myanmar day 4 and 5

May 3, 2016

Today was going to be an interesting day as we just had to kill time before our night bus to Bagan at 8:00pm.  We were a little uncertain about how to plan our day.  As Yangon's temperatures were uncomfortably over 100 F, we didn't want to be too sweaty and sticky on the bus.  We tried to be a bit aware of that when planning our day, but in the end, it wouldn't matter as standing outside for 10 seconds is enough to make you sweat.

On this morning we didn't go to the gym.  Erik went for a walk along the train tracks and I stayed in packing my things.  It was our last day of breakfast at the hotel and the menu did shuffle a bit again, but it was more or less the same sort of food.  Our hotel offered a shuttle service to the Bogyoke Aung San Market (The market we intended to visit on the first day), so we utilized this service and began our day once again at 11:00am.  The shuttle was quick and before we knew it, we were at the market.

I wasn't looking for anything in particular to buy, but was keen to find a bit of knick knacks here and there that I could give as souvenirs.  If there was one thing I wanted to find, it was a good-priced Chinlone, a rattan weaved ball used to play a form of kick ups.

The market was quite interesting and the layout was terribly confusing.  It was definitely a maze where I assume many people end up  walking around in circles.  There seemed to be lots of jewelry stores as well as fabric stores, both of which had no interest to me.  We walked around a few times and by a certain point, I managed to lose a lot of my energy.  We found a donut shop across the street that had AC so we sat in there for a while.  We even went inside of a modern and very western department store to escape the heat outside.  When we left, we both had a decent haul of various Myanmar items.  I found a Chinlone and paid 3000 Kyatt, I think, for it.

The exterior of the market

Within the market

Interior of the nice section

The market turned out to be very near the Yangon Main Station.  We walked towards the main station with the intention of catching the circular train back to our hotel.  On the way, we stopped by a sporting goods store for the 3rd consecutive day to buy some of the things that interested us, a Myanmar National Jersey, and a Takraw: a Southeast Asian weaved ball used for playing a volleyball-like sport with your feet.  We thought we would have found more opportunities to find products and cheaper prices in the market, but we were wrong and ended up buying from the sporting goods store.  It was nothing to complain about though as the official Takraw ball was only 5,000 Kyatt ($5).  I later found a Takraw ball being sold on Amazon Japan for around $20.

When we got to the station we found out that the ticket was an additional 100 Kyatt.  We were surprised as to why it was 300 Kyatt as opposed to 200 Kyatt and the reason for that was that we would be riding on the AC Train.  As expected, the AC Train was an old JR Train.

In many ways, I found this train to be worse than the standard train.  The windows were closed but the AC wasn't strong enough to make the entire car cool.  To make things worse, the closed windows and recycled air also caused the car to be stink.  Whether it be from the body odor of everyone in the train or the foods that were being distributed, it was stink and not particularly cool.  Luckily, it was a short train ride back to our hotel.

We went back to the hotel and decided that we would eat dinner there as it was the easiest option.  It turns out, the fitness center in the hotel had a separate locker and showers, so we were able to take a shower after all.  We were told that we should catch a taxi about 2 hours prior to our departure time because of heavy traffic and it turned out to work perfectly.  Our taxi left the hotel at 6 and spent nearly 1.5 hours in traffic.

Our VIP bus wasn't so VIP, but it was comfortable enough to find a few hours worth of shut eye.  The bus ride was around 9 hours long.  Departing Yangon at 8pm and arriving in Bagan at around 5am.  Why the strange hours? I don't know.  As one would expect, the roads were, for the most part, bumpy.  It was manageable though and not bumpy enough to lead to motion sickness.  The bus made a stop at around 11pm for a bathroom break.  This highway rest stop was a bit surreal.  It was after 11pm and the rest stop was crowded with many locals.  It was also big and impressive as well.

Highway Rest Stop

Canteen area

Snack stalls

I ended up buying a drink and meat bun to satisfy a bit of my hunger.  It wasn't great, but it wasn't so bad either.  The bus ride continued and I must have fell asleep, as before I knew it, we were stopping for the final time in Bagan.

