21.05.18 - 24.05.18 Bagan

21.05.18 - 24.05.2018 Bagan

In our travel guide, it says about the travel time in Bagan: "MAY: Bagan is sizzling, avoid visiting now or you may melt." And he is absolutely right. After an almost cold night in the air-conditioned bus, where we were even equipped with a toothbrush, we arrived at six in the morning at a pleasant 25 degrees. That should remain the most pleasant temperature for the next few days.

In Bagan, over 6000 temples were built on an area of ​​approximately 13x8km from the 11th to the 13th century. At present, about 2000 of them are scattered on the site, all more or less well preserved. Due to the 2016 earthquake, some of them were heavily damaged and are currently being restored by UNESCO, which leads to some construction sites.

Due to the size of the area, we decided on our first day to rent a bicycle and find a suitable place to watch the sunrise. Since most pagodas are now closed for safety reasons and are no longer available as viewpoints, we found ourselves on some roof with about 10 other people (according to various "not guides" who are all artists, the insider tip). Our ambitious plan to ride a bike was then abandoned by 09:00, as the sun that had already risen began to take effect and the temperature steadily approached 40 degrees.

Since we didn't want to spend any money on renting an electric scooter the next day either, we once again relied on our feet. In the late afternoon, we set out again to explore the area. It's impressive what people built so many 100 years ago. We didn't see the hoped-for sunset, as it preferred to stay behind clouds, which made our walk very pleasant.

Here in Bagan, we found numerous tourists and the corresponding infrastructure (so they do exist in Myanmar), which made our search for authentic food a bit more difficult, but we still found something.