Bagan

It's now Monday 31st and we've arrived in Mandalay. Back to the Internet . We've had more non stop days since last Friday. We arrived in Bagan the site if the thousand temples. Bagan is the number one tourist destination in Myanmar . It's certainly the most tourist favoured destination we've seen with plenty of hotels and restaurants catering for softy westerners

Friday night we went to the top of one of the temples to watch the sunset over the plain. Really amazing to see so many temples. There are over3,000 temples spread out over a 20 sq km area. We asked our guide why so many in such an area. Burmese people believe the greatest thing they can do in life is to build a temple - that's one reason. Secondly there were many kings living in this area from 9th to 16th century and they needed to build lots of temples to ' make merit' , to outdo the earlier kings and to atone for earlier sins. So judging by the number like lots of kings they killed a lot of people!

Oh and we also got to see a lovely moon rise

Saturday morning we visited 3 or 4 of the biggest temples. Many of the temples are small and solid but a few are larger with inner rooms with large Buddhas and painted murals which are very beautiful. But after 10 or so it becomes a bit much. So we left Saturday lunch to visit a lacquer factory and for Ang to get some new friends!

 

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