Bagan

Bagan was something else. We've been to a lot of places that are a bit similar in what they feel like or represent, like Cairo or maybe Siam Reap, with ancient architecture  that makes you say 'wow'. We've never experienced something quite like this though. Bagan's temples stretched out before us in every direction. Since the area was not too big, but would take time to travel by on foot, we decided to rent an e-scooter each day to get around, it was quite fun and not too dangerous. I could name temples, but there are just so many of them and let's say that we went to all the main  ones, plus a few more. 

On the first day we arrived in the afternoon so we just chilled and walked to the end of the road near our hotel. This is where the pineapple looking temple was located. We scoped it out as it was supposed to be a nice point to watch the sunset, but what we should have anticipated was that everyone else thought that too. We ended up going nearby to a river boat for dinner, an odd little place where we were the only customers and the owner, a foreigner, was kicking about on the shore trying to do landscaping or something. On the way there we walked through a small cluster of homes and a few kids ran out to try to sell us postcards. Some of them were just crayon drawing, I suppose the smallest kids saw the older kids making money off selling cards and wanted a  piece of the action. However, one girl was selling a set of 10 cards for about 1 dollar. I hadn't seen anywhere near that price at any of the tourist stands, so I went for it. I felt great that I got a great deal, about 75% of what the stands were selling, but I also felt kind of bad because I think the kid maybe just got excited and said the wrong price. Hot off my major deal, stomach full of fish and eyes full of river and mountain sunset, we turned in for the first night. 

Day two we rented the e-scooter and rode to our first temple then on to the local market. The first temple was beautiful, but we had a funny run in before we entered. As we were coming up to the temple on the side we couldn't exactly see where to park the scooter. While we were moving up a side lane some women came out of a doorway and said, "enter, enter" and sure enough, above the door was painted the word "Entrance". So we parked and went in. As soon as we did the women tried to sell us some things and one of them even managed to pin a little butterfly broach on me. I didn't really realize until we had managed to shake them off that the butterfly was a tag so that when I came back for my shoes the lady would have something to pin (like that one mom?) on me and of course she did, but I held my will and didn't buy anything. I've gotten stronger over the years of running into touts and I don't feel so bad anymore, but maybe a little. Maybe I was just hyped from my previous days good buy on the postcards. The temple grounds themselves were beautiful and since we were there somewhat early in the morning there weren't too many people and the air was cool. Right after we rode to the market in town, a crazy complex of a really big covered area. There were vendors of every kind and tourist stalls and local stalls were mixed. We then had lunch and headed back to the hotel for an afternoon rest.

Later that day we headed to the Nann Myint tower going the long way around to cruise a little bit. The tower was about 5 dollars a person, kind of expensive (relative to the service) we thought and for a few minutes we considered sending up just one of us. In the end we both went up because, what is 5 dollars each to spend on something we will do once? Once up to the top floor, I think it was the 13th floor, we had quite a good view of the landscape. However, I think the tower is actually too high. As you look out on the temples in the area they appear more like tiny dots without much detail. We spent a bit of time taking a rest on top and then headed our way down. On the map we were carrying there seemed to be a shortcut to the next place we were going and as we were bouncing down the sandy lanes we started signing 'born to be wild' (me, actually). Less than 5 minutes later our scooter was stuck in deep sand and it was obvious that we had taken a wrong turn. We pushed and cajoled our scooter out of the sand and up a ridge eventually, but by that point the headiness of riding around had faded. We took the long, and safe, way home. As we wound our way along the dusty tracks the sun was starting to set, so we saw a lot of people gathering at the temples for the sunset viewing. Today, we were going to skip that exercise because we had other plans, but the next day we would. 

Early (ish) the next day we hired a car to head to the nearby temple at Mt. Popa. The prior day at Nann Myint tower we had seen it far, far in the distance and from pictures it looked pretty neat, so we decided to get a driver to make the half day journey there and back. Our driver was pretty chill and the ride was fairly uneventful  except when we neared the mountain. Along the road were people in small groups and as we passed they would wave. At first I thought, surely, they are waving for a ride, but as we went on there were more and more people and they weren't gathered in one spot but spread about 50 meters apart. It was really odd. I would find out on the way back that they were waving to tourists and that sometimes people threw money out the windows at them. What a job, if you can call it that. 

