Another Day Another Temple ... or Baganarama

After so many temples in so many Southeast Asian countries, it's hard to get excited about seeing ANOTHER temple and yet we found ourselves on a slow boat from Mandalay down the Irawaddy to visit the temple-strewn plains of Bagan.

The temples started sprouting up here like weeds a thousand years ago. There are now around 2000 temples remaining - with a few brand new ones to offset the thousands that have been destroyed over the years. That sounds pretty incredible, and it sort of is. It is hard to find a spot where there is not a temple of some sort in site. Some of the temples can be climbed and offer unreal panoramas of a galaxy of stupas rising above the trees. The temples are fairly spread out over 16 or so square miles of farmland, so we rented bicycles for a few days to explore. That turned out to be a bit of work on some of the sandy paths, but at least there weren't any real hills. I woke up at 5:30am one day to capture the temples rising through the misty jungle sunrise. Instead, I got a 5 mile bikeride in the darkness and rain and a few gloomy photos. Yay!Like the rest of Myanmar, Bagan was largely devoid of tourists. On our biking adventures, we came across hundreds of temples, but only a handful of foreigners. Only sunset at one of the big temples near a posh hotel drew them from their air conditioned lives. OK...we had A/C, too. But we managed to go outside and see stuff during the day.

We also found the moral equivalent of the Thai "No Whammies" Prayer Machine. Here, you throw money at target wishes a spinning wedding cake. I'm shooting for "May you win in lottery".

The Temple's so Bright I Gotta Wear Shades

High atop Rangon is a big golden temple bejeweled with diamonds and rubies. It is seriously too bright to look at with the naked eye. If you try your eyes start watering and you're forced to squint or turn away. It sits in the center of the massive shining complex of Shwegadon. Surrounding this holiest of holy temples is a smorgasbord of lesser temples each dedicated to topic and day specific buddhas. Families come packed with a day's worth of food and spend all day in the shade their religion offers. They take naps, women braid hair, rugrats run amok, and everyone takes time to make offerings to their buddha of choice. The look of the buddhas area quite different. Most are the typical golden sitting statues with coils of hair and a soft smug countenance.

But there are also the old men likenesses of revered monks and even a green troll demon. This latter one was being proffered fast food and lit cigarettes in addition to the usual incense and monetary offerings.

It took us several hours to take it all in, including a rest with the locals on a tiled floor of an open air temple under the watchful eyes of the ever present buddhas. Interestingly the entrance and exit for foreigners is distinctly separated from those of the locals. Our shoe racks were separated as well as bathrooms and even the elevators. Obviously we had to pay an entrance fee but we were also required to sign in to a log book that we found out later freelance guides peruse to pick out their next targets. Our guy had walked around for over an hour and couldn't find us until we were on our way out.

Brighter is Better

We wanted to see the rural parts where the locals live on the outskirts of Siem Reap so we disembarked from our tuktuk on the way back from Tonle Lake and walked the rest of the way along the dirt paths. Through dense trees we saw an explosion of rainbow. It was a new buddhist temple getting its final layer of paint. The saffron robed monks were sweeping, washing, and painting. Statues were being prepared to go to their standing posts. As I was gazing at the technicolor reliefs a monk approached me and struck up a conversation. He had been an ordained monk for 3 years and was focused on learning English. He taught three times a day to the other monks. He said monks live by 227 virtues but he holds 4 to be the dearest. As a monk he must preach five virtues to the common people to guide them to a good life. His exposed skin showed tattoos of a dragon down one arm and buddhist mantras on his chest and forearm. The dragon he got before he entered monkhood. The mantras were for protection. He told us the locals do not like tattoos and think they bring bad luck to a village. He gave us a tour of the temple that had his likeness upon the wall as a founder. This brand spanking new cement one was built to replace the wooden one that the Khmers destroyed. He spoke of some of the stories and characters on the murals. At one panel he stumbled with his words then apologized and said he could not continue the story because his english was not good enough. His worry was that he would use the wrong words and translate the story incorrectly to us, in essence lying. Thus he would commit a sin and could no longer be a monk. So we skipped the panel. We took up a good hour of his time so said bye and continued on our way along the stream that went through Siem Reap. Along the way a few kids invited us to play volleyball with them next to their straw house. You see volleyball nets scattered everywhere in this part of the world. Its a very popular sport along with badminton, soccer, and patong.