Templetown, part one

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Bagan, 21-25 January

The sun was setting as we landed at Nyaung U airport, Bagan. It says a lot about how unspoilt Burma is that the airport at one of its main tourist attractions is so tiny there are not even any baggage carousels and the entire departure lounge consists of two small-ish rooms. Our flight from Inle Lake had travelled via Mandalay – as there are so many flights every day in Burma and distances between destinations are very short, it's common to take indirect flights and just wait on the tarmac for 15 minutes while people get on and off before setting off again. It was in this way that we ended up taking the shortest flight of the trip, and indeed my entire life - the entire journey from Mandalay to Bagan including take-off and landing took 17 minutes. Nice.

It was near impossible to get an initial impression of Bagan, mainly because it was getting dark when we arrived but also because the town is so spread out that it doesn't really have a centre. Bagan is a huge sprawling place dotted with temples, pagodas and stupas (between two and half and three and a half thousand in total, depending on who you speak to) spread over 40 square miles. Our hotel was located in New Bagan and absolutely gorgeous. Our room was just feet away from the swimming pool which was surrounded by big colourful lounge cushions perfect for chilling out. We asked at the front desk how long it would take to get into town and they said five minutes so we Burmese-time-translated it to 15. We were right. The road into New Bagan was almost pitch black and when we reached the town, it was almost difficult to tell that we had reached it as the place was so tiny. This entire part of town consisted of around three shops and a teahouse. A bit further down the road there were a few restaurants and guesthouses but nothing that could have been called a bar. This was not a place that is prepared for tourists, which is another reason it felt so special.

We wandered into the teahouse for dinner. It was similar to those we had seen in Inle Lake and Yangon, populated by groups of boys and men and with a very relaxed atmosphere. Everyone was drinking tea and watching TV, absolutely enthralled by the film that was on (King Kong). The waiter poured something into our cups which turned out to be a popular drink we had seen advertised everywhere in Burma - a mix between tea and coffee. It was about as nice as it sounds. C took a sip and promptly turned a distinct shade of green. I'm pretty sure he would have spat it straight back out if the waiter had not been stood right there, smiling as if all his Christmases had come at once. I alternated between thinking it tasted pretty wrong and still being tempted to keep drinking it. For food, we had chicken noodle soup and ate it by candlelight, not so much to be romantic but because there was a power cut across the entire town right after we started eating and the teahouse was plunged into darkness.

It was at this point that it became clear just what a remote place we were in. The power couldn't be fixed so we walked home in the pitch black but this wasn't really a problem as the only thing that we had to watch out for was the occasional horse and cart. It felt like we had stepped in a time machine and climbed out into an era long gone. When we got back to the hotel, the staff had sprinkled our bed with rose petals in the shape of hearts and brought us wine and chocolate fondue. It was lovely to be a bit spoilt, if a bit strange by contrast to our experience in the town.

In the morning, we were impatient to explore the temples so we left the hotel early and wandered down the dirt road in the direction of New Bagan. Within a few minutes, we were greeted by a horse and cart driver and we jumped on the back. It turns out that a horse with an extremely thick coat, along with very humid weather and dusty roads are not a good combination for an asthma sufferer, and by the time we reached our first stop, C did not look at all well. We wandered into the temple, which was one of the older, best-preserved ones ones and very beautiful with colourful paintings still clearly visible on the walls. The guide explained how the temples of Bagan had faced major batterings over the year, by invasions and earthquakes. By this point, C was not so much appreciating the history as having a mild asthma attack in the middle of the desert plains, miles from any form of civilisation that may include something such as a hospital. What's more, the only way that it was possible to get him back to the hotel was on the horse and cart that had got him in this state in the first place. Bagan is not a place where you can hail a taxi.

In the end, we managed to ride back with C facing away from the horse (and cursing him under his breath the whole way) and me trying my best to explain to the driver that it was nothing to do with him and he should not take it personally but it was actually his horse that was problem. He seemed completely bewildered by this idea and I couldn't help thinking that it must be very awkward to live in Bagan if you are allergic to horses as they seem to be the main mode of transport. Once we had got off the cart and C started to look a bit better, we stopped to have a bite to eat in an outdoor cafe.

We then spent the rest of the day laid by our pool on the ridiculously comfortable cushions, watching the sunshine sparkle on the water and generally roasting (Bagan is HOT - the average annual temperature is 33 degrees). That night, we ate dinner in the hotel in gardens draped with candles in a gorgeous, serene setting. I tried Myanmar goat's cheese, which is worth a mention as it's the only goat's cheese I've ever tried that I actually liked and C got major food envy. We also met the lovely couple who owned the hotel, a Burmese lady and Swiss man. The lady, M, was an incredible power-woman – she spoke six different languages fluently and seemed to have connections with somebody in every single high-profile company in the world. It was also her that cleared up one of the mysteries of Burma for us when we told her about the Burmese sense of time, or lack of, and how we had asked on our flight to Yangon how long it would take and the stewardess had looked very flustered and uncomfortable and seemed not to want to give us an answer.

"Ah!" M said. "In Burma, it is bad luck to ask the time to get somewhere as it is like a jinx. Then we believe you will not get to where you are going. In Burma, there is no such thing as time, so you cannot be early or late."

Cannot be late? Well, it sounds like C and I have found our home away from home. And the next day we were to discover just how incredible Bagan really was...

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