Sometimes I’m amazed how my head works. While in Bangkok last year, I saw a photo in a newspaper of a place I’d never heard of called Bagan and decided that I should go.
Who does that?
I prepped and read everything I could about Myanmar. I secured a wad of crisp, new USD $50 bills to pay for my entire week of travels. I even created a gmail account since I knew my normal yahoo and hotmail accounts would be blocked inside country. I was ready.
And I did it. Enter Bagan.
The main reason anyone goes to Bagan is to see the temples. Thousands of them. I’m not Buddhist, so this wasn’t a religious pilgrimage for me. It was just to experience culture and architecture and history and beauty of a place that was completely mysterious.
My hotel helped me arrange a half-day taxi tour, for get this – $20! The other option was a horse cart, but spending an entire morning behind a horse didn’t really appeal to me.
We hit up all the best sites, my driver Aung Sann and I. He would drop me off at the front steps of each temple, then go park the car in any patch of shade he could find and nap. He somehow always noticed me heading out of the temples, and would drive back up to the steps to pick me up.
It was glorious door-to-door service. Even better because the heat was nearly unbearable. This efficient system worked well – we visited 12 temples in four hours. We were done by noon, and I retreated into my hotel room, desperate for some AC, which I promptly cranked to high.
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