Buddha Day, Temple Night
Full moon today. It’s a holiday/festival day in Bagan because of the full moon – some type of Buddha Day I think. We all (‘we’ being the other travellers at the guesthouse) decided that it would be a good day to visit Mt. Popa which is a famous temple on top of an extinct volcano about 50km from Bagan. We rented a minivan with driver for $3 each and a group of 8 of us set out for Mt. Popa this morning – me, Lori (Canada), the 2 Israeli girls, Edwardo (Spain), the Slovenian couple, and the Japanese man. It was interesting to see the temple especially today because there were many locals there bringing flowers and money offerings but overall none of us were that impressed with it and didn’t think it was worth the 1.5-hour ride each way. I think we had more fun in the car.
The whole group had lunch together back in Bagan and then we retreated back to our aircon rooms to get out of the afternoon heat for a bit.
In the early evening Mirit and I decided to take bicycles and cycle around the pagados for sunset. This was the first time that either of us had seen any of the pagodas in Bagan. When the guidebook says there are’thousands’ of pagodas here they ain’t kidding. Ther are literally everywhere. The landscape is COVERED with them. The evening glow of sunset made all the temples look like gold. We went up to the top of one of them to watch the actual sun set over the river below. Spent almost 2 hours just sitting up there taking in the view. Nice time.
Tomorrow more temple touring is on, and, ok, perhaps some more tailoring as well.
See the big rock on the right with temples on top, thats Mt. Popa
Girl conquers summit of Mt. Popa
A happy Burmese Buddha (Burma has my favorite Buddha faces)
Add comment July 24th, 2002