Sunrise again

We woke up early again today, as we wanted to catch another sunrise again, in a different pagoda named Buledi paya. This time we rented a bike from the sundry shop next door for 1500 kyats per day, from dawn till 12am. 

It was somehow creepy, cycling in a shanty town in almost pitch dark, as you try to avoid monks, horsecarts and other cyclists; it was freezing cold and I could feel my face  being petrified by the chilly wind. Also, we had to try our best to avoid the horse dung scattered on the road!

Upon reaching Buledi's paya, there were already a few tourists waiting on top of the pagoda. Fortunately, we managed to reach in time as the sun had not risen yet. Buledi paya was easier to climb compared to Shwesendaw Paya, as the steps were less steeper.

Buledi Paya was located to the east of Shwesandaw Paya, hence we were able to see the hot air balloons clearer this time! And every sunrise indeed is different. As more and more tourists arrived, they climbed up and joined us together in witnessing this wondrous event of the day.

We proceeded with our battery of stupa-fying tours around the temples of Old Bagan, visiting the Thatbyinnyu temple, Pahto Thamya complex, Gawdawpalin temple, Mahabawfi temple, Bupaya temple, Shwebugyi paya, Upali Thein temple, Htilominlo temple and finally the Shwezigon pagoda in Nyaung U town. Honestly, we had not purchased the Bagan Archaelogical Zone entrance fees worth USD10 since nobody asked us for it for the past 1 day, and we really had thought we could escape it. Unfortunately, we were ambushed at Htilominlo temple by the government officials and had to purchase one on the spot. Otherwise we would have saved USD10!

Somewhere we came across an interesting sign that showed NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE OVERCOME PAGODA. Hmm... I never knew the military junta build a new pagoda to pray to overcome any imminent nuclear catastrophe. 

Having completed our amazing stupa-fying tour, we ventured Nyaung U's downtown for a quick brunch. Somehow we have got addicted to Myanmar's milk tea, and kept on ordering for it everytime we had breakfast or lunch! Before heading back to our hotel, we made a short stroll to the Thanaka Museum just around the corner. 

As we arrived at the hotel, both of us just dozed off immediately we were within the vicinity of our beds.

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.

First Sunrise in Bagan

I woke up around 3 a.m., still on the rattling bus heading towards Bagan. Everyone around me was fast asleep, except those who were dropping off when the bus started making short stops once in a few kilometres.

After 30-40 minutes, the bus steered into a shanty little town and stopped at the local station; we were already in Bagan. We hopped off the bus with the other passengers, and we swarmed by horse cart drivers, like vultures prying on a dead carcass.

"Hello. You want horse cart?" One by one they started hovering around us, trying their luck.

Since the hotel that we booked was around 1km away from the bus stop, we decided to walk in the cool misty morning, with two 10kg backpacks on our backs. It was still dark, so I pulled out the new torchlight that I purchased in Yangon, hoping we would not get rammed by some crazy motorcyclist or a horse cart.

Eventually we reached our hotel, but unfortunately it was locked, and the hotel staff was soundly dozing inside. I was somehow annoyed since we did make a phone call the day before informing them we would be arriving in early morning. Another horse cart driver saw us standing outside the hotel, waving and shouting like mad men, and he too joined in the fun, after failing to coax us to try another hotel further down the road. Somehow we managed to wake up the hotel staff and we were let into the front gates. 

Since it was still early and the hotel was full from the previous night, we had to wait till someone checked out later in the day. After relieving ourselves in lobby's toilet, we decided to head out to have our first sunrise in Bagan, at the infamous Shwesendaw Paya, and started to walk back towards the bus station.

We found horse carriage drivers who offered us 7000 kyats to bring us to a nearby pagoda to see the sunrise, but we bargained hard; finally he agreed to take us to Shwesendaw Paya for 6000 kyats and sent us back to the hotel. It was already 5.30am then, and I was worried that we would miss the sunrise since it was a little bright then. The horse galloped ahead, tugging the carriage with me and my buddy in it as the driver steered it towards our destination. I sat beside the driver in front while my buddy lazed himself at the back, taking care not to fall off from the carriage.

After 30 minutes, we finally reached Shwesendaw Paya and there were already a number of tourists at the top. We mounted up the pagoda via the steep stony stairs until we reached the top, and tried to secure a nice spot facing the east where we should have a superb view of the sunrise.

