Alarm went off at 5.00am and in the darkness of the early morning we "sped" through the streets of Mandalay in our Tuk-Tuk seeing the city start to wake up. We arrived at the docks in plenty of time for our boat which was to take 11 hours along the Irrawaddy River (the country's largest) to the city of Bagan.

After finding our assigned seats downstairs, we went up on to the deck to watch the sunrise, together with a tour group of Germans and a photography group from Turkey - it was a multi-national busy boat. We watched the city and its 100's of pagodas on the hillside fade in to the distance and be replaced by visions of everyday life on the river. We had an early afternoon stop at a local village which was the English equivalent of Stoke on Trent - they made a lot of pottery. It was interesting to "potter" around the village and meet the local people who were very friendly. The final few hours were pretty much the same and we arrived in to Bagan at 5.30 and walked the plank to get on to land.

Lots of taxis waiting and we were soon in our hostel, the BaobaBed, which had been recommended to us by a traveller in Laos. Everything there for the traveller - café, bar, pool table, washing machines and a roof top swimming pool! We didn't do much on our first evening but walked down the road to a local restaurant to have some food.

Bagan is an ancient city that was the capital of the first Burmese empire. It is located in the dry central plains of the country and does not have a rainy season so great to visit any time. As the heart of Burma during ancient times, Bagan serves as a home to temples and buildings built from the 11th century to the 13th century - there are more than 2000 to be found, most of which were built by the ancient kings and leaders of Burma.

The first morning we rented a scooter (electric) - the majority of tourists visit the temples by way of a scooter and is a great way to get around. Armed with our top 16 list of temples we set off - Dan looking very fetching on the dusty pink scooter and powder blue helmet. I think we managed about 7 of them as every 5 minutes we stopped to see different ones in between. Some of them had no other people there and a local would pop out of nowhere with a set of keys and open up the pagoda - we saw great Buddha statues and ancient, faded paintings on walls and ceilings.

We stopped for lunch along the river and a sign said it was Avocado season, so we ordered Avocado and Papaya smoothie, avocado and tomato salad, delicious. That afternoon we continued exploring along the dusty sand roads and at sunset we came to a view point, along with many other tourists, and watched as the sun sank behind the temples. We got the scooter back for the said time of 7.00pm, had a welcome shower and got a taxi to the main street for dinner at "Weather Spoons". Heather again had Avocado salad as one of her favourite foods and making the most of them being in season whilst we are here.

Day two we were up at 5.00am, picked up our electric scooter at 5.30am and went in search of our sunrise. We were going to a tower located within a 5-star resort and again, we were not alone. There were many Chinese tourists who had beat us there and already set up their tripods with huge zoom lenses in readiness for the anticipated sunrise. When it finally showed itself on the horizon there was a round of applause, and 20 minutes later everyone, together with tripods dashed to the other side of the tower - the hot air balloons were setting off and it was a spectacular sight to see them all floating above the temples. Unfortunately, it was really difficult to get a good photo so we will try again tomorrow!

We got back to our hostel at 9.00am for breakfast and then went to a local bar as we had heard they were going to stream the England v Wales Rugby match from the day before. The bar was filled with English people who happened to be the hot air balloon pilots who come and live and work in Myanmar for 6 months of the year. It was a nice way to spend a couple of hours and have a few early beers. The rest of the day was spent doing laundry and catching up on our blog.

Day 3 - A lie in this morning, only got up at 05.30am for another sunrise. We were going to a different spot and in the middle of nowhere a local on his scooter stopped us and said "sunrise?". He wanted to show us a temple where we could climb up and watch the sunrise and balloons. Nothing is for free and we agreed on a price and off we went. When we arrived, we took our shoes off as is customary and in our bare feet we climbed up the old stone narrow staircase inside the temple, in the dark whilst being careful of the bees' nest at the top of the stairwell. There were about 20 people so a lot less than yesterday and we did see a lovely sunrise and the hot air balloons silently floating overhead with the occasional noise of the gas burners.

We went back to our hostel for breakfast and spent the remainder of the day visiting more temples, the Royal Palace, lunch on the river for more avocado delights. We also visited a village where we got an insight in to the daily lives of local craftsmen and they showed us their weaving, spinning cotton, lacquerware, and amazing traditional Burmese hand rolled cigars and how they smoke them, quite unique. We were now very hot, sweaty and covered in dust and in desperate need for a shower and a beer. We decided to skip the sunset this evening and got the scooter back by 4 and went to our roof top bar for a nice cold beer. The shower could wait, the beer was more important at this stage. We then had a welcome shower, packed for our early start tomorrow, had a bite to eat and an early night.