Bagan 28th nov

Bagan - 28th nov.

So, clever me I decided to cycle for about 1h30, right to the other side of the area of Bagan during the hottest part of the day (I'm full of good ideas like that!). I thought that the takana, the mud on my face, will make a kind of paste with the sweat but surprisingly didn't. Instead I started to sweat heavily from my eyelids, a rather strange phenomenon.

Later on I started to sweat from the usual other part, forehead, chin and upper lip, which gave me the great idea to try putting that stuff tomorrow in the shape of a moustache!

I realised that many people here don't seem to know what my moustache necklace represents. It's true that as they don't have many hair, especially facial ones, I doubt anyone could ever grow such a curly one like that, hence not realising what it is.

The day was good, saw obviously loads more temples. People loved the make up and every body kept saying how beautiful I was, so it is definitely something to make you prettier over there.

I found a sweet little temple away from crowd to watch yet again another sunset. Stayed there until quite late as the full moon was rising, which just made it incredible. Also this time had some music with me, which changed the whole experienced.

I waited for the night to fall to pin point which temples had lights on and started my mission of Bagan by night.

 Well...cycling in sandy pathway in the dark (even with a headtorch) is simply impossible, I had to push, and I mean really push hard , by bike through the sand. On the top of that the front basket detached itself from the bottom due to the weight of my bag and the bumpy roads, which means that it was going on the side onto my knee and stopped me from cycling! Great!

I tried to fix it with a bit of fabric (200AD) that I found, but obviously only lasted a few minutes... Luckily when I stopped at a temple, a young lad who's English was incredible, managed to fix it for me.

The whole thing by night was a bit of a mission, nice to see the temples lit, but didn't come out so well on the pictures. It was 7, I hadn't had any food all day, the only thing I wanted is to be home, showered and fed, so I cycled back.

Met up with some Spanish people that I met in my guesthouse for dinner and had the chance to practice la idioma un pocito! As it was the start of their 2 days festival ( I found out it was the festival of the pagoda, couldn't be in a better place for that! Ha!)  we headed towards the main temple which is round the corner from my guesthouse, again couldn't have been better. We arrived and saw a huge crowd, praying... it was really impressive. It finished soon after we arrived but as we went out, a concert was starting...and what a gig. It was so cheesy, it was hilarious! the weird thing is that no one seemed to enjoy it. no one was singing along or dancing, but especially not one clap at the end of each song. Also the crowd was mainly male, which was a bit weird.

Today the whole town is receiving thousands of visitors. Wanted to see the sunrise but failed miserably at waking up so early. Instead I went to the main pagoda to see what was happening. So many people were coming to make offerings, women carrying their presents on their heads, while parents were buying cheap toys to their kids from the souvenir shops.

At 8 (there was no point going there at 6.30), thousands of monks started to queue up to receive the offerings made by those people. Children, teenagers, men and elderly, all dressed in their red robes were all in one line waiting for their turns. Some got food, some got money attached to a kind of handmade tree... 

It's then started to get very busy so left and about to return now, to see what's going on, before to catch my bus to Yangon and then straight to the beach... oh yeah!

Comments

[papiloo]

unusual buddhas! with also nice colors, nice scenery, the shapes of the temples are great, with good pictures! I undertand you are practicing spanish but with the locals I suppose you speak english; do they spek well?

lots of kisses xxxxx