Travelog: Beguiling Bagan


Before I continue with this post, I just want to wish all my Philippine readers well. I was truly shocked with the news of the floods. As you probably know by now, we don’t have international roaming on our phones and internet access is rather slow and quite limited.  We only found out the extent of damage caused by the nonstop rains because we tuned into CNN. We were dumbfounded 🙁 So before I write about my travels, I hope everyone in the Philippines stays dry and safe and to those who have the opportunity to help the less fortunate, please do help. My prayers are with you all…

Yesterday, we took a flight from Yangon to Bagan and had to leave the hotel at 4.30am. I slept for just an hour so I really konked out on the plane throughout the 1 hour 10 minute flight. Apparently, the airlines here from Yangon to Bangan are not really too reliable when it comes to their flight schedules. There are apparently times the airlines will end up making flight “pit stops” in another city or two before you end up in your final destination city!

I was very fortunate that I had the comfort of having CV Travel arrange everything or we would’ve been so clueless with how to work our tour schedules had our flight been delayed (managed to speak to a couple who was left clueless because their travel agency had not been thorough with their itinerary and contact details– and not everyone speaks English here yet).

As our private van drove out of the Bagan airport, my jaw dropped. My jaw has not met my upper lip ever since. Because I was really floored and not expecting to be greeted with such a remarkable sight– a little over 2,000 pagodas were scattered all over the landscape. Everywhere we turned, there was either a temple or a stupa.

Barefoot, we entered a few temples. Bagan felt like a scene out of Tomb Raider (I know it was shot in Angkor Wat but I’ve never been to Angkor Wat before :D). But since I could not emulate Lara Croft- Angelina Jolie, I decided to play neon Spiderman 😀  Hehehe…
Thanks Claudette for this photo. I had to stop myself from laughing 😀
It was also today that I decided I wanted to be a geologist 🙂 So I went into an empty field and begun picking up stones 😀 

What do you know, I ended up picking up some petrified wood 😀  I will reserve some of my photos of the temples for tomorrow, but I can tell you that our walks got us really, really tired.  We had to climb up some temples barefoot (no shoes or socks allowed) so it was quite an experience.
Thanks Stevie for this photo!
Sorry, I could not resist camwhoring every so often because 1. I wore a super bright outfit (LOL people can see me from a mile away :D); 2. Bagan is THE place to take photos, seriously. The landscape is really breathtaking and it’s impossible to take a bad photo! 
Anyway I’ll tell you more about Bagan tomorrow. I will be checking the news feed now on the latest about the flood situation in the Philippines before I get some shut eye. Take care and stay safe everyone!!
Hope this post has somehow made some of you smile 🙂 
x
TheBagHag in BAGan 😀

3 Comments
  1. I love your pink jeans. More photos of the place please. It is really wonderful, like photos lifted from a calendar or something! 🙂

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