Myanmar

Saturday 4th June 2016 – Refusing to be cowed by her malfunctioning bowels Alysa decided we would press on to Bagan and by 6am we were being driven through the early morning chaos of central Yangon to a bus station on the outskirts of town. The Burmese don’t travel well and the 8 hour journey past countless flooded rice fields and water buffalo was punctuated by the sound of locals vomiting into plastic bags. One lady behind us didn’t make it to her bag in time and we watched in horrified fascination as little rivulets of vomitus slowly made their way down the aisle beside us. At the bus station we took a taxi to our hotel in New Bagan. As we drove we were astonished at the number of pagodas we could see dotted across the flat landscape. Our room at the Northern Breeze Hotel was downright luxurious – not what we had expected at all seeing as we had booked the cheapest room we could find. For dinner Alysa managed a couple of pancakes – things didn’t look too promising when they initially appeared thick, beige and gooey but after a couple of trips back to the kitchen we got something that could pass as a pancake.

Sunday 5th June 2016 – Alysa’s lavatorial requirements prevented any exploration for most of the day although in the late afternoon we managed a quick trip to Lawkananda Pagoda just a few minutes walk from the hotel. Alysa became a bit of a hit with a group of Burmese girls visiting the temple and they all insisted on having their photo taken with her. Opposite the pagoda was a pretty lake full of carp with a walkway out to a shrine in its centre. We bought some pieces of bread and had great fun tossing them into the water below and watching the calm surface erupt with dozens of large, hungry fish. That evening we shared a large vegetarian pizza which was delicious.

Monday 6th June 2016 – Alysa spent the day feeling pretty miserable with nausea and diarrhoea – classic TD. The advice online was that most of the time you get better within a week so it seemed we should wait a bit longer to see if it resolved itself. We spent the day online, reading and watching tv and in the evening I brought back a large pizza margarita for Alysa.

Tuesday 7th June 2016 – Alysa was still feeling ill but wanted to visit some of the temples in Bagan so that morning we rented an e-bike (a battery powered motorbike) from the hotel and set off to explore. There were pagodas everywhere; they number in the thousands, from small, somewhat overgrown brick constructions that go largely unvisited to large, well known ones like Thambula. We visited some of the bigger temples around Old Bagan as well as a couple of smaller ones by the road. At one of the temples we met two monks who wanted their photo taken with me – I was thrilled! Around lunchtime we took a break and waited out the heat of the day back at the hotel. In the late afternoon we set out again on our buttercup yellow e-bike, me driving and Alysa riding pillion and this time we just drove enjoying the freedom of getting lost down little dirt tracks in the countryside. Around dusk we found ourselves in Old Bagan and drove to the riverside to watch darkness fall before driving back to our hotel in the gloom.