Sacred Bagan

The third stop of this lifetime trip was the temple town, Bagan, in Central Myanmar. Bagan is a green vast area, framed by the calm Ayeyarwady river, surrounded by distant silver mountains, and interrupted everywhere by two-three thousands Buddhist temples. It’s beautiful, it’s unique and it’s one of the greatest archeological sites in the world, although it still does not have the amount of visitors that equally important historical sites typically have. Yet, it is definitely the most touristy area in Myanmar.

Bagan was good to us. We stayed at a quite good hotel, which, by itself, made every thing better. The hotel had an amazing infinity pool in line with the temples, a 13-storey tower (the only tower in Bagan) with a restaurant and a viewpoint, great margaritas, good food, extremely good service and very decent rooms. It even had a small fitness center, which I visited once. Working out in Asia is much more difficult than at home – the weather is way too hot and humid.

We got ourselves two electrical bikes and freely explored the area. No tour guide, no schedules to follow, no obligation to go to all the big touristy temples. Just us, our e-bikes, and a few good tips from friends and Lonely Planet! We visited dozens of temples, climbed up to the top of a few of them and passed through hundreds of others. We talked to many local ladies and gentlemen, who tried to sell their products to us. We sweated most of the time too, apart from the times we were driving our e-bikes, enjoying a smooth breeze. We ate local food without knowing what we were eating. We were happy in Bagan! It is incredibly beautiful and imponent...

A few years ago, Unesco tried to make Bagan part of the World Heritage, while it was still under a strict dictatorship. Unfortunately, that did not go through and the effects of Bagan not being World Heritage can be noticed already. In fact, Myanmar’s government has been renewing temples and monuments with inadequate materials, allowed for the construction of a golf course in the middle of many temples and of a 13-storey tower in a hotel (actually our hotel), and even built paved roads very close to temples, connecting the four local villages in the region. None of this should be happening within such na important archeological site.

As per usual, this stop had to include an atypical event. During our second day in Bagan, we left the hotel on our e-bikes around noon to explore the area. It was a super duper hot day. The temples' floors would burn our feet and we had to stop for water every once in a while. Before 4 pm, when we were quite far away from the hotel, and about to have visited all the spots on our wish-list, my e-bike decided to die. For about 1h30, Gorda had to pull my e-bike while driving his. He would leave my e-bike go down by itself downhill and pull it uphill and in straight roads. Quite an adventure! And quite a workout for him! As a bonus, he awarded himself with many margueritas and a generous dessert at the hotel’s infinity pool.

What happened next may be related to the amount of margueritas he drank. It was about time for us to leave Bagan and we still had not booked anything. After some research, we decided we wanted to go to Ngapali – the best beaches in the country. I started organizing the flights and asked him to look for a decent-not-to-expensive hotel. I left him at the swimming pool so that I could negotiate and buy our flight tickets (Bagan-Yangon and Yangon-Thandwe). He met me at the reception and presented me a very decent hotel, in front of the beach, which seemed to match what we had in our minds. I decided to book it too.

When we arrived in Thandwe the following day, we got a taxi and asked the driver to take us to Emerald Sea Resort. The guy started driving us through an awful road. After over 20 minutes, we arrived at a closed hotel whose name didn’t even match Emerald Sea. We told the taxi driver that was not our hotel and he took us to another hotel so that someone there could tell us where our hotel actually was. In such hotel, we were told to go in the exact opposite direction. There we were, in the taxi, on an awful road, again. We passed through the airport, drove for quite a long time, and the taxi driver stopped again in another hotel, whose name still did not match Emerald Sea. We were starting to get a bit annoyed with all that…

We asked the reception where our hotel was and understood that Gorda had booked a hotel room in the wrong place, in another district, not reachable from Thandwe!!! Gorda, Ngwe Saung Beach and Ngapali Beach are not the same…! Also, our booking was non-refundable so we ended up paying 2 different hotel rooms for 4 nights in a row, in two different locations, and just enjoyed one of them… I guess we will look back at this in a couple of weeks and laugh about it. When it happened, it was not that funny at all.

Love from Ngapali Beach,

Marta