The morning started with the monks waking us by ringing a bell - at 7am, how inconsiderate, don’t they know we are on holiday!! In this town there are more monestries than guest houses and almost as many nunneries (if that is the correct term for monestries for women). Here they still ask for food and we saw them being given rice by three different people.

Later we visited “Little Bagan” which is the wrong thing to call it because you cannot compare what we saw today with Bagan, as they are totally different and both beautiful in their own way.

I loved that fact that we had all the stupas to ourselves and we had to climb over things to see some of them. They were all falling down, had trees growing out of them or just slowly decaying but all were lovely. We also had to hunt them down as they were scattered through out the village and in the grounds of two monestries. One was so overgrown by a tree that from one side all you could see was the tree, it wasn’t until we had gone over to look at another stupa that we realized that it was one too. One of the monestries was made of teak and again was great - if you like the slightly decayed past it’s best look.

It is so sad that this town is near the conflict area and has been very badly affected by the drop in tourists this year. Our guide yesterday said they were all hopeful that it is all coming to an end - let’s hope so as the people here are tired of the problems.