Bagan

I had never heard of Bagan until I started planning for this trip.  However, when I saw photos of it I recognized it right away.  Bagan is the poster child for tourism in Myanmar, with its hundreds of thousand year-old temples spread across a 40km square area.  It was on my "must see" list for Myanmar and I haven't been disappointed.

You can explore the area by hired car, tour bus, horse cart, or bicycle.  I choose the latter and enjoyed the freedom it gave me.  The main roads were paved, but the side roads leading to temples weren't, so I had to pay attention so as not to slip on the sandy shoulders.  Unlike everywhere else that I've been in Southeast Asia, there wasn't much traffic on the road, so it was quite pleasant to tootle around on my one-speed bike.  It wasn't too hard to not get lost, although there was one temple that I unintentionally visited twice from two different directions.

I won't even attempt to describe the size and the shapes of the temples, except to say that there were way more of them than I had expected and that the big ones were really big.  I've taken many photos, but realize that none of them will come-out as nice as those on the postcards that children try to sell me at each major temple.  Exploring the insides wasn't all that exciting, as usually each temple contained four giant Buddhas, one on each side.

Unlike the temples around Angkor Wat in Cambodia you can't climb to the upper reaches of these temples.  However, after huffing-up the steep stairs on one where it was permitted I realized that this limitation was probably a good thing.  The climb did provide a great view of temples near and far and in all directions and it was then that I realized that I would only visit a small fraction.