Bagan's Temples

Even though most of the people I have been traveling with will remember Bagan, Myanmar for the time we spent in the hotel with food poisoning, it actually is known for all of the temples.

Though Bagan is trailing other parts of Myanmar in economic and tourism growth, it makes up for it in the beautiful temple-laden landscape and slow sunsets.

According to my sources (aka - Wikipedia.  Not always the most credible, but it is chock full of info), over 10,000 Buddhist temples and monasteries were built between the 11th and 13th centuries - right when the kingdom was prospering.  Today, over 2,200 are still standing.  I am usually shy to admit that I enjoy operating as an over-achiever, but for some reason those 'over-achiever' qualities did not fully kick in while in Bagan.... we only hit a tiny fraction of all those 2,200 temples.

We did see a lot of them via bicycling, though - things always seem to look better from the perspective of sitting on a bike.

Bagan

Bagan landscape

Bagan sunset

Boats outside an island village

Bringing in rice

Carlos, Jen, Aaron

Monk in training

Biking to temples

The kids here are cute!

Slow sunsets..

On top of a temple... well, half-way to the top

Life in Bagan

First thing to eat after food poisoning?
Some great guac from a hip vegetarian
restaurant... yep, they have one in Bagan

                  

Sunflowers I spotted peaking out
of banana leaves at the dusty
Bagan market