Destination – Myanmar
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Bagan – Crazy Stupa Love
We take a 5
to 7 hour bus ride to Bagan (the roads are atrocious) finally hitting the
tourist trail. Ok, our first impressions are much better. Accommodation is
better, restaurants are much better and there’s even a bit of infrastructure.
It’s cleaner and nicer and the people look a bit happier and much healthier. You
can see immediately the difference a little tourism can bring to their lives.
Their housing is better, small (really small) businesses sprout from every front
doorway, people have scooters (Yangon has to be the only place in South East Asia
where you can’t see any scooters on the roads, really weird) all the kids are
wearing sandals and even the dogs are chubbier. The streets are still unpaved
but we can’t see open sewerage running anywhere. So, we are beginning to see a BIG
winning argument for not boycotting independent tourism to this country.
Anyway, we
change hotels just to come back to the first one, not perfect but we’ll try to
manage. We find a nice place to eat, San Marco Restaurant, and go back there
over and over again. We get two full nights and full a day of torrential rain
and again catch up on movies and reading. On the third day we resurrect and finally
manage to do some sightseeing and we are blown away with the beauty of the
largest archeological site in the world. A massive display of thousands of stupas
covering a huge area. It’s really amazing and again you can check
out our pics.
We
hire a car with a driver and get around the whole site and the beauty of this
place really dawns on us. We walk around, talk to some very bright kids and buy
some trinkets to help a bit. A pretty young woman selling bracelets comes to me
and asks me for my lipstick and of course I hand it over to her and get the
loveliest smile back. It’s just a used a tube of Nivea lipbalm but no young
woman should go without lipstick, not on my watch. A bright little girl
speaking pretty good English starts talking to us at another site and starts acting as our tour
guide. We let her as she really seems to know everything and is really sweet.
When I offer to pay for her “services” she pulls a plastic wallet with some
cute little animals she drew and coloured and tells me not to give her money
but to buy some of her work, which of course we do. Awesome. Again, we can’t
stress enough how nice and sweet the people are in this country. YES, we have
yet another unforgettable day. I think Bagan is even more impressive than
Angkor Wat, Paul thinks Angkor is better. I guess you have to eventually come
and decide for yourself. 