We arrived in Bagan on a 9 hour overnight bus from Yangon at 5:15am, found out our hotel room would not be ready for a few hours, and got back in the cab to catch the sunrise from one of the more famous and large pagodas (there are >2000 pagodas scattered throughout Bagan). Despite the crowd that was already at the top of the pagoda, we managed to secure a front row seat (thanks to Hillary’s prowess) to watch an incredible and breathtaking sunrise. It was amazing to see the thousands of temples and pagodas slowly illuminated as the sun spread its light across the landscape (had to make this picture full sized to appreciate it fully).
Right about when it started getting really beautiful, I felt a strange sensation overcoming me (and not the spiritual/pleasant kind…). I turned to Hillary and told her we needed to start descending the many steep stairs back to the ground immediately and get back to the hotel, or else I would have a serious issue. We spent the rest of the day in the hotel room, as I suffered through what we believe was food poisoning. Here we were in this amazing place in the world, and I was staring at a hotel ceiling and toilet bowl for a full day – I was not pleased.
The next day we had planned a guided tour through the pagodas with 2 Austrian friends we met on the bus ride from Yangon, and upon waking, I decided to try to give it a shot despite still feeling pretty miserable and not being able to eat anything besides white bread (for those of you who know me well, you’ll realize I had to be feeling pretty rough to consume white bread). In addition to the Austrians (Victor and Janine) was a fellow American friend of theirs (Jack), so when the van arrived we had a nice little group to spend the day with and a good English-speaking guide to show us around and discuss the history and significance of what we saw.
The only thing on the lunch menu I could handle… plain white rice
I had to stick to shady areas for much of the morning after almost passing out at our first stop, but as the day progressed I gradually started feeling better, and it turned out to be a great day. We made some new friends, saw amazing pagodas and temples, and learned a lot about Bagan and Buddhist history. We ended the day watching a beautiful sunset before crashing back at the hotel.
Taking a midday rest in the shade to help my recovery
Enjoying the view of an amazing sunset
I was still not 100% the next day and we had another 9 hour overnight bus back to Yangon awaiting us in the evening, so we decided to take it easy and sit by the pool working on the last Laos blog posts all day. Thankfully we were able to cover a lot of ground on the tour, so we didn’t feel like we missed out on too much due to my illness, and by the time the bus ride came around I was just about back to normal.
Overall, Bagan was definitely a beautiful area and a very unique place in the world. While it was a rough few days for me, I’m glad we got the chance to explore the area and learn a lot about it. Fingers crossed for no more bad illnesses this trip… on to Yangon!