The Land of 1,000 Temples

The ancient city of Bagan, former capital of Burma, is an arid, dusty plain covering about 16 square miles. The ruins of over 2,000 temples and stupas, most dating from the 11th to 13th centuries, dot the landscape. It is a surreal and breathtakingly beautiful place.

Many tourists - myself included - choose to travel around Bagan in one of the hundreds of traditional horse carts. Most of the roads are unpaved, so it is a convenient and inexpensive way to get around. As long as you're not in a hurry. And if you are in a hurry, what the heck are you doing in Bagan anyway???

These horse carts are pretty and quaint, but after about an hour of clomping up and down I was like, "Can we stop at the nearest chiropractor???" It was incredibly uncomfortable no matter which position I shifted myself into.

We stopped in Old Bagan for lunch. At a local market, a young girl was making a toffee-colored candy that she was kneading in rice flour like bread. I decided to buy some, which she weighed using an old-fashioned scale & counterweight system. The girl spoke no English and she giggled constantly through the whole transaction - I don't think many foreigners made purchases from her! I saw these same counterweight scales used everywhere; only at one Yangon market I noticed a woman who had a digital scale, which suddenly looked so...strangely modern! She must have been the envy of the market with her flashy new scale.

I later stopped at a tea shop for some hot sweet tea with milk. I went to use the restroom, and a young boy in the kitchen pointed to a lopsided wooden shed in their backyard. A real outhouse! Except the ceiling was so low I couldn't fit inside... Oh yeah, all the guys in the kitchen found this incredibly amusing. And then I went back and took my seat at the tiny 16-inch high plastic stool. There's a giant in the tea shop!

Trucks and buses were coming into the town that were jam-packed, with people literally hanging out the windows. My horse cart driver explained that they were coming to the full moon festival at Ananda Temple, one of the largest and most famous temples in Bagan. All around the temple a mini-encampment had been set up: families were pitching makeshift tents, cooking, eating and sleeping for 3 or 4 days in anticipation of the upcoming festival.

I really enjoyed the three days I spent in Bagan (although my spine might answer otherwise...). In fact, it was one of my favorite places anywhere.

Before I left home for Myanmar I imagined that the temples of Bagan would be the highlight of my trip. And though they were amazing to see, it was actually the people I encountered that were the highlight of my trip: the three generations of women who followed me around the morning market determined to get me to buy some tanaka, the natural sunscreen women and children wear on their faces... the young man with dark, sad eyes who explained the murals inside a temple, showed me his own paintings, and then sat and drank tea with me... the group of kids selling postcards (does anyone send postcards anymore??) who followed me around a temple, more interested in practicing English than whether or not I bought their postcards... the ancient monk in red robes who I was surprised to find at the top of a crumbling 1,000-year old staircase who twirled a £1 coin in his hand. "Do you know how many dollar for one Pound?" he asked. [People everywhere seemed to have collections of coins from around the world in their pockets, and were always asking if I knew how many dollars a particular coin was worth]. I told the monk I wasn't sure how much. Then he handed me a worn leather journal and asked me to write "what I though about Myanmar."

What I thought about Myanmar? Broken, but beautiful. The people held together by tradition and Buddhism. And hope. I wonder how long that can last?