Nate and Kara explore Bagan's 3,000 temples on an e-bike rental ($8) during a river cruise. They visit 13th-century pagodas, learn about novice monks and traditional neck rings, find a secret sunset spot, and recover their drone after a tense moment.
16 square miles
Over 3,000
13th century
At least twice in their life
Before they're 19
Sa.
It's our fifth day on our Irrawaddy river cruise, and today we're exploring Bagan, which has the largest archaeological site in the world. It is 16 square miles and has over 3,000 temples, pagodas, and stupas. And we're starting with the tallest one.
On to the next temple.
Found me fast.
We have 3,000 steps down. Are we getting back on the bus?
Meet our new friends.
She's pretty tall.
Oh, wow.
We are taking ceremonial oxygen carts to get to our next destination.
This is so cool.
This is something they use here when there's like a special celebration, like a wedding. This is what, like, the guest of honor would be pulled on. So today we're the guest of honor.
So while we're riding on these carts, it's of seemed like a good time to share some fun facts with you. We've learned quite a bit about monks since we've been here, and it kind of ties into the ox cart. So every male in Myanmar has to go to the monastery at least twice in their life. And when they go as a young boy, before they're 19, they're called novices. And you have to like, do this studying and then get approved to go to the monastery for the first time. And when you pass that test, then they kind of like throw a parade for you in the town. And a lot of times in that parade, that's when these oxcarts would be used and the new novus would be pulled through the town on an ox cart.
Another fun fact that we should probably explain at the beginning of this vlog, since we're going to be doing a lot of it today, is the difference between pagodas, temples, and stupas. We tend to use them interchangeably, but they're definitely different things. So a temple is just one that you can walk in. It has a door, you can go inside. A stupa is solid. You don't go in, you just look at the outside. And then pagoda, it's kind of like a blanket term for both. So if there's an area with stupas and temples, you can just say pagoda.
So now you'll know the rest of the day as we're exploring them.
The next temple that we're visiting is known for having the most beautiful plaster work. And really the fascinating thing about it is just how long it's survive. This was built in the 13th century, and somehow through tons of earthquakes and a lot of other stuff, plaster is still stuck to the outside.
This temple is surrounded by little shops. There's tons of cute stuff but this one has a lady wearing this around her neck. And I've seen this in pictures before. Apparently a lot of people think it's from Thailand, but it originated in Myanmar. It makes their necks look stretched because it pushes their collarbones down. And I've never actually seen it in real life. She's so cute and sweet and she's weaving a scarf. It weighs 8kg. Apparently the girls start wearing them at the age of nine at four kilograms, and then they work their way up eight.
It is so heavy, it's crazy.
This is our last pagoda of the morning and our guide told us it's his favorite and possibly the most beautiful in all of Myanmar or even the world.
This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in a temple. There's a massive Buddha and when you're standing under him, he looks really serious and kind of mad. And then when you back up to the other side of the temple, he's smiling. Some kind of crazy carving illusion. Our group is leaving us.
We went back to the boat for another delicious lunch and to escape the midday heat. And now we're back out in Bagan to do some more exploring.
We've gone rogue. This afternoon we're making up our own itinerary. This morning when we were out, we saw these ebikes. It's like an electronic Vespin. It looks like such a fun way to go explore the temples.
They're totally silent and we just had to try it.
So we paid $8 to rent this bike. For the rest of the day we're going to go out, drive around, see some more temples and find a good spot for the sunset.
But I'm not driving.
Why not?
Cuz I'm a scaredy cat.
This is exactly what I had pictured when we were renting the bike, saying we were going to get off the beaten path. It's actually way better than I could have ever pictured. Not even 15 minutes down the road, we ran up on these local herders who had their cows out just wandering around the pagodas. This is incredible.
It's crazy how easy it is to just like get off the beaten path, away from tourists.
Bikes off. We haven't been driving long at all and we've just been finding these little, like dirt paths. They've been taking us back to all these temples. What we're really looking for right now is a temple that hasn't been gated up. So as we said earlier, they close most of them. But we've heard that here and there, there's a few that you can still get inside and go up to the top and watch the sunset. So we're kind of like running in and out of a lot of these temples looking for an un locked sail up.
That's so funny.
We did it. We have found the super secret sunset spot. Check it out. Yes.
So secret.
It's actually really pretty up there, Being above all the trees. But we decided we'd rather watch the sunset with the blaze in our hair by ourselves.
Oh my gosh. That is the closest that we have ever come to losing the drone. We were getting these cool shots where it was like driving behind the Vespa. And then I didn't realize how far away from the home point we were. And then I couldn't find where it was in the air. And the only way I knew to get back to it was to drive it to the home point and then try to figure out where we started from. And literally as we pulled up, it was like landing. So it was just about to land in the middle of this field. Who knows if we would have got it back.
I just need like a. Just need like a quick breather. I think we might have missed the sunset due to our. Our droning. But I was just so glad we got it back. Would have landed in the field. Have been a really good present for somebody that walked by and found it.
Wow. That was crazy.
That was quite the adrenaline rush.
They're getting much faster.
It doesn't have enough power. Okay. I legitimately can't. Oh. Should I get off? Yeah.
Just be safe.
There we go. It's got enough power to get me up.
It look cool.
Have to seize.
Those sounds are so funny. They sound like people.
They really do.
Sam.