May 4, 2016

When we exited the bus, the taxi drivers were quick to ask us where we were going.  It was still early, it was still hot.  We just wanted to get to our hotel.  Our hotel was close to the Bus Center so the ride was relatively short.  Along the way we had to pay a 25,000 Kyatt entrance fee to Bagan.  We arrived at our hotel and the sun had already risen by that point.  As expected, a room was not ready for us yet.  The hotel workers suggested we go out looking at the pagodas and return at a later time when our room would be ready.  We took them up on that offer and went out looking for an E-bike to rent.

We found a little store a block away that was renting out what looked like mopeds.  They were electric mopeds, so were referred to as e-bikes.  As I had experience with riding a moped before, I knew I was going to have a great time.  The mopeds had a top speed around 45kph, fast enough to get to where you need to go and slow enough to remain safe.  We paid 6,000 Kyatt to rent the bike for the day and were off on our way.

The first temple was literally a few 100 meters down from the rental place.  It was a bit surprising how near it was.  Just in front of us stood an ancient temple and we could drive right up to it.

Main road in Bagan

The first few temples and pagodas were quite interesting.  It was fun as well to explore on your own.

As it was still early in the morning, many of the larger temples were still locked.  We approached one of the temples and a lady nearby came to us asking if we wanted to look inside.

Her name was MawMaw (pronounced momo) and she showed us all around one of the temples.  It was dark inside but she had a light to show us the details of the paintings on the wall and also the large statues of Buddha inside.  I was impressed.  There are over 2,000 temples still remaining (approx. 10,000 in ancient times) in the area and each one of them were constructed with exquisite detail.

At the end of our short "tour" Mawmaw wanted to sell us sand paintings of Bagan.  While I didn't really want to buy one, a few of them were quite nice.  To sort of thank her for opening the temple and showing us around, I bought a painting and I'm sure it made her happy.

We continued exploring around.  Bagan reminded me of a theme park of sorts.  The main road circled the area where all of the temples and pagodas were.  My poor estimate says the area would be around 21 square km.  Within this area laid the approximate 2000 or so temples.  Most of them were accessible through dirt paths.  Having a moped to navigate these dirt paths, I really enjoyed riding through Bagan.  The only negative was the 100 degree weather.  All of the temples were more or less the same. 

There were a few temples that you could climb to the top.  These were the temples that were the ideal place to watch the sunset or sunrise.

After a certain point it became too hot.  We had to take a break.  We headed back to the hotel around 11 to check in and eat lunch.  The hotel wasn't so great but it wasn't so bad either.  It was comfortable enough to rest.  I had a Bagan-styled curry for lunch.  It was great.  After taking a short nap and realizing that this hotel didn't have access to any sports channels, we went back out to look at more temples and eventually catch the sunset.

Bagan had a small market area that seemed worthwhile to check out.  It was a market for the locals as there was nothing particularly interesting for foreigners to buy.  We didn't spend much time there and didn't buy anything there either.

The forecast predicted heavy thunderstorms to approach around the time of sunset.  Despite of this, we headed for a pagoda to climb and attempted to watch the sunset with a few others.  But as predicted, the thunderstorms came.  Although we missed out on the opportunity to see the sunset, it was an experience to watch the thunderstorm roll in as well and then race the clouds on our mopeds back to the rental store.

The rain lasted for only an hour or so.  When we returned our moped, we waited in the store for the rain to pass.  The family that owned the store were happy to talk to us and wanted to share a local fruit as well.  I don't know the name of the fruit, but it wasn't good.  I also suspected that one of us might get sick from eating this fruit.  But the family offered it to us and were kind, we took it and ate it.

The rain stopped so we headed back to the hotel.  We played a bit of makeshift chinlone outside of our hotel room and the power cut out.  The hotel had a generator to keep the electricity running, but it was clear that all or most of Bagan was out of power.  Dinner time approached and there was a street a few blocks down known as "Restaurant Street".  The streets and sidewalks were still a bit flooded from the rain and we literally chose the first restaurant on that street.  It offered a variety of foods. The power was still out so the restaurant was lit by candles.  I was hungry and wanted to try a variety of foods.  I ordered Bagan Curry and Fried Rice.  I finished all of it and wasn't finished yet.  I topped it all off with chocolate ice cream that was really refreshing on a hot night.

There wasn't much to Bagan so we headed back to the hotel and called it a night, hoping that we could manage to wake up at 5am to catch the sunrise the next morning.