Mt. Popa was pretty cool. Our driver dropped us about 1km from the start of the mountain as the road was jammed with buses and people. There were motor bike taxis, but we walked assuming it wouldn't be that far and it luckily turned out that it wasn't. The base of the hill was jam packed with pilgrims, cars, motorcycles, etc. It was a bizarre bazaar of people, animals, and machines. As we approached the staircase we were directed to take off our shoes. This was not unusual as every temple ground asked you to do this. From there forward we started climbing the stairs with the other pilgrims. The 770 stairs to the top were packed with people and the occasional monkey and we often had to stop to wait for people to clear out. Getting to the top was a beautiful view and we spent some time there enjoying the breeze before making the descent. At the bottom of the stairs, after retrieving our shoes, we tried to decide what to do next. Standing at the edge of the churning mass of people trying to figure out how to get to a look out point opposite Mt. Popa, we eventually decided that it would be too far/hard to walk it so we would need to get a taxi. We asked two motorbike driver who were chilling by the road, showed them the map, described the place, and then we each hoped on their bikes. It was a fun ride, but it ended too quickly and Aya and I both thought, what the hell? The bikes stopped on the main road to the town, not near where we were going. As it turns out they stopped right by our driver's car, but how did they know he was our driver? We never told them? It was odd, but we didn't ask what happened. We just kind of looked at each other and said, whatever, lets go back to town, because at that point we were getting pretty tired. Originally we did not have a plan for later in the day, but since we arrived back and had lunch around 2pm we thought we would rent an e-scooter again and just tool around to some temples aiming to watch the sunset. As we did we ran into our friends from Beijing and decided to go together to the sunset. Many of the temples in the area were off limits to people climbing them for pretty obvious reasons like instability of the temple and potential destruction from tourists. We did see some people breaking into areas they should not have been, but we avoided that and eventually we found a temple where people were clearly gathering  and watched from there, a very nice end to the day.

On the third day I got up early and had a run around the temples. It was nice and cool in the morning and the temples were beautiful in the morning light, but there was a lot of smoke from burning garbage and small cooking fires. Overall the air quality in Myanmar was pretty poor. We didn't know this for sure, as there are no official readings, but it was pretty clear by the thickness and smell of the air in Bagan, Inle, and Yangon. After my run we rented the scooter again and took the long route around to see some of the further temples that we hadn't before. It was a pretty leisurely day and we didn't get up to much. In the evening, Christmas Eve, we met up with our Beijing friends for dinner. It was quite a nice way to spend the holiday and our last night in Bagan. The next day, we were off to Yangon. 

Aung Traditional Puppetry

We had read about this place on trip advisor, or something, and figured that there wasn't much to do in the town of Nyaungshwe at night, so we should come early to guy tickets and secure our seats. Cost was about 5 dollars each, which I felt like it was a bit much as I looked around the small simple theater room, but probably worth it.

When we arrived back at 6:50 pm, ten minutes before the show start, we peeked inside and saw an empty room of about twenty chairs. At first we thought that maybe we got the time wrong, but we were asked inside and sat down with some tea and candies. We were given a book where people had written comments and then the madam disappeared behind a curtain. We thought for sure that more people would be coming, but as we paged through the visitor's book we saw that many of the entries were spaced far apart in date and some of them even said, "I was the only one here". So it was for us too, we got a private show!
The puppet master came at 6:55 and he and madam prepared the stage. They used a recording to introduce each of 20 different puppets and dances. I thought the recording was very cozy as it sounded like it was on a vinyl record and the accent of the woman speaking was kind of like an old English accent. Imagine the old recordings of the Jungle Book maybe and you can get an idea.

After we had watched the show we talked a bit with the puppet master and he told us he was from a family of puppeteers. He also tried to sell us some of the puppets they had on display. It worked! I bought one of the medium sized puppets for about 10 dollars. What a deal really! I would have gotten a larger one for about 35 dollars, but I was thinking about room in my bag so I didn't.
After the show we walked down the dark lanes of Inle, smiling a bit at the whimsical show we just witnessed. 

From Yangon to Nyaungshwe and Inle Lake

We arrived in Yangon in the afternoon and did not get up to much, so that part of this story is pretty bland, but the next morning we made our way to the airport and took a flight to Heho airport near the town of Nyaungshwe and Inle Lake. The flight itself was pretty good and the view from the plane was beautiful as we flew fairly low (ish) over the hills of Myanmar. After we touched down at Heho we had a bit of a problem as there were two drivers waiting there for us. Seems that Aya contacted our hotel about getting a driver and gave them our details, but they hotel never confirmed a driver and had in fact told her to just get a cab. So Aya booked another private driver instead. So there we were with two people standing there looking at us trying to figure out what was going on. In the end, we took the private driver and spent about 45 minutes getting from the airport to our hotel.

