Bagan: Beautiful People, Beautiful Place

My trip to Bagan was highly anticipated to say the least. Semester at Sea obviously hired a seasoned veteran to advertise this particular trip, because I was sold from the minute I read these words:

 

“Bagan is a truly mesmerizing destination, and often the favorite of seasoned travelers. Bagan can only be described as amazing and enchanting. You will experience the essence of Myanmar in a place still largely unaffected by the 21st century. Nobody leaves disappointed, only engrossed.”

 

Ok, Semester at Sea.

 

You got me.

 

So, from the minute we landed in Bagan, I had a feeling that this place was going to be different than anywhere before it. Even the airport was unlike anything I had seen before. I think the same guy who flew the plane was also the one to unload our bags, walk us through immigration, and lead us to our busses. No joke.

 

 

We arrived late in the day after our full day tour of Yangon and two blisteringly hot flights (seriously, I just can’t even explain the sweat), so we regrouped quickly at our hotel and headed out to dinner at a local restaurant. Not only were we treated to yet another amazing Burmese meal, but we had the opportunity to watch a cultural marionette show while we ate. While at first this felt like another inauthentic ‘Cambodian dance’ experience (please see ‘Cambodia Called: The Temples Are Here’), I actually felt as though I got a better sense of the Burmese people through their performance. The music was happy and light and the characters were jovial and satirical. There was a lot of laughter in the air around that dinner.

 

 

Afterwards, I was exhausted, so I finally treated my body to more than just a few hours of sleep.

 

It was thankful.

 

The next morning we got our first taste of Burmese hospitality in the form of a private sunrise buffet breakfast outside of our hotel. The meal and the atmosphere were beautiful and the service was so attentive and helpful that I felt as though I was eating a meal with close friends. Such a peaceful way to start the day!

 

 

From there, we started a very full day of sightseeing and touring all over Bagan. We began our morning the way that many locals do by visiting the daily food and vegetable market. At first, we were so out of place that I felt as though we were intruding on their personal space.

 

 

But this market, like so many others in Southeast Asia, had begun to cater to tourists as well. So where the fresh cut meat and homegrown vegetables ended, the ridiculous souvenirs and locally designed clothing began.  But the ingratiating smiles still seemed to abound everywhere.

 

 

After we had been given jasmine for our hair by local women and samples of food from the gracious vendors, we continued on our tour with our first of what would be many pagodas over the next two days. This particular pagoda, Shwe Zigon Zedi, was painted completely in gold and was stunning in the morning sunlight. We wandered around just mesmerized by the intricacies and details that set this site apart from many of the others.

 

 

Just outside the pagoda sat our next mode of transportation waiting to take us to another pagoda. What might that have been, you ask?

 

PONY CARTS! DUH!

 

 

At first I was beyond excited. We were finally getting the chance to weave our way through all the temples without being restricted to the tiny amount of actual roads in town. Then I remembered one inconvenient detail: I’m incredibly allergic to horses.

 

Oh well, as they say on Semester at Sea—YOLO!

 

Onward, Seabiscuit!

 

This part of the tour was hands-down my favorite. The horses were able to take us among hundreds of pagodas and temples, over the dirt roads of the desert to places where there were no roads at all. Our driver stopped every few hundred yards for us to take pictures of the various famous pagodas, and we laughed and talked the entire ride. It was really magical to watch the scenery and realize just how lucky and blessed we were to be there.

 

 

Our horse’s final destination was yet another pagoda called Ananda, which is one of the most famous in the region of Bagan. It had some of the most beautiful niches and Buddhas we had seen all day.

 

 

The rest of the day seemed to fly by in a blur of culture and temples.

 

We stopped at a small elementary school and fed school children their afternoon meal.

 

 

We ate lunch at a gorgeous garden restaurant overlooking the water.

 

 

We visited a temple with a giant reclining Buddha.

 

 

And last but not least… We climbed to the top of a pagoda for a breath-taking panoramic view of Bagan.

 

 

THIS PLACE WAS AMAZING!

 

We climbed down, well, more like reluctantly crawled down, and continued on our way to our sunset destination—the Irrawady River.

 

 

We boarded boats and set out to watch the incredible sunset on the river. The sunsets in Southeast Asia are especially amazing because the sun turns a deep purply-red before it finally falls behind the last clouds over the horizon. I still haven’t been able to quite capture it’s awesomeness with my limited camera and iPhone, but I still try every time.

