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