We've switched over to 2014

Days 153 and 154 - Last day in Yangon and home...

Yes, it's the final day. No idea how that can possibly have come round already.  

Some last shots of life in Yangon...

We made it a good'un by visiting the National Museum, which managed despite the dreadful lack of proper lighting to contain some spectacular exhibits.  

The main draw is the Room of Thrones, featuring an enormous golden throne for the king and, more interesting, a dozen or so smaller subsidiary seats (the bumble bee throne, the elephant throne, the peacock throne etc) which were apparently used for specific "kingly" tasks : accepting gifts, receiving dignitaries, promoting and demoting, ennobling, passing sentence of death - your everyday stuff, for which you need a special place to park yourself.  More down to earth is a floor dedicated to the various tribes of Myanmar : their particular festivals, costumes, musical instruments, sports and activities, illustrated both with rather comical mannequins and some lovely photographic portraits (which make you realise that the mannequins actually aren't so very far off).

Sadly no cameras allowed inside but this is the gentleman at the gate

Then to the airport for the long trek home...

And, well, that's that.  Last two flights (fifteen in all - conservatively 30,000 airmiles, plus Lord knows how many more thousands by car, bus, train, ferry, pony and trap, electric moped) brought us via Changi back to London at 05.45 on a cold, wiiiindy, dark Valentine's Day morning.  And so to the familiar joys of the Piccadilly line

  

 

and a weekend of rummaging around in our own stuff (bloody hell, where is everything?!)

A million thanks to everyone who put up with us and made it all so fantastic.  Highlights : Crater Lake and the Columbia river gorge; the Anthropological Museum in Vancouver; Levuka on Ovalau island and the scenery all over Viti Levu; snorkelling and the market in Port Vila, Vanuatu; Napier, Cape Spit and of course those lazy sunny days bouncing around on the St Helen's trampoline; wine-tasting in Mudgee and Hunter Valley, Australia Day in Canberra, and breakfasting with a view of the Pacific; beautiful, breath-taking Bagan.


Thanks for reading. 

Day 152 - Yangon part II

Last full day - eek, how could that have come round so quickly?!  We headed to the National Museum only to find it unaccountably closed (in fact it turns out to have been a government holiday - hopefully open tomorrow) so opted instead for the nearby Governor's Residence, now a swish hotel, for a rest by the pool and a glass of the local Myanmar brew.

Duly fortified, we attacked the final packing exercise before heading out to one of the main sights of Rangoon, the Shwe Dagon Pagoda.  Wow - it's gold, gold and more gold.

Overwhelming. And vast.

But, for all the enormity and expanse, also some lovely touches of detail

As well as being a major visitor draw, it's a working temple - though some of the monastic visitors looked to be tourists too!

Days 149, 150 and 151 - the temples of Bagan

First full day and the big question remained how to get around the huge number of temples...  

Day one, to cover longish distances, we carried on with our chap with a pony and trap,

Days two and three, we swapped to a teeny e-bike ("the Steed"), all the better to pootle up dirt tracks away from the crowds, and let Duncan relive old times...

 

Many and varied the temples are. From petite and delicately formed

to glistening and gorgeous

some unexpected ones 

and some hulking and brooding, this one with an apparently grisly and mysterious past : the king who commissioned it chopped off an arm of any builder mason whose work did not satisfy him, and had passageways filled with rubble (and what else...?!)

 

We revisited sunset vantage points by day for more fabulous views, 

and found others for a slightly different angles, and internal frescoes and detail

 

And my goodness don't the balloons come out in force at sunset (all very well going up but you'd have thought tricky landing with all these sharp pointy things scattered around....)

Day 148 - North to Bagan

04.30 taxi to Rangoon airport (interestingly, while the army managed to change lots of things about Burma - including of course the capital's formal name from Rangoon to Yangon - the airport code steadfastly remains RGN)  

In fact, our early start proved to be in vain as, we're just on board and astonishingly a fog sets in

and it's back to the terminal for two hours - never mind,  we were never going to be in Bagan early enough to see very much this morning before the sun turned on the burners.  Views from the plane were nice once we got up there (to travel the 429 miles north).

Bagan - or more formally the "Bagan Archaeological Zone" - is a 20-odd-sq-mile area, containing thousands of temples (variously called Pahto or Paya), built by a succession of kings between 1047 and 1287, when the Mongol hordes came knocking.  We're staying within the walls of Old Bagan (apparently the hotel was built for a 1927 visit by the then Prince of Wales) next to the Irrawaddy River which makes for lovely breakfast views.

We've whittled down the list to about 20 of our must-see temples, which sounds like a lot of temples and we know we probably won't manage all of those in four days as they're quite spaced out across the Zone.  We're thinking about our options for covering the ground to reach them all - probably house and cart - if only I'd learned to ride a bicycle (a very common way to get around).

