Some of you might be wondering why I’ve got the names written here in two different ways. Well, I’ll give you a short introduction into the former military junta of Myanmar and recent political history of the country, which will explain why:
Myanmar or Burma, as the country used to be called, has had a military junta in power since 1962. The junta has called itself in various names, for example after the 1990 elections (which the junta lost, but did not respect the vote), it wanted to restore order in the country by declaring the government State Law and Order Restoration Council or SLORC. Later after some inter-junta power struggles it changed its name to State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the name it had held before SLORC. The SPDC was in power until the military gave up power (nominally at least) in 2008. Before giving up power the SPDC changed the names of the country, major cities and towns into their pre-colonial form. So Burma became Myanmar, Rangoon became Yangon and Pagan became Bagan. They also changed the flag of the country.
The controversy with this is that the people weren’t consulted about these changes, and so Aung San Suu Kyi for example has said in interviews that tourists should refer to the country as Burma, to express their disrespect for the government. In other words using Burma means not accepting the legitimacy of the government. Now, since ASSK was released, she hasn’t given a new statement on this matter and therefore many bloggers still refer to the country as Burma.
So the name is all about politics, not so much whether the names are ‘wrong or right’ (in reality many of the Burmese names are in fact British colonial mis-transcriptions). The UK still uses Burma, while USA changed their course few weeks ago and used Myanmar for the first time when president Thein Sein was visiting Washington. This was seen as ground breaking, because using Myanmar is in a way concession that the present government is legitimate.
Why am I using both? Well, I wish to honour ASSK’s wishes, but at the same time I am thinking that all the Burmese people I spoke to while I was there used Myanmar only, and I did not hear Burma said once during my whole time there. So, I also want to respect the Burmese people and their usage of the language. In Burmese language this really isn’t an issue, because they are saying the names the way they’ve been said for centuries.
But now back to my trip and Bagan.
After arriving to Bagan and checking in, I slept for a few hours and then set out for the day around noon. I hired myself a bike for 1500 kyat and began pedalling to the temples. It was a really hot day and I was slightly worried about how it would go, since I had a really bad experience with cycling under the scorching sun in Bali few years ago. Back then I cycled really far away from the hotel and then I was a bit too tired to cycle back because of the heat. I made it back eventually, but it really made me cautious of exercising in hot weather. Anyways this day in Bagan went extremely well despite the heat.
Bagan is essentially a large area (like 20km2) of dry plains full of old temples and pagodas dotted around. Some are almost ruined, some have been restored and some are in active use. There really isn’t much else to see in Bagan apart from the temples, but hey, that’s why people go there. I took two days exploring them but one could easily spend a a few more, as there are so many of them. At some point however, you get into some serious temple fatigue and don’t want to see a single temple anymore.
In one of the temples I got asked to a group picture with a few monks. They also asked another tourist to join. This tourist was Kjell, with whom I ended up spending the rest of my time in Bagan and we travelled together to Inle-lake too.
I went to see the Irrawaddy-river and on the way back found this. The sign looked fairly new, so I would guess it was put up after the nuclear catastrophe in Japan. I did not see a pagoda there, so maybe they haven’t built it yet.
In the end of the day I went to a temple where everyone goes to see the sunset. Well it was so cloudy that there wasn’t much of a sunset but I ended having a coconut with Kjell and getting aggressively harassed buy the touts.
Next day I cycled together with Kjell. First we went to Shwezigon Paya in Nyaung-U village (where I was staying). Shwezigon was my favourite pagoda in Bagan.
Young novice made a swing out of his robe.
Then we cycled to other temples around Old Bagan area and finally to two in central plain.
On the way back it was getting dark and I wanted to get out of the plain before dark, as we didn’t have light in our bikes. Kjell’s bike broke down once we got to the main road. After the kind help of two locals, two policemen overseeing the repair procedure and one eager Japanese tourist, we had the bike fixed and off we went for dinner at Nyaung-U. A German and a Dutch guy joined us for the bikeride to the village and dinner, and after the bars closed we ended up drinking beer with a bunch of local guys on the roadside. They didn’t speak much English and we didn’t speak Burmese but there was the universal language of beer, guitar and Youtube-videos watched on the phone.
Next morning a pick-up picked me up (haha) and I headed to Inle-lake with Kjell.
parempikueimitaan 