When we got here there was the usual taxi drivers scrum. We are all tourists on the ferry so that is big money for them. When they found out I was going to Eden they backed off and I got a horse cart. The place I was going is just up the road. The Eden hotel is OK but they said they have WiFi and dont and they said hot water and they dont. I got a room on the roof, I'm in the penthouse baby. Other than yhat it is an OK room with my own bathroom.
I am on the Bagan plain. There ate 3 towns here, Bagan, New Bagan and Nyaung U and you can almost interchange the three. Most people just refer to the area as Bagan and I will for this. I am staying in Nyaung U cos it is the backpacker heartland. They cook on the street and there are heaps of cheap hotels.
The area has over 4000 temples, built between the 11th and 13th centuries. They say they would have to start a new one every 14 days to build them all. They are scattered all over the plain, most of them small but some are massive. There are a few theories about how and why they were built and even more about why they stopped. They think our old mate Ghengis Khan has been here and they know his grandson Khublai Khan has definitely been here. I am going to see heaps but I wont bore you with the details, just the pics, and hope I get the right name on them.
I am using the same taxi as I had yesterday. Naing Naing is his name and officially horse No 123. We negotiated a rate of $15 for 10 hours.
LP lists 32 temples and I got to about 20 of them. They all claim to be unique and they all say their buddha is different but I cant see much difference. At one a little girl, about 6 or 7, tried to sell me some paintings of her's. Now yhey were pretty ****** looking, but for $1 I nearly paid up but I was strong and held out.
For lunch Naing dropped me off at a very fancy touristy place. I looked at the menu and the mains were 3000k and drinks were 1500k. I spied some women down the road cooking on the street so I headed there. Naing saw what happened and came after me and asked what was wrong? I explained and he took me in the horse cart and I sat in the dirt with the horse cart drivers and had a great lunch for 1400k. Lunch was typical of the meals here. Bowl of rice, a saucer of chicken, usually 2 small pieces and a lot of oil. Then small saucer of potato (nice), pickled bamboo (OK), chilli green stuff (hot) and fish paste (grose). There is a table full of food.

Im on the night bus tonight to Yangon and intend to stay at Ocean Pearl but I might go somewhere better to veg for a couple of days.

I tried to load up pics but connection too slow will load up all 110 ASAP