Templing
Trip Start
Nov 07, 2006
1
6
9
Trip End
Nov 18, 2006
Bagan, Myanmar
Sunday, November 19, 2006
I got up bright and early, had breakfast, then packed my bags for the move to the upscale "New Park Hotel" 8 dollar guesthouse. The manager of the guesthouse I was leaving was visibly insulted by the fact that I was leaving after one night but, well, he's the one who is responsible for the leaky bathroom pipes that left the floor in an uncomfortable puddle the whole time.
After checking into my new place I rented a bicycle and hit the road. You probably think that I went for the cheaper (1,000 kyat) bicycle, but no, this time I sprang for the best. (When I can go up market for only an additional 39 cents per day, then count me in!) I set off on my tour and after about a half an hour, the damned pedal fell off of my bike! You would think that it would have been as easy to put back on as it was for it to fall off
01-My favorite temple
. No such luck. Even a few friendly passing locals tried to help me - to no avail. So I had to bring the (new?) bike back for a replacement. I also told the bike shop owner that I wanted a different new bike but that I was going to pay the old bike price due to the inconvenience that I had been caused as the result of the pedal mishap. He could see that I was in no mood to compromise and he accepted my terms.So, once again I set off on my tour, by now with half of the morning gone. It's kind of difficult to describe temples with words, so I'll do it mostly with pictures. I would like to say, however, that the temples of Bagan can be summarized as follows: Basically lots and lots of temples spread out across the landscape - with the occasional spectacular one. My Lonely Planet travel guide gives the following description: "Bagan is the most wondrous sight in Myanmar, if not Southeast Asia." Essentially, from the years 1057 to 1287, Bagan was gripped by a temple-building frenzy. It might not seem like a long period given that it was so long ago, but this period of 230 years corresponds exactly to the amount of time that the United States has existed as a political entity. So imagine, for example, that America had been in a temple-building mode for its entire existence.
This brings up another interesting comparison: I have noticed in my travels that places that expended a lot of effort and resources building unproductive assets (like Bagan, Angkor Wat, Egypt, etc.), for all of their aesthetic beauty, suffered greatly economically for their misallocation of resources. Two hundred thirty years of temple building nearly a thousand years ago and Burma is yet to recover economically from that waste. (Okay, putting socialism on top of that didn't help either.) The very same 230 years of productive investment has made the U.S
02-Temple landscape of Bagan
. the richest country in history.Back to the temple tour: Just as I was about to keel over from heat and exhaustion, the clean, lovely Sarabha Restaurant appeared before me, so I stopped there for a traditional Burmese pizza. After recovering my strength I proceeded with my temple tour. Arriving at the very next temple, a man said to his wife a sentence in some strange language containing the word "csinos". Well, what a coincidence: From my days of living in Hungary, I recognize that word to mean "good looking". I talked to the guy and he was in fact from Budapest and he was commenting to his wife on my "outfit" (rather than me!), which he found to be particularly appropriate for the setting. (I was wearing my usual Camel pants and shirt with the wide-brimmed Camel hat - my "adventurer" look.) The gentleman and his wife were dressed a bit too warmly for the occasion and were hiding out in the shade inside of the cool temple trying to recover. I took the opportunity to rekindle a bit of my Hungarian by telling them the two Hungarian jokes that I remember from my time in Hungary, which I will repeat here because I think they are funny:
A man knocks at the door of a house and says to the homeowner answering the door: "Your money or your life." The man then turns to his wife and says "My life, it's for you!" (To understand this joke you have to know that the Hungarian language has many terms of endearment
03-Pyramid-like temple
. So it is common for a man to refer to his wife in such was as "my dear; my heart; my life; my sweet; my little rabbit; etc.) Trust me, the joke works in Hungarian!In the other joke, there is a river with special miracle healing properties. A blind man goes to this river and rubs some of the water in his eyes - and then shouts "I can see again!" Then a deaf man goes to the river and puts some of the water on his ears. "I can hear again", he shouts. Then a crippled man wheels his wheelchair into the river. "Hey, new tires!" he joyfully exclaims. Ha! I'll be you didn't see that one coming! (Which is what makes it funny!) Mind you, I heard this joke on Hungarian television - in Hungarian. It was the first joke I was able to understand in Hungarian, although I had to run it through my mind a few times before I got it. (The Hungarian word for "tire" is the same word as for "rubber", so when I thought he said "New rubber", I didn't get it. About five minutes later, when I realized that he meant "tire", I was able to have my laugh.)
Anyway, back to the plot: I spent the rest of the day riding around looking at temples. My rear end was sore from the small, hard bicycle seat and I wanted to quit earlier, but on my way back to the hotel, there were just so many temples that I just couldn't pass by without stopping to look at and photograph them. Now I'm glad that I tolerated the suffering.
Later that evening I had dinner at an Indian restaurant in the little town of Nyaung Oo. (For clarification, there are three little "towns" in the area of the temples in the Bagan archaeological zone: Old Bagan, New Bagan and Nyaung Oo. I stayed in Nyaung Oo, which is closest to the airport and which has most of the budget accommodation and restaurants. Even then, it's a very small village with only one paved road.) Just off of the paved road is the "real" Burmese village life.