While waiting for the sunrise, we noted there were even more and more tourists arriving the pagoda; some on bicycles, some on horsecarts. With more tourists climbing up the pagoda, it became merrier especially when a couple of aunties from Mainland China was making such a hullabaloo, complaining bout how one of them almost died when one of the horses tripped on their way to the pagoda.

We chatted with one Singaporean gentleman, who is an avid photographer; it was his second sunrise in Bagan and he planned to spend 6 days here catching all the sunrises and sunset. I admired his persistence and his passion, but my idiotic buddy, somehow senseless, gave him a cold blanket, resulting in me reprimanding him soon later.

"Why 6 days of sunrises here? You have sunrise in Singapore as well." My idiotic buddy commented.

"Just ignore him." I replied. "He doesn't have any sense in him."

"Well, every sunrise is different from one day to another." The Singaporean answered. "No sunrise is ever the same."

I could not agree more!

Slowly the sky got lit up as we could see from the distant an orange fireball climbed up form the horizon, emitting rays of light that glazed the dawn from afar. It was then that the shutters of cameras commenced as everyone frenziedly started snapping photos of the picturesque sunrise. From the distant we could spot hot air balloons, slowly hovering across the sky.

We spent around an hour on top of the pagoda, admiring the wonderous view, until everyone started to scatter as it was starting to get hot. We climbed down the pagoda cautiously and jumped onto our horse carriage, heading for the hotel and hoping to get a room so we could refresh ourselves and carry on with our itinerary in Bagan.

To our dismay, there were still no rooms available although it was already 9am! So, we decided to grab breakfast at a nearby teashop, and continue with our journey!

Night Bus to Bagan

I woke up the next day feeling refreshed; breakfast was served by the hotel in the common dining room where I met a few other backpackers and we had a short chit-chat on our experience in Myanmar. Since we would not be going anywhere else today but to stay in the hotel till 4pm when we had to check in at the bus station (I figured we probably had seen most of the must-sees in Yangon), we went out for a short stroll and did a little routine grocery at a local shopping mart, before having lunch at another teahouse by the streets.

Back in the hotel, we bumped into Mary, one of the most hilarious fellow backpacker I came across in this trip. Mary was fun and garrulous, and she is 75 years old; she was planning to stay in Myanmar for 4 weeks after a fortnight in Laos and a week in Cambodia, before heading to Thailand later. Well, I wonder if I were aldy bedridden or wheel-chair bound at that age. Or probably I would have been demented enough. 

Anyway, since she was heading towards Inle Lake with a bus 30 minutes ahead of us, we agreed to share the taxi. And Mary kept on entertaining us with her savoury backpacking stories when she first did her backpacking trip 50 years ago! I was just simply amazed by her courage and perseverance.

As I was toying with my iPhone while killing time, Mary almost killed me.

"What's that toy you're playing with?" She asked.

"It's a iPhone." I answered.

"What's an iPhone?" She asked again. "What does it do? Is it some sort of a telephone?"

Astonished I was.

"It's a smart phone where you could perform other functions like logging onto the internet and etc." I explained.

"Does it have a camera?" She politely added.

""Of course it does." I chuckled.

"Oh my! I didn't know such gadgets existed!" She exclaimed. "I don't know how to use a cellphone to be honest."

I almost fell off my chair. Mary must have been a living antique. Probably she was from the Jurassic Age too.

"Anyway, I do most of my stuffs via the internet using emails on the computer. More reliable." She persisted. "I find normal phones more trustworthy than these handheld ones."

Gosh. She survived 75 years without a handphone, and I could barely live for a day without my iPhone!

Our pick-up taxi arrived at around 3.30pm to pick us up to the bus station, 26km away from city centre, for 8000MMK. The journey to Au Mingalar Bus Station was an eventful one, with Mary teasing the driver and entertaining us with lots of jokes. And like usual, the roads of Yangon was packed with traffic, with swirls of dust hovering the air like a sandstorm, and we were baked in the taxi for almost an hour!

Au Mingalar Bus Station is an eye opening; it somehow is a city in a bus station, and a bus station in a city. A labyrinth packed with buses leaving to every single destination in the country almost every single hour, it is like a city that never sleeps. I swear we could even get lost in it. We had Chinese food in a nearby restaurant, as I was worried we would get disorientated if we had wandered too far from our bus depot.

