Joyride in a horsecart

Since our room were not ready yet, we decided to tour the temples near New Bagan in a horse cart as it was a bit too far to walk. The hotel owner suggested us to go with her employee who asked for 20000 kyats for a whole day in his horse cart, including a sunset in any temple that we want to; it was rather expensive compared to other backpackers whom we had researched, but since the price of almost everything has inflated within months, and we were kind of hot, tired and desperate, we just had to agree.

Our first list of temples started with Mingala Zedi at the south of Old Bagan, followed by Manuha temple, Ape-ya-da-nar temple, Nagayon temple, Lawkanandar pagoda, the twin sisters Anauk Peleik and Asha Petleik temples near New Bagan. After that we headed back towards north and visited Myazedi and Gubyaukgyi pagodas before stopping for lunch.

I was completely stupa-fied; there were so many temple and ruins, albeit each of them different architecturally and historically, but they were just stone ruins of different size and shape. Aside from that, I was kind of fed up barefooting on the scorched rock tiles in the pagoda, and shooing away touts and pedlars. There we took tons of photos but looking back at it I would not be able to remember which was which.

We finally made a stop somewhere near Old Bagan, and had lunch in a restaurant that sells Burmese food. For 3000 kyats we were served a buffet of various Burmese side dishes with rice, dessert and fruits. After an hour of rest, we walked towards the nearby Ananda Temple, which is the finest, largest, best preserved and most revered of all Bagan temples. 

After that we proceeded with the Dhammayangyi temple and the Sulamani temple before having a grand finale of today's trip with a sunset at Buledi pagoda, which was less crowded than the touristy Shwesandaw, which we had our first sunrise at. We arrived pretty early at Buledi, around 4pm, so we just hang out there and chilled while waiting for the other tourists to come and join us for the sunset.

At around 6.15 the sunset commenced with a delight symphony of colours; rays of orange, pink, and violet shaded the weary sky as the giant fireball gracefully descended until it was occluded by clouds beyond the distance, signalling the finale of today's horsecart trip.

We headed back to our hotel, and got the keys to our room, finally, and refreshed ourselves before having dinner nearby. We spent the night doing laundry, and planning our itinerary for the next few days.