The road between the airport and the town of Nyaungshwe was fairly underdeveloped and at many places along the way it was clear they were trying to expand and improve the road with diggers and human laborers carrying cans of tar or baskets of gravel. It looked like extremely hard work, I thought to myself as I whisked by in my air conditioned car. Often we forget how lucky we are to have things we think are normal, like a flushing toilet or 24 hour access to electricity, but this was not one of those lapsing moments.
Our hotel, called Manle, was a pretty nice place. Very simple in it's layout, but nice. We spent a few nights here and the staff were very polite and always attentive. Of course, staff will be nice to customers, but there was something extra here and we were pretty impressed with the manners of people generally on our trip. I guess that is a saying about Myanmar, not much to see, but tourists come back for the people. I'm not totally sure I agree with the not much to see part, but I can fully agree about the people. Everyone we met was very nice and treated us fairly.
The two full days that we had at the lake we used to rent a boat and to see as much of the lake as we could and then the other day we just bummed about on the hotel bicycles, had some wine at a local winery in the hills, looking at some old temples, and eventually going to a puppet show at night. I have to say one of my favorite moments was the puppet show, but a close second was taking the bikes on a back road and just coming across some old stupas that no one else was looking at, or seeming caring to upkeep. Right after, we hit a kink in the road and weren't sure where to go, but a friendly monk stuck her head out the window of a building and waved us in the right direction. A moment later we passed a place called Hair Cats (a small place in the middle of nowhere, mind you) and a man called out, "Want a hair cat?"Aya will never forget it, I fear.

The lake is the main draw to the area, of course. We rented a boat for what would be about 25 dollars for the day. As with most things like this, it was partly understood that the driver would be taking us to shops and getting a commission if we bought anything. Before taking off we had lunch and then walked with the driver down to the canal to board the boat. It was a long wooden boat, which we were to find out later was made with local teak wood and lacquered with local tars. The engine was a long diesel engine that made quite a noisy put-put sound and it quickly got us through the canal and out into the open lake. It was a very nice day with some clouds, but mostly sunny and fairly warm. Cranes and other birds were doing their fishing along the shores and men were doing their fishing in the shallow lake.
We wouldn't really need long sleeves until later in the day as the sun was out and it was nearly noon. The smell of the fresh water, some decay of plants, and the expanse of the lake made me a little home sick as it reminded me of lake Michigan. Along the water's edge were many houses built on stilts as well as the occasional passing of another put putting boat. One of the things the lake is well known for is the fishermen who balance on the end of the wooden boats, keeping hold of the tilling oar with one leg and dipping their large wooden baskets into the water to fish. There were plenty enough of them, so much I wondered how the lake sustained itself.

We took about 45 minutes to make it all the way to the southern end of the lake where we then slowly made our way between smaller villages out on the water and from shop to shop seeing crafted silver, silks, wood, and other wares. Probably the most interesting place was a shop that had many looms for making fabric. The shop had various combinations of silk and lotus root textile, something I had never thought of before or seen, but it seemed to be quite rare and expensive. If nothing else it took the ladies working there an awfully long time to get all the root from the lotus in quantities large enough to weave them into textile. Of course, we had a walk about their shop too, but settled to have a tea and wait for our driver to get back rather than making a big purchase. I think overall our driver was disappointed as we only got one teak box with rolled cigarettes and didn't buy anything else our whole trip, not much commission for him. We also made our way through the "floating garden", what was essentially a floating boggy area, quite large, where tomatoes and other veggies were grown. I was quite impressed really. I bet the veggies were tasty.

At the end of the day we ended up at the "Jumping Cat" monastery where it was legend that the monks had trained cats to jump through hoops, but no longer did as it was seen as cruel. I don't know what is cruel about that, I really wanted to see some jumping cats, but all the cats there were not very jumpy. More the usual loungy type. We chilled for a bit and waited for the sunset, what was touted as a must see. Nearing dusk, we entered back to our boat and made our way the rest of the way across the lake as the sun set over the mountains. With the put putting in our ears, the lake smell in our nose and the golden rays slicing through mountains and clouds, it was a beautiful end to a very nice day.