Hello, again, Blogonauts.

Forgive this polite fiction that I encourage you to live with ... that I am writing this blog on a daily basis and you are following closely in my footsteps. Myanmar's sticky web of web insufficiency left both you and me trapped and starving for bandwidth.

There was so much to tell you about, but the internet was stoppered, and semaphore doesn't work around the arc of the globe.

I intend to be caught up by the time I reach home, but let's pretend together that you're getting the freshest of information, and hope that as each day passes, it grows fresher still.

So let's pretend that it is still February 1. Zoë and I joined up within the walled garden where the Bagan Umbra Hotel serves its guests breakfast. And soon we met our horsecart driver for the day, Tzin-Tzin.

We also met his horse, but the poor beast's name was never clear to me.

Bagan awaited nearby. From 900-1300 C.E. i.e., during our own Dark Ages, Bagan was the capital of central Myanmar. And over time the city fostered a 100-square-kilometer prolific "farm" devoted exclusively to crops of pagodas, stupas, and temples. As I pointed out earlier, building such architectural aids for veneration gains the builder/funder merit for a better life when reincarnated. And in its height, some 10,000 such temples were constructed. Of those, more than 2000 remain.

Needless to say, visiting even the tiniest fraction of this multitude in a single day is impossible, even if our horse had been named Secretariat or Seabiscuit. But Tzin-Tzin had mapped out a course that showed us many that were both impressive and relatively nearby. Take a peak the photos to see some of the glorious architecture and statuary we wandered about throughout the day.

While we gave Tzin-Tzin and his steed a break for a bit, we rented bicycles for a couple of hours and pedaled to an area known as the Bamboo Village, where truly astonishing lacquer work is done. We toured the workshop and couldn't escape purchasing some items to tote in the bicycle's basket.

Photography loves long shadows and suns that hug the horizon, so we met up once more with Tzin-Tzin for a final push to find a temple to climb for the best sunset ever. Many of the taller temples become coated with tourists aching to get a good shot of sunset. On crystal clear days, cameras are already mounted on tripods and set up in ideal spots by 3 PM.

Having a horsecart worked to our advantage. We traversed trails that were really unreachable by car or bike and found a somewhat disused building with stairway access to its roof. (Possibly it is the remains of a long-abandoned monastery.) We were not alone on our perch, but only about a dozen other denizens of looming dusk shared our rooftop vantage point.

After the warm up show of light and shadows, we had dinner where local musicians and marionette performers gave us a second act.

It was a breath-taking day, but it was followed by a visit to Myanmar's answer to Shangri-La. More on that coming up next.

Blog to you later!