So, Monday morning we ballooned, rest of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we did, for all intents and purposes, nothing at all. Well we did breakfast. And dinner. Saw a couple of sunsets down at the river bar. Went for a couple of swims. Brrrrr... 30+ degrees but the water is freezing. Left the compound exactly twice, once at night for a shuffle around one of Bagan’s 2200+ temples - this one being conveniently about 3 minutes walk down the road (right hand side - wonderfully eerie in the dark of the night with no one else around), once during the late afternoon to visit the 2nd tallest temple in the archeological zone... also conveniently at the end of the street, left hand side. Many Buddhas. Go figure. So having had a wonderful and much needed rest, we were finally ready for, you guessed it, sightseeing! The temples of Bagan await!

We had a grand plan, hatched early in the week, that we’d do our sightseeing on Friday, check out of the hotel, bags into the boot then the driver could drop us at the airport for our 5.50 pm flight. Well first off, we were originally planning to take the overnight train from Bagan to Yangon. Then multiple local folks told us we had rocks in our heads - even with the sleeper it wasn’t as though we’d be getting any rest - slow, noisy, bumpy and if it breaks down (and it does) you’ll be stuck in the middle of nowhere until they fix it. So being a bit over noisy and bumpy everything (rooms, service, air conditioners, power supply, other people, other peoples children, boats, roads etc) we chucked money at it and booked our flight to Yangon - 1 hour 20 minutes flying time, in the workhorse of Asia - the ATR72. Probably not too noisy or bumpy at all. Then today our flight was delayed 90 minutes due to unavoidable circumstances (very common in Myanmar amongst the domestic airlines). The unavoidable circumstance is usually not enough customers bought flights for Golden Myanmar to bother with... so they (and who knows who else) consolidate their customers with another airlines and they do the Aviation equivalent of car-pooling to get everyone to Yangon eventually. So then we begged a late, late 4 pm checkout from our new friend the hotel manager. Then our driver cancelled - but we got another one via a very good Tripadvisor review (remember... confirm, reconfirm, re-reconfirm). So now instead of US$35 for our driver it’s US$50... but he will also act as our guide, come into the sites with us and generally know what he’s talking about. So now the grand plan is a) not to exhaust ourselves, b) leave at civilised time of 9.30 am with packing 98% done, c) return to hotel around 3 pm for ultra civilised bubble bath and change out of dusty temple hopping clothes, d) 4 pm whistle up driver again, check out of hotel, trundle off to Nyaung-U for late late lunch/early dinner, take a look in a shop or two involving sparkly, shiny things, then progress to airport at roughly 6 pm, for our 7.20 pm flight. Yangon awaits.

They say, apparently, that no plan survives first contact with the enemy...

Well our driver turned up on time at 9.30 am and turned out to be a great guy, around our age, who’d more or less taught himself English from reading books - and done a good job of it too. We had done a good half hour of research online as it never hurts to be prepared so had a list of half a dozen ‘must see’ temples and pagodas. He added in several of his own must-sees which demonstrated various things - the earliest pagoda, the different eras of temples, how to tell when a buddha image was created by the style of the hair/eyes/head-dress/chin/ robe and, not least, we now know more about Buddhism than we ever thought we would. A gentle, peaceful religion which guarantees (like most do) a ticket to heaven if you just manage to pay enough during your lifetime.

Unfortunately James was feeling very green about an hour into the trip but battled on and we ended up visiting Bu Paya Pagoda (first pagoda in Bagan and shaped like a pineapple), Mahabodhi Pagoda (based on an Indian pagoda), Ananda Temple (famous for being famous - and very white since India paid for it’s cleaning and restoration) Htilominlo Temple (famous for plaster remnants on the exterior), Shwezigon Pagoda (very big, very gold), Gubyaukgyi (famous and one of the guide’s favourites because of the very well preserved paintings inside - 900 years old and so delicate they’ve banned even carrying phones or cameras into the temple), Dhammayangi (the largest temple in Bagan, known as the bad luck temple and considered haunted by locals who avoid it as much as possible).

Dhammayangi is possibly the saddest of all the temples, the tyrant king who built it murdered his own father to get himself on the throne. He then felt bad and decided to build a massive temple - a particularly meritorious deed - to eliminate his bad karma from, you know, the whole murder thing. He was a particularly nasty bloke, who wanted it to be perfect and to outshine Ananda temple. He reputedly would chop off the hand of any bricklayer not doing a good enough job. Good enough was defined as not being able to get a needle between two bricks. He also had the theory if he knocked off all the stone masons, then no-one else could build a better/higher/bigger temple than his. Life was not going well and he also decided he’d had enough of his foreign wife so, you guessed it, murdered her too. He only reigned 4 years and in the end his tee’d off father-in-law put him out of his misery - what goes around comes around to paraphrase Buddha. Now his ghost is said to haunt his unfinished temple. Spooky-pooky.

It was coming up on 2 pm and we were both 100% satisfied with our sightseeing endeavours. It was great to see the temples from the ground after seeing them from the air during the balloon ride. James however was feeling worse and worser. We made it back to the hotel, had a bath and then he was violently ill - and again as we were driving off en route to the airport. Talk about big and brave. Ahhhh... Even 3 months in Asia doesn’t make us immune from food issues / sun / just plain ‘because’ issues etc. Being a great one for sympathy and empathy I was feeling mighty squeasy myself by the time we were sitting and waiting for our delayed and then just plain late flight to Yangon. Given that an ATR flight can feel like being in a washing machine, I took some motion sickness pills to make sure I wasn’t being sick on the flight itself. Which seemed to work.