Michael Batson

Entry to the ancient site at Bagan for foreigners costs US$10, also payable as €10 or 9000 Burmese kyats, regardless of the length of your stay. If you’re travelling by bus you get hauled off on the outskirts of town to pay at a small booth on a dusty road.

Better value then than Angkor in Cambodia which charges out at US$20 per day and the passes date stamped. On a scale of impressiveness, Bagan compares admirably with the ancient capital of the Khmer Empire and is well worth the effort.

Bagan (Pagan) is the former capital of several Burma kingdoms, and famous today for the number and variety of its religious monuments, mostly built along Indian models. It sits on a plain bordering the Ayeyarwaddy River – known as the Road to Mandalay – and is divided into Old and New Bagan.

Bagan became a major city in the 9th century AD but most of its buildings were built in the 11th century to 13th century, during the time Bagan was the capital of the First Burmese Empire.

Buddhist monks and craftsmen toiled to transform Bagan into a religious and cultural centre. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Bagan became a truly cosmopolitan centre of Buddhist studies, attracting monks and students from as far as India, Sri Lanka as well as the Thai and Khmer kingdoms. From the 11th century onwards King Anawratra turned Theravada Buddhism into a kind of official state religion.

In the 13th century Bagan fell to the Kublai Khan’s Mongols, who may have looted the area. Thereafter the city declined as a political centre, but continued to flourish as a place of Buddhist scholarship. Centuries later in 1975, Bagan was hit by more tragedy when a major earthquake destroyed many of the structures.

After a rough ride from Mandalay over 140 kilometres which took almost seven hours I was taken to the New Park Hotel by horse and cart, the main form of transport for tourists at Bagan other than push bikes. The horse looked in reasonable condition, with a healthy coat and no obvious sores.

Some of the other horses I saw clearly showed their rib cages, but I’m no great fan of animal-powered transport. I once dismounted from an elephant ride in Thailand while out trekking because I felt sorry for the beast and its gait gave me motion sickness.

For this reason I looked for alternate transport to cover the 40-square kilometres of Bagan historical features. Tourists are not permitted to hire motorbikes in Bagan. I didn’t realise that motorbikes aren’t permitted in the historical area either, so most tourists get their bearings by horse and buggy and then take another day to cover the ground by bike. I wasn’t really feeling up to either so when young Burmese offered to take my around by motorbike I accepted. Though he later confessed he didn’t actually own a bike and would have to borrow one.

Most Burmese cannot afford a vehicle and motorbikes are expensive for the average person. I was told it cost about US$400 for a new one and US$250 for a good second hand bike.

My guide was a second-year student of Burmese history at a university in Mandalay. He told me by way of background that originally there were 10,000 pagodas at Bagan but that after the disastrous 1975 earthquake half were destroyed.

There are few sealed roads around Bagan’s historical area, and he wasn’t much of a dirt-bike rider. During the morning we came off a few times. During one tumble the throttle jammed, catching my water bottle as it fell and the wheel propelled the bottle out the rear like a missile.

Curiously Bagan is not designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The main reason given is that the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) has haphazardly restored ancient features while ignoring original architectural styles and using modern materials which bear little or no resemblance to the original designs.

The SPDC has also built a golf course, a paved highway, and erected a 61-metre observation tower. It’s an extraordinary construction that, when I first saw it, thought it the airport’s control tower at the airport.

Bagan like Mandalay has a perpetual wind blowing, which is of great relief to tourists from more temperate climes. By the observation tower we stopped to collect the key to one of the pagodas from a woman at her house. Before departing she offered tea from small handle-less white cups.

The pagodas follow a basic design. Inside are images of Buddha facing all four directions and back-to back to each other. Larger pagodas have internal access to the roof, though with some this is no longer possible because of damage sustained in the earthquakes.

The walls and ceilings are covered in ancient scriptures, though some much faded. Most of the images seem intact, and range is size and origin – some are Chinese Buddha with the squat neck feature while most are of Indian design, with one Hindu temple.

The highest temple is the 60-metre Thatbyinnyu Temple resplendent with golden-topped spires on white-washed superstructure tinged with grey going black the signs of damp in this, the most humid of climates.

At the larger pagodas you run the inevitable gauntlet of hawkers peddling lacquer ware, jewelry, t-shirts and paintings, the latter backed on cloth which can be rolled up easily, crumpled without damage and, in some cases, washed.

At one pagoda I came across two Burmese resting, one each side of the entrance to a gallery holding two Buddha images. They offered to move while I took a photo but I asked hem to stay, so I got the two of them in shot with the Buddha statues, all of them smiling.

Part of the tour takes you to a small village where 600-or so people live in 100 houses ranging from the basic to the head woman’s more impressive double-story residence. She took me on a brief tour. Livestock including pigs and cattle were tethered in parched soil with little water and fodder. The walkways were lined with palisades patrolled by dogs of indiscernible breeding. The woman demonstrated her weaving abilities, which were substantial, while her mother sat and smoked a huge cheroot made from corn and other material. Being an ex-smoker I declined her offer to inhale.

Back at the hotel I met Stephen from Victoria in Australia. He was covered in sweat from biking Bagan. He told me the famous lady was in town, and staying at the Bagan Hotel down the road.

“I pretended I was looking for a room” he said, “thought I might be able to get my photo taken with her but no chance, security everywhere.”

Indeed there were, the place was surrounded by people carrying walkie-talkies. Stephen was off to change some kyats with the hotel, having changed over US$1000 for a fortnight’s stay in Myanmar, only to find that he and his wife were unable to spend it all.

Later he told me they thought it a good idea to come to Asia with 500 one-dollar US bills and walk around the streets handing them out to children because “they wanted to help people” and thought this would be a good way of doing it.

Originally, the money was destined entirely for Cambodia, but had come to Myanmar first and told me they’d already disposed of half of the money in this fashion. Though doubtless done with the best of intentions, such action presents an appalling image of tourists and unfortunately does nothing to improve the lives of people struggling daily with poverty, the lack of opportunities and corruption.

At one stop on the pagoda trail, a young Burmese saw me taking notes and asked for my pen to keep.  I told him it was the only one I had but he said to me “yeah, but you can buy another and I have none.”

At another site a young girl her face covered in thanaka, a wood-based paste used widely in Myanmar as a natural sun block, said I could take her photo but that her string of 10 postcards would cost me 1000 kyats.

Mid-year is low season for tourists in a country where it’s been low season for many of the last few decades. I stayed near Restaurant Road in one of the more popular hotels, but even that wasn’t full, pleasant though in a way.

Myanmar is back on the map and experiencing a huge increase in tourist numbers, albeit from a very low baseline. The Bangkok Airways flight I arrived in the country on was barely 20 percent full, though the percentage leaving the country was only slightly higher.

Myanmar’s value for the tourist and its manufacturers is under threat with the rise of the kyat at the precise time tourism is starting to take off. The reasons for this are twofold. Dollars are pouring into Myanmar’s largely fragile and opaque economy with foreign investors keen to tap its vast resources and visiting traders buying up gemstones. Another contributor to the rise of the kyat, are sales of illicit opium and methamphetamine, of which Myanmar is one of the world’s biggest producers.

But Bagan is one of the sights to come here to see for any visitor.