By 5.30 pm the our bus, somehow old but seemed reliable, departed the bus station as we headed north towards Bagan. They gave us a complimentary bottle of drinking water, as well as a facial tissue and a toothbrush with toothpaste, which made me somehow impressed. The ride was rather smooth, and I managed to catch some sleep despite the  loud Burmese pop songs and soap opera on the telly throughout the journey.

Around 9.30 pm we stopped at a rest stop which looked like a theme park! It was so bright and colourful and busy, and they have got their own wifi! Impressive! We got ourselves some midnight snack and lingered around the stalls for 30 minutes before the bus continued its ride. Eventually I doze off after adjusting myself on the small reclining seat, and when I woke up hours later, we were already in Bagan.

Shwedagon Paya, the fairest of them all

We walked around 30 minutes northwards from the Bogyoke Aung San Market, stopping intermittently for a sip of iced sugar cane juice. It was 3pm; still 3 hours away from sunset, so even if we arrived there we still have to wait for a few hours before the sunset sets in. Flipping through my LP and its suggestions of where to visit in Yangon, we came across the Bahadur Shah Dargur, a.k.a the tomb of the last Mughal Emperor of India,which is located just a crow's flight from the Shwedagon Paya.

Reaching the tomb around 4 pm, we were somehow taken aback by this little tomb. It looks like a small mosque, except for a few small signboards in Burmese writing, and a fading portrait of the emperor. There were no other foreigners but us; the caretaker welcomed us and let us into the mosque, directing us to the tomb of the emperor (basement below the mosque) and the empress' (a room at the wing). It was a very different mosque from what we had seen back in Malaysia, as there were portraits of the emperors all around and candles and incenses scattered around the shrines.

From what we had gathered from LP and the inscriptions in the tomb, the emperor was exiled to Rangoon back during the British colonial era, and was buried secretly after his demise. His tomb remained clandestine until it was discovered in the mid 50s, hence this mosque / shrine was built for him.

We sat on the floor at the mosque's veranda, panting and sweating from the Yangon's awful heat, while waiting for time to pass by. And by 4.45 pm, we bid farewell to Bahadur Shah, and headed towards the Shwedagon Paya.

 

The southern entrance of this famed pagoda is guarded by a pair of giant Burmese lions; flights of stairs, with rows of vendors displaying souvenirs, joss sticks, flowers, religious materials, etc., welcome every visitor as they arduously push through barricades of peddlars. But as one victoriously reached the end of the flight of stairs, he or she would be greeted by the majestic sight of the Shwedagon Pagoda's golden stupa, with the hordes of pious Burmese locals like worker bees hovering around the nexus of the pagoda, in addition to clusters of tourists too. I could hear the mantra recitals loudly blaring in the air, probably there was some ceremony being held, and the locals gathering under the tents. sitting with their legs folded, palms held tightly and their heads bowed down in silence. Everything was just so solemn in the midst of chaos. 

 

Sadly, in the midst of my bewilderment, I dropped my camera and it was unrecoverable, despite the frenzy assistance of the local security officers and pagoda officials. It somehow dampened my mood a little for the day, and hence after snapping some sunset views of the pagoda, we hastened back to our hotel after dropping off in a local night market via a taxi, which charged us around 3000MMK (extra 30-50% after sunsets). 

 

The night market was really an authentic non touristy market as we could only see stalls selling vegetables, fruits, and Burmese food. No souvenirs at all. I randomly ordered something that seemed edible, which turned out to be fried vermicelli with an egg in it, then gobbled a couple of fried spring rolls, which tasted a bit similar to the Malaysian type. And to avoid constipation, I bought a couple of Mandarin oranges too.

 

We walked back to our hotel which was 4-5 streets away in pitch dark, as there were no street lights in Yangon, probably except the really busy areas like Chinatown. Still, it felt so safe, except for the numerous potholes on the road. Upon arriving to the hotel, I collapsed instantaneously after shower; it was such a tiring, satisfying yet frustrating day (since I lose my camera). 

 

Still, I can't wait for the next day to come, as we had already got ourselves bus tickets, costing us around 15000MMK to Bagan.