Day 145. Kyle & Leanne joint blog. Bagan, Myanmar.

Unlike Yangon, Bagan is vastly spread out with 3,000 Pagodas dotting the landscape so our Big Sause walking tour strategy will not work here. There is an option to rent e-bikes and go the do-it-yourself tour route but figuring out which of the is 3,000 pagodas to prioritize would be an exercise unto itself.  In addition, the thought of putting seven of us on motorized scooters after Vietnam gives Leanne and Kyle visions of crashes and piles of seven mangled scooters.  So we book a one day tour with a guide and van that can hold the crew.

We meet our guide Aung in the lobby of the hotel.  “Aung who?” you might ask.  Just Aung.  Aung tells us that there are no last names in Myanmar, just first and middle names.  Kyle asks him how one differentiates people with the same first name.  He says we just know each other.  With 57 million people in the country, a system with no last names would seem rife with confusion.  We can see someone in the government saying, “hey send a notice to Aung, he hasn’t paid his taxes yet.” “Umm, sir, there are 4 million Aung’s in Myanmar, which one do we send it to?” “Ahh, just pick one of them.”

Aung is twenty four years old and his English is excellent.  Kyle asks how he learned English and he says watching English movies and TV shows.  He says to Kyle, “you know Power Rangers?” and is thrilled that Kyle knows them as he break out and in a kung-fu fighting pose.  Aung moved to Bagan from Yangon with his parents six years ago.  He is very talkative and social and Kyle especially like him because Aung laughs at his jokes.

Bagan’s plethora of pagoda’s are the main attraction so today is Super Pagoda Day! Most of the pagodas were built in the 11th – 13 the centuries when Bagan was the capital of Myanmar amidst the spread of Buddhism.  A Buddhist stupa is a place of worship that has a large round center dome that is filled with Buddhist artifacts and offerings.  A Buddhist temple is a place of worship that is “hollow” and can be entered underneath.  A Buddhist pagoda is term used to encapsulate both stupas and temples.  We will see the “Big 4” pagodas as well 4 others.

The first pagoda is Shwezigon Pagoda which is one of the Big 4.  A prototype of Burmese stupas, it consists of a circular gold leaf-gilded stupa surrounded by smaller temples and shrines. The temple was completed in 1102 AD. Over the centuries the pagoda had been damaged by many earthquakes and other natural calamities; and has been refurbished several times. In recent renovations it has been covered by more than 30,000 copper plates. The pagoda is believed to enshrine a bone and tooth of Gautama Buddha. The pagoda is in the form of a cone formed by five square terraces with a central solid core.

It is reminiscent of the Shwedagon Pagoda that John took us to in Yangon.  Ashlynn woke up this morning not feeling great but decided to try to brave out the day.  As we arrive at the Pagoda, nausea overtakes her and she ends up making an extra offering to the Buddha.  We finish our exploration and Ashlynn is declared done for the day so we take her back to the hotel and Ashley volunteers to stay back to help her.  Looks like Leanne’s cultural show from the day before has claimed another victim.       

Back on the road again, we stop at the Manuha Temple which was by captive Mon King Manuha in 1067. It is a rectangular building of two stories. The building contains three images of seated Buddhas and an image of Buddha entering Nirvana. Manuha Temple is one of the oldest temples in Bagan. Manuha built his colossal Buddha images at Myinpagan where he was living in captivity a mile south of Pagan (now Bagan). "Stricken with remorse", says the Glass Palace Chronicle, "he built a colossal Buddha with legs crossed, and a dying Buddha as it were making pariniruâna; and he prayed saying 'Whithersoever I migrate in samsâra, may I never be conquered by another!' 

At the temple, they are preparing for an upcoming festival and have bags and bags of rice stacked against the wall.  The four entrances to the temple each have a gigantic Buddha which fills up the entire room.  We ask Aung why there isn’t any space for people to worship and he tells us that when the exiled King Manuha had the temple built, he had the rooms constructed this way to symbolize his exile imprisonment (e.g. Buddha has no free space around him).  One of the gigantic Buddha’s is lying horizontally and we learn how to tell the difference between horizontal statues representing the alive and resting Buddha and vs the dead Buddha. 

Next door to the temple is Napaya Temple which was the former home of King Manuha of Thahton.  The Temple is said to be have been built by Nagathaman, grandson of Manuha in the late 11th or early 12th century AD. It was later converted to a Temple is one of only four religious buildings in Bagan built of sandstone.  Napaya is noted for stone bas relief of eight Braham figures (Hindu), ogre heads with triangular foliage carved on the supporting pillars inside the temple. We marvel at the sandstone carvings. There might have formerly been a Buddha statue of bronze or sandstone but not now.  Figures of hamsa birds adorn the exterior walls of the temple.  Above the perforated windows are arched pediments with kalasa and Sri Goddess.  It is actually a Buddhist edifice despite the Hindu elements incorporated therein.

Next pagoda up is the Myazedi Pagoda.  The highlight of this one is the Myazedi Quadrilingual Stone Inscription which is Bagan’s version of the Rosetta Stone which we saw in London.  The stone has a UNESCO Memory of the World designation. The inscription was inscribed in 1113 AD.  The inscription is written in four languages (one on each of the four faces of the stone): Pyu, Mon, Myanmar and Pali.  The stone is the earliest Myanmar language document with a chronological date.  It was also very rare to have four languages inscribed on a single stone.  The stone was discovered in 1886 AD.  The pagoda also has a model of the city laid out on a huge table with replicas of the major pagodas.

