There's a lively market near the temple, which is a beehive of activity. It was a very popular stop on the trip for most visitors, although coming from Thailand, it was pretty much your typical Asian market.

We spent the following morning in Bagan as well before setting off on our river cruise. We visited Shwezigon Pagoda, which is about the only temple still in use in Bagan. It's one of the oldest, built around 1000 AD, and on the outskirts of the old city limits. It was built to house a copy of the Buddha's tooth, made from the original in Sri Lanka. It's quite an elaborate place for a knockoff relic.



It's probably the most elaborate temple outside of Yangon in terms of jewels, gold etc ornamentation. One odd feature is a small reflecting pool nearby, which was built to allow the kings to look at the reflection of the jewel encrusted tip of the stupa. This was done because he couldn't look directly up at the tip lest his crown fall off, which would be quite a calamity.

We saw a few hot air balloons hovering above Bagan, which must be a beautiful way to see it. Even from our elevated viewpoint, we could only see a fraction of the temples. Once the sun set, our kiddie driver returned us to the boat. We washed off about eight pounds of grime caked on us during our carriage ride, had a good dinner and called it a night.

The Bagan plains look their bestg at sunset, and a few of the temples are known for offering prime viewing areas. We ended up at Sulamani Pahto, which looks more like an Aztec ruin than a Burmese temple. We clambered up the unsafe terraces connected by deteriorating staircases and settled in for the show. The sunset isn't really anything special, but the temples turn a very rich shade of red and eventually turn to silouhettes.

Just some more Bagan panoramas, plus our horse and buggy. Our driver was about eight years old, and seemed very happy pretending to be old enough to be driving tourists around. His teeth were dyed bright red, like almost all rural Burmese, who chew betel all the time, notwithstanding its revolting cosmetic impact. The best decision we made on the trip was to ditch the tour bus and take the skinny horse and little red-toothed kid instead, since the whole spiritual quality of wandering around these abandoned places almost completely alone would have been ruined in a big group.

Here are just some random shots of the ruined temples scattered throughout the plain. To me this is a more impressive sight than even Angkor Wat. Although the Angkor temples are larger and more intricate, they're more spread out and hidden by jungle, so they don't have quite the same breathtaking impact. There are also almost no tourists, and no locals either, just a few dirt paths meandering through thousands of abandoned temples. It's quite an amazing experience to climb up one of these temples and look in any direction and see an endless number of other temples. It would take weeks to see each one, but you'd have to be a real archeological buff to want to do that. The temples are for the most part closed and only the main stupa remains, so there's not that much to do at any individual temple. But I do wish we had more time here, as I think two or three days are needed to do justice to the place, whereas we only had two half days.

95. Bagan

Bagan rose from obscurity around the year 1000 to conquer all the surrounding kingdoms and become the capital of Burma. This position lasted only about two hundred years, when the Mongols swept through Asia, destroying everything in their path. But in those two hundred years, Bagan's kings built thousands of temples, the ruins of which are everywhere you look, as far as the eye can see. In its heyday there would of course have been palaces, shops, homes and other buildings, and these thousands of temples would be covered in gold, silver and intricate decorations. These are all gone, leaving only the ruined temples as testament to what must have been an amazing city. This temple,Gawdawpalin Pahto, is probably the largest, and one of the last to be built, around 1220.