Bagan - Ohn Ne Kyaung - Aung Pun Choung
Steve is up early to catch the sunrise and to watch the balloons float over Bagan. A cool morning, but truly beautiful to sit atop a stupa and watch the sun come up over this extraordinary landscape.
Breakfast and then a final trip to one last stupa (by now the expression NAFP - not another f...ing pagoda was well entrenched). The Shwezigon Stupa is said to be the most sacred stupa in Bagan and is the only one built from sandstone (all others are built of brick). Very beautiful, but we are kind of over the whole pagoda thing.
We then roll on to the markets of Nyaung Oo. This village is the largest village near to Bagan. The people used to live all around the stupas, but the government decided it should be a massive archeological site and so all the people were moved from 'Old Bagan' to 'New Bagan'. Interestingly, the population of the area is only about 80,000. Mind you, we suspect this increases dramatically with tourists!
Bagan is definitely a 'must see', however there is no question that a visit here is tainted by the aggressive hawkers.
Back on board for a leisurely cruise further up river to Ohn Ne Kyaung. This is a small village (about 1000 people) that it seems Pandaw support in some way. There is nothing here except the village and we are free to wander through, effectively in to people's homes, to see how they live. Our village hosts are wonderful. There is (by western standards) clearly a significant lack of resources, but the people seem content and welcome us openly. We finish at the village school and all 200 odd students come out and line up to greet us. They sing us a couple of songs so we in return sing Waltzing Matilda for them. We then hand out pads, pencils, rulers and pencil sharpeners to every student which they gleefully accept. One more 'thank you' song and we are back on the boat to cruise to our overnight mooring.
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