Bagan feels very luxurious to me, probably because I am staying at a very nice little hotel (affordable because of Agoda.com and the fact that I am actually in a mixed six bed dorm room in this nice hotel!). Yesterday I took full advantage of the hotel services and booked a shared taxi to visit Mt Popa which is one of the many sacred sites of Bagan. A little off the tourist trail, Mt Popa is pretty fun to visit. We stopped at a place that makes palm alcohol and palm sugar snacks on the way (very tasty... they also make palm sugar and milk sweets that taste a lot like my piano teacher's Sucre à la creme!). Mt Popa is a shrine on a mountain top, you have to climb some 400 steps in your bare feet. I got to ring the gong at one of the shrines and we made friends with a large Burmese family (three girls, four boys, and a grandma with a very firm handshake).
The six in our Mt Popa group also decided to take a boat from the Old Bagan jetty to watch the sunset. The rest of my time in Bagan has been touring the ruins and doing a bit of shopping in the Lacquerware shops. Bagan is known as THE place in Myanmar to buy the beautiful handmade lacquer bowls, cups and plates.
Top pagodas to visit in Bagan:
Shwesandaw Pagoda for the best view of the temple-strewn plains;
-Ananda Paya for the biggest standing buddhas;
- Shwedagon Pagoda for a very "local feel".
-Stayed at the Royal Bagan in Nyaung U and recommend it.
Next stop, Mandalay!!
xxx
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