We walk next door to the Gubyaukgyi temple was built in 1113 AD by Prince Yazakumar shortly after the death of his father, King Kyansittha of the Pagan Dynasty. The temple is notable for two reasons. First, it contains a large array of well-preserved frescoes on its interior walls which are the oldest original paintings to be found in Bagan. All of the frescoes are accompanied by ink captions written in Old Mon providing one of the earliest examples of the language's use in Myanmar. 

We eat lunch at the Teak House which has a good selection of local Myanmar dishes and then head back out to visit the Thatbyinnyu Temple which was built in the mid-12th century during the reign of King Alaungsithu. The Temple is shaped like a cross but is not symmetrical. It is one of the earliest double-storied temples with the seated Buddha image located on the second story. At ~65 meters, it is the tallest pagoda in Bagan. The great height of the temple and the vertical lines of the ornamental features-the plain pilasters, the flame-like arch pediments, the corner stupas-give a soaring effect to the Thatbyinnyu.

Next up is the Ananda Temple which is considered one of the most beautiful temples in Bagan.

The Ananda Temple was built in 1105 AD during the reign of King Kyanzittha (1084–1113) of the Pagan Dynasty. The temple layout is in a cruciformwith several terraces leading to a small pagoda at the top covered by an umbrella known as hti which is the name of the umbrella or top ornament found in almost all pagodas in Myanmar. The Buddhist temple houses four standing Buddhas each one facing the cardinal direction of East, North, West and South. The temple is said to be an architectural wonder in a fusion of Mon and adopted Indian style of architecture. The impressive temple has also been titled the "Westminster Abbey of Burma". The temple was damaged in the earthquake of 1975, however; it has been fully restored and is well maintained by frequent painting and whitewashing of the walls. We meet a woman at the temple from New York who loves our year-long travel adventure plan and says she wishes she could have taken her two grown sons on a trip this like this when they were younger.

Next up is the Gya Pya temple.  The temple looks like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark; an ancient ruin in the middle of the jungle.  It is not one of the big four but Kyle loves the ancient lost city feeling which turns out to be a precursor to Angkor Wat.

Next up is the Sulamani Temple which is one of the most-frequently temples visited in Bagan. It was built in 1183 by King Narapatisithu and is similar to the Thatbyinnyu Temple in design. The Sulamani Temple also shows influence from the Dhammayangyi Temple (see below), and was the model for the Htilominlo Temple. Sulamani Temple was restored after the 1975 earthquake, and utilizes brick and stone, with frescoes in the interior of the temple. It was rebuilt in 1994. The temple complex originally housed a number of other buildings like an ordination hall, a library where the Buddhist scriptures were kept and monks living quarters. The remains of the Sulamani Kyaung, the monastery building are still visible within the walled area.

Our final stop in the Mega, Whirlwind Pagoda Day is the Dhammayangyi Temple which is the largest of all the temples in Bagan.  The Dhammayan as it is popularly known was built during the reign of King Narathu (1167-1170). Narathu, who came to the throne by assassinating his father Alaungsithu and his elder brother, presumably built this largest temple to atone for his sins. From a distance it resembles the early step pyramids of Egypt. The king was an extremely brutal ruler.  The brick work of the Dhammayangyi was done with great precision. During construction, the King would visit and if he could stick a needle in between two bricks, he would have the bricklayer’s arms cut off resulting in their death. Kyle makes a note to self not to apply for any Bagan pagoda bricklaying jobs. After ruling for only three years, the King was later murdered himself.  The people hated him so much that his temple was never finished.

We wrap up our great day with Aung which has been very informative.  We have asked him about before 2011 when still under military rule. He talked about how day-to-day life was very scary with the military patrolling areas.  He said from his perspective, things were much better after the change but is currently worried about the current state of affairs with the tourism industry which is his livelihood.  The Rohingya refugee crisis and civil war has resulted in the many Western countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, etc.) issuing travel advisories in the past year that has severely negatively impacted the Myanmar tourism industry.

We check in with Ashlynn who is still weak and nauseous and we opt to have the hotel send a doctor to check on her.  The doctor who speaks perfect English shows up with an older mother in tow who we speculate could be her mother.  The older woman does not say anything, just stands there occasionally nodding her approval as the doctor dispenses the medicines. The visit is relatively quick but then the doctor sets about writing up the paperwork.  First she needs just about every piece of information on the planet about Ashlynn, us, the family, the trip for her papers.  Kyle asks if she needs the birth records of our “adopted” neighborhood cat Oreo back home in Manhattan Beach but the joke is lost on her as she responds that the family cat’s records are not necessary.  An hour later, she hands Kyle a tomb representing the entire medical diagnostic evaluation.  Kyle suspects the document is more comprehensive than most company’s disaster recovery plans.  

With the Mega-Whirlwind-Pagoda day completed, we opt to eat dinner in the hotel.  They have an outside / open air restaurant next to the pool.  There is a karaoke night listed on the hotel board but Leanne is dismayed to learn that they only have songs in Burmese and a corporate group has already rented out the room.  Kyle encourages Leanne to crash the party, grab the mike and just start belting out Whitney Houston songs but to no avail.