what was happening in the world (ie how did my football teams go over the weekend), she advised that I came here to “relax my mind” - a good response from someone with halting English! One suspects that the real answer is that the military junta in fact doesn’t want the citizens to know what goes on in the outside world.

I guess we all perceive different priorities in life. A couple of times during my rounds of the Bagan temples, I saw gangs of up to 6 people sweeping in the dirt on the side of the road, presumably aiming at separating the leaves and tiny pebbles from the dirt. Frankly, it didn’t seem to make any difference at all. And yet, less than a kilometre away might be a dried up river bed, or similar block of land, that resembled a rubbish tip, especially with discarded plastic bags. As in other Asian developing countries, with so much unemployment, it staggers me that people don’t take some time to clean up these areas, but it clearly doesn’t concern them.

Well, next stop is Heho, gateway to Inle Lake. This is new territory for me as we didn't make it this far east in 1974. I've heard great reports about it.

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Comments

[Jill Fitzhenry]

Once again, a very interesting (and amusing) insight to another culture. I look forward to your impressions of Heho. All the the best Jill

[Lorna Coochiroff]

My God you're a brave boy!!