Thante Hotel Nyaung Oo Bagan

After getting high 45 deg in Mandalay we finally reached the desert!! so hooooot... The way to visit the hundreds of payas (some from 12th century) was to wake up at 5am, take a bike and visit til 9am, take a breakfast, a nap, wake up for internet and food, nap again, go to the pool of local hotel, then on the bike again from 5 to 8pm. They say the place is a bit like Angkor.. will see, but it is amazing.

... always smooth or clean?), it looked run down. Bill wandered in and told me that there was a lot of graffiti here and the floor was broken up. Soe Mingyi Monestary (Somingyi Kyaung) is named after the lady who sponsored the construction around 1204. This monastery is unique because it has monastic cells clustered around a courtyard. We climbed the flimsy wooden staircase to walk around. There was not much to see here. Nagayon Temple has a ...

Journey from Inle Lake to Bagan was surprisingly smooth except the very first bit, getting to the junction where the bus collects passengers. It was 11km away from the town. I did not realize that for a moto drive at 4am might be a little chilly. Thanks to the temperature of around 5°C and wearing only a light jumper I was really freezing. Cambodia's got Angkor Wat, Thailand's got Sukhothai and Ayuthaya and Myanmar's got Bagan. I spent 3 days there and had a very good ...

Bagan Bagan is located in the middle of Burma. It was home to an empire about 1000 years ago that prided itself on building numerous temples and stupas. Some say there were over 10,000 temples there, now only about 2000 remain. The place is stunning, I preferred it to Angkor Wat. Bagan is a place where the sum of the parts is greater than the individual. Even the most impressive temples don't compare to others ...

As is*lated as Burma is and has been fr*m the *utside w*rld f*r the bett** (m*st gl*bally and techn*l*gically pr*gressive) part *f the past century, v**y few c*untries really d* require m*re pre-reading than h**e. Ov** the past week I s*mewhat quickly fished thr*ugh a th*r*ughly appr*achable, brisk, yet surprisingly c*mprehensive hist*ry *f Burma, a p**s*nal and hist*rical narrative that shed th*ught-pr*v*king light *n Burma's current p*siti*n in t*day's w*rld, and the decisi*ns ...

... we explained to Zaw the situation and we disappeared into town for a couple of hours and Zaw got rid of the lacquerware man. It was a relief to be leaving Bagan. We must have seen about 20-30 pagodas and started to get really bored of them. We did visit a village though and they showed us their handicrafts and we had some tea (and bought a longee).

... the driver. The outside usually had all sorts of wreaths and incense for further protection. Judging from the roads, we could use all the help we could get We traveled on the main highway through the country. A pot-holed, two-lane, mess that was not wide enough for two large vehicles to pass each other without one moving slightly off to the right. Each public vehicle had to have a person on the left as a watcher. Why? Because the Burmese are the only ...

... built. Sadly it was only open 6 years before the British blew 2 of its spans in 1942 in the face of the advancing Japanese and it was over a decade before it was repaired. Now its been supplanted by a new Chinese built bridge which handles most of the traffic, but its still an impressive piece of early twentieth century construction when seen from half a mile downriver. Sadly it was now too late in the day to visit any of the old royal capitals of Burma which litter this area ...

... but also - admittedly - some good dance presentations by the wife), doesn't constitute the evening of entertainment I'd expected. So, I'm sorry, a thumbs down from me. The act still needs quite a bit of work. The Royal Palace in Mandalay is a replica, so you should wonder who would be interested in forking out the required $10 to get in. Obviously, the entry ticket also covers ...

... paid by the British proconsul and the Burmese city mayor. Men unloading a boat, running with sacks up and down planks, women doing their laundry at the river, a goldsmith, kids, shops, small town life. On the 2nd day evening and the 3rd day morning we went ashore to explore Inn Wha (Ava), also a former capital city, now a rural village. Interesting was the monastery completed in 1822, so ...