Shamballa Cruising Yacht Club: Bagan

The bus trip to Bagan was surprisingly comfortable. I fully expected the trip to be like the bus trips in Laos; pigs and chickens in baskets, plastic chairs in the isles over bags of rice; comfort stops being a ditch by the side of the road and meal breaks at fly infested roadside stalls. The Myanmar bus north was a comfortable 2 + 1 configured seating with neck pillows provided, onboard throne toilet (no squatties) and a meal stop at a clean and well run restaurant. The 12 hour journey passed quite pleasantly.

'Luxury' bus

The bus station was outside the town of New and Old Bagan so there was the usual negotiation for taxis to our hotel. Taxis in this part of the world are pick-up trucks with a mat or if you’re lucky a mattress in the back. Luggage and people pile into the back and hold on for a bumpy ride through the town.

Local taxi

Bagan is an ancient city that prospered between the 9^th and 13^th Centuries. It was located on major east-west/north-south trade routes and irrigation provided fertile plain and an abundance of rice and food. During the 11^th Century 10,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas and monasteries were built along the plain of which over 2000 remain today in various states of disrepair. When Bob visited Bagan (or Pagan as it was known then) in 1987, there was only the sleepy village of Old Bagan where the only accommodation for visitors was a spare room in a ‘guest house’. The temples were accessible by dirt track and totally open to the public. There was no infrastructure around them, no tourist stalls or many people for that matter. The few tourists that were around hired bicycles to peddle amongst the ruins and could climb around wherever they chose.

Plenty of the 'old' ways still around

We hired an e-bike (electric scooter – the only kind available to tourists) to explore the temples. It was a good way to get around; quiet and one can’t go too fast so safer. Today the larger temples are surrounded by souvenir shops and food stalls but there are still many smaller temples that are less developed (and less restored). Most of these though have locked caged doors and can only be seen from the outside. Nevertheless it is a magical place -Very beautiful. Some of the locked temples have caretakers living nearby and can be opened for a private viewing. We saw one temple, Gubyauknge, which had wonderful frescos all over the walls. As beautiful as it is today, the area must have been magnificent in its heyday with all the temples covered in gold and the frescos brightly painted.

Temples over the plains

A renovated temple covered in gold leaf

A pagoda for the future?

We went to the Bagan Archaeological Museum which was surprisingly good. It is in a huge, ornate building – plenty of room to expand – and had well displayed exhibits with good signage in English. I particularly liked the stone tablets with the different languages.

Archaeological Museum

Hairstyles each with a different name and meaning

Beautiful teak entranceway

My Rosetta stone for the Bagan alphabet

One evening we went to a puppet show at one of the restaurants in Old Bagan. It was quite an enjoyable show displaying 12 of the classical characters and their dances. One of the puppeteers was just a teenager and obviously loved the art form. We were reminded of the puppet museum we stumbled upon in Cadiz, Spain. This museum had many marionettes from Myanmar and at the time we didn’t realise what an important tradition puppeteering is for the country (nor did we imagine we would be in Myanmar just 10 months later).