bagan

As we were flying to Yangon, I filled Rocky full of what to expect: a country so steeped in the past there would be no credit cards, atms, foreign advertising, and maybe even no electricity. You can imagine my chagrin when we landed in a new airport, walked off the gangway to be greeted by a giant sign that read, "Mastercard Welcomes you to Myanmar." I guess they have electricity...

The next morning we took a flight out of the domestic terminal. Let's just say Mastercard was not advertising there. Rocky says the only building that compares with it is the old PG rec center. To say security was lax would be un understatement. I threw my bag on the conveyer belt and walked through holding my phone in one hand, with my watch on the other. Didn't seem to bother anyone. I'm not even entirely sure the computers scanning the bags were working--not that I was carrying anything interesting. 

This is the domestic terminal from the outside:

You can't buy domestic tickets online, they are handwritten, so we bought our tickets when we'd arrived Yangon. We thought we were getting a great deal and were feeling great about our trip when we realized we'd only bought one way tickets. We tried several travel agencies and even an Air Bagan store, but it turns out Mastercard is not really that welcome as no one would take credit cards. We would have to buy our tickets when we go there. 

Once we landed in Bagan, the first difference was the scooters. They were everywhere and they were full. We counted between 3-5 people on all of them. We had arrived on a full moon day and there was a festival taking place at one of the temples. 

By the time we got to our hotel and had them call on the flights for the next morning, they were all full. The night flight the next day wouldn't get us back intime for our flight home. We were left with two options--the train or the night bus. The hotel staff very strongly recommended not taking the train (it was over 15 hours) so we booked the night bus and headed out to enjoy our 8 hours in Bagan. 

The temples of Bagan were built between 800-1300. At it's height, there were over 10,000 temples. Only 2,200 remain. It's amazing (in the true sense of the word). 

We rented bikes. This was the first time I'd been on a non-stationary bike in about 10 years. I just signed up for an adventure race that involves biking, so I figured this would be my training. 

To say I was bad would be an understatement. In me defense, conditions were not the best--the sand was deep and I'm pretty sure my bike was left over from colonial Britain.

Thanks to Rocky having my camera and thinking it was hilarious to watch me, I have a million pictures like this. The moment he didn't capure was when we were riding through tall cacti on either side and he said, "Be careful, you don't want to end up in the cactus." Less than 5 seconds later, I was picking cactus spines out of me feet.

I'm not sure if the laxness was due to the massive size of the park or because tourism is new or if they're just generally really lax (Asia) but there didn't seem to be any rules. One local helped us rock climb the outside of a temple to reach the top. He kept telling us to be careful--which is good advice as falling would lead to our immediate deaths. 

A local village that makes laquerware. Since bus prices are a fraction of air prices, we decided to spend what would have been my plane ticket on laquerware. Mainly so I could have something to focus on during what was described online as a "special kind of torture."

The hotel we never actually stayed at.

Not that it stopped us from storing our bags, using their pool, renting their bikes, and eating their breakfast (we did pay for that--it was a full English breakfast, I've never been able to refuse one).

It looked really nice. I tried to block it from my mind on the bus. The bus really wasn't too bad, it was no Harry Potter Knight Bus, but after the 30 plus hour flights with two kids, a nine hour bus ride is almost relaxing.