Day 131 Bagan Day 1 15 June 2012

Unfortunately we had to get up yet again at 4 am to catch our flight to Bagan, Myanmar’s most famous temple complex. It was interesting having breakfast at the 24 hours restaurant, while the young and restless were still having a drink. After our flight, we went straight into sightseeing. Aung, our excellent guide took us to several of Bagan’s 2500 pagodas while enlightening us with many stories of Buddha and the history and artwork of the temples.

In this temple the Buddha appears to be smiling from a distance but gets more serious as you come closer. According to our guide this is because the poor common folk (far away) are truly happy, the middle class smiles without heart, and the rich can only be serious.

We had an excellent lunch at a vegetarian restaurant (pumpkin and tamarind leaves curry) before we headed to the hotel. Since it was truly hot (41C/105F) we spent the hottest hours of the day by the pool. At 3:30 we continued with more temples and pagodas, bringing us ultimately to a magnificent panorama sunset view.

The slightly disappointing dinner at the hotel was compensated by a lovely marionette performance, including an act by Ana.

Some of the more interesting stories we heard during the day were:

Myanmar should eat bitter for their stomach, salty for their teeth/mouth, oil for their ears and drink water for their eyes.  They have a lot to choose from in their markets. This is the worlds longest bean, called a snakebean:

A rooster says ”O ie ie O”, 1^st time around 9pm for the baby to go to sleep, 2^nd time around midnight for the adults to sleep and the 3^rd  time at 4am to wake up (as we have already experienced!).