47. to 49. Day Sunday, February 15, 2015 Bagan

Bagan!,

and its stupas as far as the eye can see.

Monday morning, very early, we took a taxi to the pier for the boat. Today was dedicated to the Ayeyarwady River with the goal of Bagan. We started in Mandalay on time at 7 am and arrived exactly 12 hours later at 7 pm.

It was a relatively relaxing trip, which was not cheap as an introduction to Bagan. $40 is a lot of money when you consider that I want to get by with a maximum of €18 per day (which is almost impossible in Myanmar), including breakfast and lunch on board.

Sounds promising, but for breakfast, each person got 2 slices of toast and as a luxurious addition, a boiled egg per person and the obligatory coffee or tea (not to mention that I got a second coffee!). For lunch, we had a portion of noodles (probably supposed to be fried). I was really looking forward to the melon as dessert that I had seen (haha, that didn't work out). It costs 1000 Kyat / €1 extra (oh right, I actually didn't want any melon anyway). I would rather have a nice cold beer on the sun deck in the heat (3000 Kyat / €3, twice the price compared to elsewhere and with the thought of $40 for the boat). Luckily, I remembered that I had warm, almost stale water with me, which should be enough for the short remaining travel time of about 7 hours (cheers with goose wine).

Arrival in Bagan (I had already been informed about the tax of $15) actually cost $20 by now (next year it will probably be $30) and to my great enthusiasm, they had city maps available, which you can usually get for free in every hotel. Here they wanted $2, so I spontaneously decided against getting a map.

Now you can imagine that (and this was the first time on the whole trip) my mood reached boiling point. So my next thought was to leave Bagan immediately by bus or even by plane and go to the less traveled Mrauk U. Unfortunately, that was not possible due to the price and time constraints (because the journey is very complicated), so I had to settle for the tourist destination Bagan after all.

Well, I then rented a pretty good mountain bike for the next 2 days and, like everywhere else before, explored the area, i.e. Bagan. And my breath was taken away when I climbed the first possible stupa, there were thousands, yes, over thousands of pagodas to see. It's unbelievable what humans can create, and so Bagan eventually amazed me. But I have to admit that I am now 'over pagodaed', I can't see any more pagodas for the time being ;-).

In the evening, I took the overnight bus to Yangon.

See you soon...