After a long night on the overnight bus, we arrived in Bagan at about 5:30am. Not exactly an ideal time to arrive in a new town, but our hotel, the Bagan Emerald Hotel, was within walking distance of the bus terminal. We took a minor detour and a significantly longer walk than we expected – we read that it was 5 minutes, but it was at least 20, and we took the wrong exit out of the bus terminal which added a few more minutes. We arrived at our hotel at around 6am, and luckily they let us right into our room we booked for the next night, even though we were 8 hours early for check in, with no extra charge! We had a large room and a comfy bed to rest up after the long night of restlessness. We just had to kill about 45 mosquitos that had been living in our room, but the front desk let us borrow their electric tennis racket type mosquito killing machine, so in our exhausted crazy state, we had a war with the mosquitos before catching a few hours of sleep.

By the time we woke up it was a little after noon, and the hottest part of the day. We decided to have lunch at the hotel since there were no restaurants nearby, and the restaurant was on the balcony outside. We haven’t been looking at the temperatures lately, but it must have been well over 100 – we were sweating like crazy even though we were barely moving, and the light breeze, whenever there actually was one, was disgustingly hot. We decided we shouldn’t venture out and explore in this weather, so we waited until evening to check out the neighboring town, Nyuang U. 

We borrowed some free bikes and rode into town as the sun was going down, thinking it would be a bit cooler. It was maybe 15 degrees cooler, but still above 90.. We found a restaurant for dinner called Bibo that had great Myanmar food and a happy hour with buy one get one free cocktails 🙂 We had more tea leaf salad, and a beef curry dish that came with a new salad to us, tomato salad, this one with sliced red tomatoes, sesame seeds, and a few other ingredients including probably peanut oil or something similar to give it a nutty flavor. 

The next morning we got up early and set out to try to see some temples before it got too hot. We planned to spend the morning exploring, rest through the heat at the hotel after lunch, then go back out in the early evening to try to catch the sunset. We didn’t make it out for sunrise, but we left on our rented electric bike before 7 and set out for the temples.

  

We didn’t know where to start, so we eventually just picked one. It was not very well cared for, and home to some bats, but we had to start somewhere! I am not exactly sure which one our first temple was, but I think it was near Atwin Ananda temple.

  

I decided to try out the e-bike since the next closest temple was only around 100 meters away. It was pretty easy – no gear shifting necessary – so I did a lot of the driving for the day. 

  
    
    

We have run into many many Myanmar people that want to take pictures with us, so many that we sometimes feel like celebrities. We made this family take one on our camera too.

 
      

After walking around a few of the temples in the cluster we were in, we drove to a bigger one. I am not sure what this one was called, but it was somewhere near the Thatbyinnyu temple (or maybe it was that temple? It is hard to keep them all straight.) This one had several vendors along the walkway into the temple, and children trying to charge us for going upstairs to see the view.

      

   
The next one was even bigger, and had more established stalls selling wares and drinks, and a lot of Myanmar tourists visiting it. We were behind a few as we walked through the temple, and it was interesting to see them praying at each Buddha they passed. 
 

     

After the crowds of the bigger temple, we ventured maybe 200 meters away and found some smaller ones with barely anyone at them. We climbed one and had a rest for a few minutes while enjoying the view.

           

So damn hot and it is only 9:15am..

   

Next we drove off to find a farther corner to explore before it got too hot for us to want to do it. We pulled off at what I think was Soemingyi temple, with a bunch of smaller ones around it. 

        

There was no one around these temples at all, and it was interesting to see the carved bricks that have fallen off the temples over the years laying about. We even found artistic fragments around, showing that there must not be too many people coming around these spots or all of this stuff would have been taken by now. I’m sure it will only be a matter of time..

    

We stopped at this large temple on the way but didn’t approach it because there were barricades up so it could not be climbed.

  

We started getting really really hot around 11:30, so we tried to quickly find the temple we wanted to see the sunset at in the evening. We got a little off track and frustrated due to the heat and the super sandy parts of the dirt road that were really hard to get the e-bike through. Since it wasn’t designed to go very fast we didn’t have any spills, but sometimes we had to walk it through the sand rather slowly. 

Eventually we found the North Gumi temple then headed back to Nyuang U for lunch. Lunch took way too long for fried noodles, and by the time we were driving back to the hotel it was 1pm. The ride back took about 15 to 20 minutes, and I swear we felt the hottest wind we have ever felt on our faces during this ride. It had to be over 110 degrees. We weren’t even sweating that much anymore, I think it was just evaporating away. The plains of Myanmar are no joke. Thank goodness we had a nice air conditioned room to rest in for the afternoon.

  

In the evening, we headed out to the North Gumi temple for sunset. It was a great choice, because it was a smaller but still tall temple, and there were only around 20 people there when we got there so we were able to get a good spot. Sunset is obviously a popular time to go out to the temples and take pictures, and some are so packed full of people that you have to get a spot at 3:30 or 4 to be able to see the sunset. Thank goodness we didn’t care about going to the popular temples; we just rolled up to our little temple at 5:30 and got a spot right away.

                 

In the evening we went back to the Bibo restaurant for more happy hour drinks and curry and salad before driving home and cooling off in the hotel pool. On the drive back we realized it smelled really sweet, I think a fair number of flowers bloom at night because it is way too hot during the day. The ones below were my favorite smelling flowers in Myanmar, they have such a beautifully strong sweet flowery scent. I will have to try to look up what they are. Couldn’t get enough of that smell.
   

The next day we were picked up at the hotel in the morning for our bus ride to Mandalay to celebrate the water festival!