3:30am wake up call for 6am flight!! This morning a couple from our group decided to go home, the lady that turned around after an hour of the golden rock walk and her husband stayed in Yangon to get an earlier flight home, a friend that came with them said she was finding it too hot with the trekking.
Anyway, we arrived in Bagan which was lovely, much quieter and scattered with pagodas which were much more natural and rustic looking, most of them just brick. We made a stop on our way to a market which was buzzing and selling everything for tourists and mainly locals. Emma, Rachel, Jo and I all bought a women's version of a longyi, so basically a long wrap around skirt - I now own a skirt!!!!
In its height Bagan had 13,000 temples and pagodas and now there are just over 2,000. We hopped off the retro coach onto bikes for the afternoon which was a great way to get around the pagodas. Around some of the larger pagodas were several stalls and locals trying to sell various items including clothes, puppets, Buddha's, jewellery, bells etc which after a while got very tiring as some of them were quite insistent.
To finish the day off we cycled to another big pagoda to see the sunset over the landscape of pagodas. Xi had suggested we get there early (about 4:30) to get a good spot so it was obviously going to be a good place to see the sunset. We climbed up 3 lots of very steep and shallow steps and avoided the top where most people carried on up to. It started to become heaving with tourists as coaches started to drop them all off. We had a good spot and saw a lovely sunset (pictures will follow hopefully). Nb: Sun sets about 5:30 here
Our hotel was amazing: Thazin Gardens, really up market, very well looked after and an amazing pool with pergolas all round. It had a lovely big green lawn with its own small brick pagoda in the middle, our group had dinner on the lawn and we wore our new Myanmar style skirts! How very civilised!!!!
