The Esthetic of Lostness: Bagan

Bagan. Definite highlight of the trip, along with Angkor Wat. Best part of the Myanmar leg of this holiday. The sheer amount of pagodas (general term covering both stupas and temples) don't even hit you until you are on top of one such monument and look over the countryside around you. They are everywhere!

My tour guide Zaw is in his mid-20s, plus spoke great English. He was very knowledgeable about each pagoda and made the entire day really interesting. I wasn't pagoda'd out by the end of it! It may have also helped that I had a half hour nap inside one of the temples after lunch. It was so warm and I had at most one hour of sleep in 30 hrs, so that gave me the pick-me-up to continue. I was drooling as well, so I must have needed it.

The first pagoda visited for the sunrise was a peaceful affair. Zaw had taken me to a smaller, lesser known pagoda, but it had great views for photography. In the distance, there were people clambering over the tallest temple for the sunrise. Zaw explained that beyond that tall temple, there aren't as many pagodas in the foreground to take nice photos. Plus I had a whole temple to myself, which made the experience quite intimate and peaceful.

Many of the pagodas are made from brick produced down south (near Yangon). Considering that Bagan is more than a few 100km north, it seems quite a feat to transport so much brick. The brick laying showed that there was not much mortar holding the structure together, yet it felt quite solid.

Many of the pagodas range between 11th to 17th century, with majority of the pagodas within the 11 - 13th century. This was due to the reigning king feeling at peace after speaking to a Buddhist monk; afterwards, he decided to convert the entire country from Hinduism to Buddhism. To have a legit tribute to Buddhism, a pagoda needs to have a relic of Buddha inside. A relic could be a piece of hair, piece of his cloth from his robe, toe nails, etc. The king in the Mon (?) state down south did not comply with providing the other king some Buddha relics, so Mon state king was invaded and relics taken by force. This also allowed winner king (I forgot his name) to also take charge of all the artisans, craftspeople and manual labour to create the numerous pagodas.

The paintings inside the pagodas are pretty cool and reflect the changing times, i.e. shift from Hinduism to Buddhism around 11th century with flat, 2D drawings, with Chinese influence and '3D' features shown in the 17th century.

Pagodas (stupas and temples) weren't exclusively for the reigning king/queen or rich to build. Ordinary villagers could also build their own monuments to Buddhism, provided they could get the brick and manpower.

If you notice that there is an Old Bagan and New Bagan, it started in the late 90s (1999 I think). People lived and farmed side by side to the pagodas for centuries. However, the government wanted to scrub up the area to make it UNESCO friendly, so the villagers were relocated to an area created called New Bagan, which is sad for the villagers.

In total I visited:

15 pagodas including Shwe zi gone pagoda, Gubyaukgyi, Htilominlo, Ananda temple, Shwe San Daw pagoda, Sulamari, Dhammayangyi and Manuha

Lacquerware workshop - the process was more intensive than I thought!

Soy bean paste factory - this is Myanmar's most popular soy bean paste. It is also exported worldwide. When you see the 'factory', you wonder how on earth they manage to supply since the process is very manual and slow

Local markets off Nyaung U-kyauk Padaung Rd - I was shown the village market and explained what many of the items were. One item I thought was cheese was actually soap! I also ate mohinga with Zaw (local Myanmar breakfast) for 200kyat - that's 20c!

The Moon restaurant for lunch - awesome vegetarian restaurant with a great dragonfruit, mint, ginger and apple juice

Irrawaddy River - went to see the river just before sunset. Apparently the Irrawaddy dolphin that is found only in 2 places in the world - the Irrawaddy river and Samoa

Booking a tour guide and driver was well worth the USD I'd set aside for this part of the trip. It had cost USD80, but this is from 5am pick up to catch the sunrise over Bagan until 7pm, when they both kindly waited for me to eat dinner and drop me off at the bus station. I would highly recommend a tour guide for Bagan since there are so many pagodas, you wouldn't know which one to start with first. It also made the experience much more interesting since the guide covered cultural, architectural, religious, historical and general information about the pagodas we visited. The above is basically what is covered in a 2 day tour as well, but I did not feel rushed at all. Also Zaw was happy to tell anecdotes about his village life, which added to understanding the Myanmar culture and lifestyle.

If anyone is going to Bagan, I would highly recommend Zaw. I had originally emailed Thein Than (who is recommended on Tripadvisor) but he was busy. Fair enough since I emailed at 1pm the day before going to Bagan. Instead he recommended Zaw and it is a recommendation that I wholeheartedly endorse :)

The cheap alternative is an e-bike (electric bike) and a map - at USD8, you can't go wrong either! I felt sorry for all the bike riders who got caught in the late arvo downpour though!

TOILET ALERT: I used the squat toilet several times! Most temples don't have Western toilets, so I had to learn fast as I ate something that didn't quite agree with me. I finally did it - albeit really slowly because the sprained ankle means that I'm not balanced :\

First light... 5:20am

Sun is up a bit higher... This is probably about 6:00am now

Unilever infiltrating developing countries. Even Myanmar people know that 1 in 4 people have a Unilever product!

Soy bean paste 'factory'... first heat the soy beans in water so all the good stuff like nutrients come out

Discard the beans and cool/re-heat/repeat until you get a thick paste

This the soy bean paste packing process - yep, these guys scoop the paste into sachets and seal for distribution

I can't remember what this temple is called but it the biggest one in Bagan

Colourful tiles donated by Belgium

No one knows where these guys came from but they're really old. Note the Mayan influence in Buddha's faces

I forgot this temple's name but this is where a German archaeologist got a bit saw-happy in the 19th century and cut of slabs of paintings for his own collection

These guys knew how to earthquake-proof their building in the 11th century. Note the vertical bricks to add strength to the structure

The

Does this need a caption?

This painting is on cloth. I'm amazed it's lasted so many centuries

The German archaeologist had the gall to leave his signature in another temple. Fool.

Forgot the name of this temple, but this is the most beautiful temple out of the 3500+ pagodas in Bagan. Note the restoration effort - clean on the right, still undergoing restoration on the left hand side (black walls)