After Mandalay I'd hoped to be able to make regular updates through Bagan since it is such a major tourist town. Unfortunately the guy who ran the only email place in town was a bit clueless and kept telling me "no internet, only email". To demonstrate this he fired up internet explorer with the modem turned off then turned it on and launched outlook express!

So, to continue where I left off...

After Pwin U Lwin I headed back to Mandalay. On the way I stopped off in a small town, dumped my backpack in a coffee show, and made a long steep hike down to see a waterfall I'd heard good things about. Then it was back to Mandalay for some in-town sightseeing.





After Mandalay I took a day bus to Bagan which was simply stunning. I thought it was more impressive even than Ankor in Cambodia. The temples aren't on the same immense scale but there are thousands of them. I many places you can look around and have literally hundreds of temples and stupas in view.



I'd planned to go to Pyay last night on the way back from Bagon but there was no real station there and the driver forgot to let me know where I should get off. To my surprise I found myself in Yangon this morning. Tomorrow I'm going to buy my ticket to Calcutta in the morning then take the bus back up to Pyay for a couple days. It actually worked out OK because the flight schedules to India aren't as flexible as I'd hoped so it's good that I'm buying my ticket further in advance than I'd planned.

Since I was in Yangon I decided to go see the inside of the Shwendegon Paya. For something with that amount of normally gaudy gold paint it was surprisingly nice, especially with the late afternoon light around sunset.



I don't know whether Pyay will have internet access but I'll try to update again in the next few days.