Pakokku and Bagan

Last night, we realized there was a group of perhaps 300 high school age students in the resort with us. Hard to miss them! Strangely, most spoke very good English, and like students of that age in the US were complaining about having to walk so much. It was hard to believe the were from Myanmar. Wish I could have gotten more specifics of who they were. In any case we were told that breakfast would start at 6:30. As Luck would have it I went over early, 6:00, and the staff was already setting things up. Thank Buddha! Because here they came. The horde descended upon us all at once and the folks in my group who had waited for 6:30 had a hell of a time getting into the buffet line. Even worse, these kids were on a field trip and guess where they were going this morning. The Phowintaung Caves, with it's myriad Buddha statues. The exact same place we were headed!

My suggestion that we slash the tires on their buses was rejected!? So plan B, Ko Ko discovered there was another set of similar cave about the same distance. As it turned out this was great because we had this set of caves all to our selves. No other tourists at all! Must have been good karma! So, off came the shoes and socks and ooch, oww, jikes these little rocks are biting my tender tootsies. But once inside the caves the floor was relatively smooth and the sites were really worth it.

Leaving the caves, we were on our way to get on the boats that would take us down the Ayarwaddy to Bagan, when we had to stop and get a few pics of this woman herding her goats down the road.

Finally arriving at the river's edge we grabbed our camera gear and headed down to the boats while our main luggage was hauled down by women on their heads. It was unbelievable to see this young women carrying my 50 pound suitcase on her head down the slippery slope to the boat. I paid her twice the going rate (1000 Kyat) and thanked her profusely.

We were running a bit late so instead of checking into the hotel first we went directly to the spot Nathan had chosen for the sunset shot of Bagan. There are over 2000 temples and pagodas scattered about the general area. At one point in time there were over 10,000. Ko Ko informed us these were built as private worship sites by local residents, whose wooden homes have long since disappeared. But the temples being of brick have lasted the centuries, though many have also been destroyed over the years by earthquakes. They are a bit like the towers in Italy. The richer the family, the bigger pagoda or temple they built. Each is still considered a holy place and again we get to dance about bared footed before entering or ascending one of them.

Gratefully the steps leading back to ground level were lit, because after taking the shots and packing up it was really dark going back to the coach. Hand iPhone Torch to the rescue. Finally we checked into our Famous Hotel. Honest, that its name.