Bagan

We woke this morning to find that it had poured with rain during the night leaving us with a very hot and humid day. Now I have mosquito bites to go with the bed bug bites... no malaria in the area!

I am told that in Bagan there are over 5000 pagodas in an area the size of Manhattan . Pagodas everywhere you look ... mostly brick from the 11 th century. Several of them were covered with bamboo scaffolding or blue plastic while they were being restored.

We had a look at a few pagodas and temples. It's an archeological site and the people living in the villages are paid to look after it.

The locals use a natural sun screen which they make by rubbing the bark of a tree on a slab with water. It looks like a pale yellow chalk which you can often see on their faces. They don't want to get dark!

Actually it makes you realise how strong the NZ sun is because you can be out all day in the sun here and hardly notice it. 

You can see a mum sunscreening her child and Hay Mar demonstrating how it works.

We were given a very nice Burmese lunch today and were amused by the dessert menu .... none of us fancied bread bums or even brown bread and butter.

After a welcome afternoon break in the hotel we all piled into horse carts to ride through the archeological site to see the temples at sunset.

 It was a great ride through the village.

Loved the enterprising young man who was trying to sell postcards he'd drawn himself.

The horses had to negotiate a few rather large muddy puddles at times and at one time we were entertained by an incidence of road rage when two horse and carts met each other in a narrow lane. The yelling must have been heard for miles as the area was very quiet and serene until then.

The sunset was beautiful. Our intention was to climb the Pagoda for a better view but given the number of people on the various levels we decided we may be better off staying on the ground..... and we wouldn't have to take our shoes off!!!

It was a stunning evening!