Myanmar - Bagan Day One

Bagan is known to some as the city of 4 million Pagodas but I think some people don'y know how to count because it felt like there were way more than 4 million pagodas around town (in fact there are about 4,000 temples). The area of these pagodas is about the size of Manhattan for reference. The landscape around Bagan is literally dotted like an impressionist painting with pagodas. They rise up around every bend and come in all sizes, colors, and designs depending on the era in which they were built and how carefully they have been maintained or restored. Even on the plane landing from thousands of feet up our eyes were aching with pagoda redundancy.

We negotiated a nice ride in our 1975Toyota Cressida (that could be overstating the facts as I am not sure there was a car over 1990 in the entire country but maybe the taxi was a 1980s version). The car sounded like a small jet engine and had no mats, duct taped seats, and seat belts…with no seat belt buckles of the belts. Despite this I felt very safe with our driver as there was no traffic this early in the morning, in fact even during the day I don’t recall much traffic around Bagan except for bicycles and horse carts.

We arrived at our wonderful hotel the Bagan Thande, which graciously greeted me (not Carrie) and led us to our riverside bungalow.

Then we started our up close and personal historical tour and visual celebration of the pagodas (not all 4 million of them) of Bagan with our knowledgeable guide Min Thu and his horse cart. Let me pause here for a quick promo for our guide. Min Thu truly was one of the best guides we had in our travels in Asia, not only was he knowledgeable and friendly. Email him here. But he went out of his way to make sure we received and retained the knowledge of Bagan. He also went out of his way to listen to what we wanted to do and although he did have a set tour we were allowed to deviate from plan if so wished. We even convinced him to get us some Paan to chew on, more on that later, now back to our tour.

The tour will be mostly by photos below but I will interject when I feel there is something extremely relevant. The quick background though is that we toured temples and saw examples of the different eras reflected in temple designs, Buddha images, and building techniques including paintings all of which were well explained by Min Thu. A lot were dark and mysterious with large walls and a random collection of locals gathered outside but some of more open and welcome with no nearby. Also, we rode around in Min Thu’s horse cart because cars are not allowed in Old Bagan and because it is just entertaining (also a bumpy and not wholly unrelaxing massage) to ride around in horse cart all day.

Our Horse Cart for the day

Horse Cart #54

Glad this was not our ride!

Some of the other highlights besides the pagodas and scultpures were the Myanmar Food buffett for two (way too much food but it was good), the monasteries (wooden and otherwise), and the children that loved to chase us around and interact with us.

Lunch Buffett

Biggest Buddha Ever!

Bamboo House Making

Wooden Monastery

Sunset

End of the Day