So we arrived in Bagan about 4am and had a slightly different welcoming committee than the usual taxi touts- horse and cart drivers!

After much negotiating we decided on a variety of transport- girls in horse & cart and boys on trishaw to hunt out our new digs. In the end we decided to treat ourselves to a place with a.c given the heat here, so we ended up in the Grand Empire, which was actually the best place I stayed in for the whole country.

Wendy & I had high hopes of doing some early morning temple visits, but after a run in a rude horse & cart driver, some very persistant sales ladies outside the temples and students super keen to show us their art work, we decided bed was the best places for us! We did manage to make it to the main viewpoint for sunset and it was spectacular!

The following day we were all set for some serious temple action and set off before sunrise. Wendy & I opted for the traditional horse and cart for a pretty chilled day checking out the temples at a fairly slow & bumpy pace which was lovely. The boys however, were on a proper mission. These guys are pretty serious about their photography and had found a photography guide (or rather he found them/ anyone with a proper camera at sunset). So with a taxi, props and some monks -yes, I kid you not they 'hired' monks for the day. Three mini monks who the guide directed for the photos and the boys made a donation to the monastry at the end of the day -probably a little morally questionable but also halarious! And they do have some AMAZING pictures!

All three nights we ended up eating at a little restaurant by the bus stand called Weatherspoons, thankfully nothing at all like it's English namesake. The food here is pretty good (which unfortunately for me is starting to mean- not Burmese). But the main draw is definitely the owner, who is lovely and really chatty. He briefly studied in England and has travelled a bit in Europe- something to do with hot air balloon racing!

It had recently been Serhats's birthday so we decided it needed to be celebrated again. We got some local rum & gin on the go at dinner but by 10pm everywhere in the town was closed, but as you know I can sniff out a party. So on the way home we came across a group of local men preparing massive vats of soup which I think (some translation issues) was for a wedding/celebration the next day. They invited us in and offered us some soup, which was pretty interesting- really nice chickpea soup but with a really strong fish stock base, so it was fine as long as you didn't breath through your nose. Appartently they were going to be there all night until they served the soup for breakfast (so not long since everyone gets up at the crack of dawn in this country). They were so hospitable offering us local cigarettes and everytime we (Carlos) finished the soup they refilled it, which of course everyone except Carlos found highly amusing! Anyway we decided to save Carlos and headed to our hotel to continue the party and thanked the locals for inviting us.

By our third day we were all templed out. The temples are beautiful but nothing spectacular individually, it's much more the sheer number of them on the empty plain that is so special which you get a much better idea of at sunrise and sunset from a viewpoint.

So for our final day we decided to chill out at a nearby hotel 'pool'. Unfortunately this body of water had certainly never seen a drop of chlorine and seemed quite the hang out place for bugs dead and alive, so it was a fairly short dip for me. I instead tried to book the boat from Bagan to Mandalay.

This may seem an easy task but I couldn't get the same information from any two people in the town. I wanted to take the local boat, which takes two days and you sleep on the boat, but I heard so many different versions of what was operating tomorrow or any other day of the week I gave up and booked the tourist boat which was leaving at 6 am the next day. So after a week travelling with Wendy we were going our seperate ways. The boys were also going to Inle but we were due to meet up again in Mandalay, so off I sailed...

Now I really don't know why I made such a fuss about going on this boat journey (I had rejigged my itinerary a few times to try to do it). To begin with the first thing I did when I got on board was fall asleep for most of the journey. I woke up intermittently to check out the non existant scenery (litterally nothing to see except murky river water and riverbank for almost 12 hours) and spot a rat scuttle up a nearby pipe, which at least made me grateful I was not sleeping on the floor on the local boat!

The boat was pretty empty but I did meet an Irish guy so we teamed up to begin my adventures in Mandalay.