 

 

By the time the sun had set, our tummies were rumbling. Then, after an hour drive in the bus, our mouths were grumbling. Where on EARTH could be we going and what in the WORLD was taking so long?! The questions increased as we turned down a dark alley into what appeared to be a quiet neighborhood. These same questions got louder and more concerned as we descended from the bus and began our walk down the dirt path in front of us. What’s happening?!

 

But then… we saw it…

 

 

An entire pagoda lit with every version of pink and orange and purple and red imaginable.

 

And next to it, was our dinner.

 

 

It turns out, that while we had been driving around ‘aimlessly,’ workers were scrambling to put tiki-torches in the ground to light our walkway to a beautifully decorated, candle lit dinner. They had cooked the meal several miles away and driven it to the pagoda to then set up a kitchen on site to add the finishing touches for us. They had even planned a performance with two Burmese men in an elephant suit performing acrobatics with musicians playing in the background. Seriously.

 

 

These people are just something else!! I can’t stress enough how amazing they were. So attentive and caring. So selfless and ingratiating. The whole evening was among the most memorable of my trip.

 

The next morning, a few of us separated from the bigger group to try and catch the sunrise. We rented bikes from the hotel and cruised through the desert to the Shew San Taw pagoda, which was famous for its sunrise view. We climbed 50 nearly vertical stairs up the side of the pagoda and were rewarded with one of the best views I have ever seen in my life.

 

 

Sunrise. Pagodas. Hot-air balloons. Trees. Desert. Colors. Skyline.

 

AHHHHHH AWESOME!

 

This was one of my favorite parts of the trip. All of the greatness of the pony rides without any of the sneezing. Perfect.

 

After getting our minds blown by the beauty of Bagan at sunrise, we headed back to the hotel for breakfast followed by a ride to Mount Popa, another one of Bagan’s main attractions. The mountain itself is actually part of a volcano that erupted years ago on top of which monks have constructed a gorgeous Buddhist temple. It was a sight to say the very least.

 

 

We climbed the over 700 stairs to the top… And by us, I mean me and the monkeys, of course.

 

 

Those little guys were everywhere!

 

The view was pretty amazing, but we were in for an even better one before we knew it. After we made our way down, we drove to Mount Popa Resort for a relaxing afternoon of lunch and lounging. The resort was stunning and serene and everything we wanted after days and days of pagodas in the Burmese heat. And the view… like I said, did not disappoint.

 

 

That afternoon after lunch we did a handful of other random activities including a stop at a sugar mill, one last visit to the local market for souvenirs, and of course, one final pagoda. It was magnificent so nobody complained of pagoda overload.

 

 

When I was standing on the top of that last pagoda, I experienced a very unfamiliar feeling. Something that I had yet to encounter thus far on Semester at Sea. Something that I hadn’t realized had been missing until I felt it.

 

I did not want to leave.

 

While that may not sound like all that novel of a thought to you, it was for me. Every other trip had ended right as I was ready to leave. 3 days in Tokyo, 4 days in Beijing, 3 days in Angkor, even 2 days in Singapore were just the right amount for me.

 

But 2 days in Bagan… it just wasn’t enough.

 

The entire drive to the airport, the entire flight to Yangon, and the entire bus ride to the ship, I tried to figure out why. The city was magical, and I fell in love with it, but why? Why hadn’t I felt this way about Cambodia as did many of my fellow travelers? Or Vietnam? What was it about this place that had me so captivated that I was actually sad when I boarded the plane to leave?

 

I thought through everything from the previous two days and found only one pervasive, salient quality that had woven together all of my time in Bagan.

 

It was the Burmese people.

 

The people defined every part of this place for me. They created the environment of peace and calm and splendor that I had rested and reveled in for days. They were the majesty of the pagodas. They were the taste of the food. They were the light of the sunrises and sunsets. They were happy, welcoming, inviting, open, playful, affectionate, silly, kind, beautiful.

 

I finally felt what others had felt for Cambodia… Vietnam… Japan… I had fallen in love with a country, a place, a people. I felt connected to them in some strange, undeserving way. What struck me most was the simplicity of their lives. They had almost nothing, and yet were so at peace, so thankful, so generous with whatever they did have. It was inspirational in every sense of the word.

 

The people of Burma are the real reason why I will definitely come back here.

 

The sunrises are just a nice perk.

 

 

I remember being so incredulous toward people who had returned from other ports raving about how much they ‘loved’ this country or that city. How they had some life-changing experience, some crazy realization from one conversation or one temple. I scoffed. Audibly. No you didn’t. You were only there for 3 days. How could you have possibly ‘fallen in love’ with a port that fast?

 

Well, people, I did.

 

I guess now I’m the crazy one.

 

I <3 Burma!

 

Question of the Day: What is your favorite place in the world?