Bagan

Bagan became our last destinations in Myanmar. Although we were supposed to go to Inle Lake because of Rita's food poisoning problems we run out of time. Both of us felt extremely happy though about such course of events. The 16 hour bus ride from Mandalay to Bagan was more than enough of pain and yet another to Inle Lake would have been to much. Imagine the state of the road considering that it was only 145km's from Mandalay?!

Tomek was looking forward to arriving to Bagan for one specific reason - our guide book said that Bagan has two types of food to offer - pizza and non-pizza; and pizza was supposed to resemble Italian pizza. It was more than you might possible want after a long bus ride - and this time the pizza lived up to its promises. He was delighted. The following two days in Bagan we concentrated on eating things that would not make us sick. The thought that in a couple of days we will be in London with all its goodies made every single day quite a pain. We had enough of rice, watching out for getting sick and the heat - we just dreamed about 'summer' in London. It is definitely much harder to survive in tough conditions once you know when you will move on to the less severe ones.

Bagan as such could compete with Angor Wat - it is as beautiful and almost completely tourist free. It was supposed to be a UNESCO world heritage site but the local government rejected cooperation. The ruins of Bagan cover an area of 16 square miles. The majority of its buildings were built in the 1000s to 1200s, during the time Bagan was the capital of the First Burmese Empire. We have spent two days visiting tens of temples in the surrounding area. Most of them in good shape and beautiful setting. The first day we hired a horse cart to look around and the second we roamed on bicycles. The sunset we have watched from one of the temples was beautiful.

The horse cart industry is by the way doing great in this place - every year there are more and more of them on the streets - literally they dominate the landscape at the moment. Obviously it says much about the development of the economy - and unfortunate lack of tourists. Bagan as such is though much better prepared to take in many more tourists - probably some years back there must have been bigger groups coming in.

All in all we took it easy in Bagan - we were mentally preparing ourselves for the last stretch of our trip in South East Asia - back by bus to Yangon (another 14h), by plane to Bangkok and then to London for a week of 'vacation'...

We both have come to the same conclusion about Myanmar - it is very much worth visiting and it is quite easy to travel around (definitely easier than in India which boasts millions of tourists every year). So if you can go there - people will be happy and you do not have to give your money to the government....Burmese people are very friendly and do not deserve to be punished even more by everyone avoiding their country (their government makes their lives hard enough). The sanctions imposed by international community take a heavy toll on the local population but we doubt that on anybody else...