Bagan

I left Mandalay, and Norman the mad scientist after a couple of days and headed for Bagan. I met up with an Austrian couple, a Swedish couple and an Englishman on the ferry, and spent the best part of the day eating cake and drinking tea, in typically English style. (Had to keep the flag flying of course).

We reached Bagan at about4 in the afternoon, having left at 6 that morning.......so got to watch the sun rise over Mandalay, as we left, and headed down the Irrawaddy river.

Bagan is an amazing place, essentially a huge plain full of about 2,000 temples and Pagodas. A photographers paradise, which I exploited with regular 5.30am forays. Of course I had the ,now standard, 20 year old, ladies shopping bicycle to get around and a small selection of Europeans to accompany me. We did morning and afternoon sorties, exploring the area to the best of our physical abilities. At this point, I would just like to mention that my time in the Fir Tree Avenue BMX gang stood me in good stead, with regard to stamina and general all round cycling ability.

The bike had a saddle only to rival the elephant in terms of comfort and tyres that could barely contain the inner tube. So it was no great suprise when I managed to acquire a slow puncture at the furthest distance from the hotel with only half an hour of sunlight left. I put this down entirely to the insubstantial tyre and not my larger than "Asian" weight.

Aside from the odd cycling incident, and I wasn't the worst, Nick the other Brit hadn't ridden a bike since his childhood years, we managed to crawl our way around Bagan and see a satisfying portion of the Pagoda splendour that was on offer. The same smiles and greetings welcomed us pretty much everywhere we went, and once I'd bought my first twenty postcards(under the understanding that I was actually buying two postcards) I grew accustomed to politely ignoring the tourist hagglers.

We spent about five days in Bagan, and with the temperature reaching 42 degrees, in the shade of course, that was probably long enough. Plus there was "Thingyan", the Buddhist new year, which is celebrated all over South East Asia, to think of. When this party starts, all means of transport grind to a halt.......oh and everybody gets wet, very wet. The new year festival is celebrated by spending three days throwing water over each other....... from 7 in the morning until the sun goes down, and drinking......from 7 in the morning until the sun goes down. No problems there then!

So time to book the bus ticket out of Bagan and head forInle lake.......where better to spend a water festival?