Meanwhile, our real intro to the sheer scale was the sunset view from Shwesundaw Paya (sadly along with the world and his wife - look at how many folk there are on another tall temple across the valley). 

The panorama is quite extraordinary

 
even if it does take some hauling to get up there!

Next plan is to get up close and see inside some temples too - we've got our work cut out!

Day 147 - Yangon part I

Our hotel is handily placed next to the Sule Paya - not sure whether it's the only place on the world with a huge golden 2000 year old pagoda in the middle of its main downtown roundabout but it certainly makes for a useful landmark and address to give to cab drivers!  And it was looking very lovely first thing this morning

as was the park opposite, with Independence Memorial, 

and surrounded by the former High Court

 and Council Building.

We grabbed 11sies at a popular-looking street food-stall : mohinga (noodles in broth) and black tea ("white" means the addition of something akin to condensed milk), and then continued on our walking tour - lots of grand (or often rather more like once-upon-a-time-grand) colonial buildings like the water board

and port authority,

 

many of which look somewhat in need of love.

Back at the hotel, our luggage had arrived, complete with a "RUSH" label!

After a late lunch, yday's driver had, you'll remember, recommended the Aung San market.  Sadly it turned out to be rather tourist-y, but more interestingly  next door was the Indian quarter, with its spices, fabrics, foodstuffs, processing monks with drums and gongs, seeking alms... 

Last sight of the day was Paya Botatuang, a huge temple complex near to the river, whose primary purpose is to be a reliquary for two of the six hairs of the Buddha which reside in Burma; the original pagoda having been a casualty of 1943 bombing by the Japanese, the present one was completed in 1953. It stands 133ft tall, and is gilded with gold and is positioned near to a large (sadly under scaffolding) seated Buddha and all manner of smaller temples.

Many Burmese wear thanaka, which is apparently ground bark applied in a paste to the face in attractive designs (plus it smells like sandalwood and is allegedly very good for the skin). Chatting with various local women who struck up conversations, I'm told that it's not a religious or caste-based thing but merely "Myanmar make-up" (also worn by children and the occasional chap).

Day 146 - Sydney to Yangon - the last leg of the trip

What a long day. After the predictable dodgy night's sleep before the 04.00 pick up, it was 9 hours/3,915 miles to Singapore then 3 hours/1,199 miles on to Yangon, landing mid afternoon in 31°. 

However, it's never a good sign to be greeted straight off the plane by someone with a placard bearing your name and, sure enough, the bags have gone AWOL again. We're assured that they'll be delivered to the hotel tomorrow... More successful was the rendezvous in Arrivals with the travel agent for our flight tickets up to Bagan on Saturday (another 6am start!), and we've made it to downtown Yangon and the May Shan hotel.  Meanwhile, we're behind schedule after AWOL-bags-discussions but some v brief first impressions of Yangon within walking distance of our hotel ...

 

Our taxi driver from the airport was proud to point out the key buildings as we came in, including a large market hall named for General Aung San (widely accepted to be the father of modern, independent Burma, assassinated by political rivals in 1947), and to point us to his photo of Aung San Suu Kyi taped to the roof of the cab, assuring us of his strongly-held opinion that she'll soon be President! 

The traffic is meanwhile dreadful - it was rush hour I suppose, but the quality of driving isn't improved by everyone closing their eyes to genuflect on passing each temple!

Days 144 and 145 - idleness and an afternoon in Manly

Tuesday dawned quite nice for a walk round the headland

but that didn't last long ...

(the cloud cover/mist got worse than this - now you see it, now you don't) so, apart from a trip into Mona Vale for shopping, we did the final prep for the Burma leg of the trip and otherwise didn't stir.

Wednesday looked a wee bit better so we bussed it to Manly for a kayaking session.  Best laid plans though - they'd decided, about 20 minutes before we arrived, to cancel on safety grounds (too windy).  Shame because otherwise it looked a decent day - not so sunny so as to burn us... 

Ah well.  Last day in Sydney though so not to be wasted - the Manly Museum and Art Gallery is just along the beach and had a good exhibition on the interaction between Manly's Aboriginal people and the new arrivals, and a portrait exhibition by Bill Leak, NSW's leading modern portrait painter (with subjects as diverse as Donald Bradman to Dame Edna!) Talking of fame and fortune, the beach path to the Museum is dedicated Australian Olympians, but not just any old Australians... Manly's first gold medallist (in 1900) was a Wallaby, and all three gold medallist at the 1924 Games hailed from Manly. Clearly something high grade in the water...

So it's goodbye and thanks Sydney (and goodbye and huge thanks to Fiona and Gordon, and Uncle John); we're being picked up by a 04.00 shuttle tomorrow for the airport and our Singapore Airways flight, via Singapore, to Rangoon.  Early to bed.