Bagan, City of Temples

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The morning of our bus trip to Bagan I woke with a stomach ache. Great. I managed to beat it back enough to load the bus at 3pm. There began a horribly long, bumpy and thoroughly uncomfortable trip of 13 hours. We stopped at 8 for dinner, and then we settled into our seats. I, of course, got seated next to a man with no notion of personal space, so I kept nudging his knees out of my way. What can you do? Then something interesting happened: around 11pm, the bus pulls over. It's a road block. Everyone is shuffled off the bus and I observe the Burmese getting out identity cards. As we walk to a guarded blockade, the foreigners are separated. We enter a small hut where are passports are taken and our names, country, numbers, and expiration dates are carefully copied down. Only then are we allowed back on the bus to continue. Two hours later it happens AGAIN. I have never experienced something like that - it was like the people were being herded like sheep by their own government. It was also at this moment that we realized the Myanmar government was constantly watching us, and knew where we were. A disconcerting scene.

We arrive in Bagan at 4 in the morning and it is COLD. A few guides try to help us - but the first 2 places are full and we're so exhausted at this point that everyone's cranky. Then our self-proclaimed guide says he'll bike us over to a further place, where he promises there will be rooms. We wait for our ride and it shows up - literally a bicycle with a little seat on the side! He says ok load up! He piles 3 bags on the back and tells 3 of us to climb on - the man was trying to bike the weight of 6 people on a normal bicycle! Very surreal experience. Not so surprisingly, when we started up the smallest slope you've ever seen, he had to ask the the boys to get off so he could push it. A harder work out at 5am I have never seen! I gladly paid him 2000Kyat (2$) for the ride! Luckily, the promised room was indeed available.

We sleep til noon and then find some food - more fried rice and egg. I'm already getting sick of it at this point - Myanmar cuisine doesn't offer a lot of options. We wait for the midday heat to abate and then we rent our bicycles to explore Bagan.

Now, Bagan is famous for being an ancient city of lost kingdoms. The surrounding countryside is dotted with 3000 pagodas, large and small. It was so beautiful to ride your bike down these roads and see such idyllic sights - herds of goats being led past ancient temples, farmers in the fields, and of course, all the people trying to sell you souvenirs. Ugh, can't escape them! Knowing my luck, I promptly got a flat tire. Wooo! But a man on a motorbike promised to bring his friend to fix it while we watched the sunset at a nearby pagoda. We climbed the terrace of the pagoda and got our spots to watch the sun set on Bagan and it was so wonderful. I happened to glance down and see my bike being fixed, a deed that ending up costing me 50 cents. Ouch. Then my rescuer plopped himself next to me and proceeded to sell my some of his sand paintings. I gave in, because I did want one, and because he'd helped me. Guilt is a powerful tool for a salesman.

We take a breezy ride home and have dinner and then head to bed, intending to make early and start again. I wake, and realize my stomach has gone to Hades once again. You know, it'd been maybe 2 weeks since I was last sick, so I was due! (Apparently .) Over the next few hours, I discover it's not just a bug, it's another bout of water/food poisoning. Oh joy. Pere also got sick, so I wasn't the only one in bed. For the next 3 days I could barely stay out of bed for a meal. Very disappointing, especially to see the spectacular pictures that Arnau was taking. Sigh, oh well, at least Pere was worse than me, haha. I finally got enough energy to do one last afternoon ride to Old Bagan where there was a hotel that overlooked a beautiful river and enjoyed the sunset with a cold Sunkist. We waited one more day, and by then, everyone was dead sick of rice/egg and pagoda after pagoda, so we decided to head to Mandalay, a bigger city in the north.

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