Bagan

This place is famous for its 2200 temples and pagodas, the remains of some ten thousand at its peak.  Maybe we should have come here first.  By this point in our trip this was all getting a bit much. 

Some say Bagan is the equivalent of Angkor Watt but I couldn’t see it, except that it is much larger in overall scale.  Individually the structures are not impressive. 

Bagan - much the same in every direction

There is an old city wall and the remains of a moat but it is nowhere near as impressive as huge and the still functioning moat at Angkor Wat.

Bagan was built over hundreds of years on individual commissions.

We climbed to the top of a smaller semi-ruined pagoda near the hotel that provided a panoramic view well into the distance.  My father-in-law and his mate could have knocked a small one up in a month or two.  At some time not too long ago this one had been extensively repaired with modern materials and it is alleged that many have been growing in this manner since Bagan became a tourist attraction.  30,000 coming up.

Two others climbing up, original construction detail, panorama from the top, very similar one nearby

Angkor was built by a true tyrant.  It required the combined efforts of tens of thousands of craftsmen and unknown numbers of slave labourers for his lifetime.  And it remains unfinished. Even the stones lining the moat are works of art.  

This is the work of dilatants. Sure, like Angkor it’s a vast monument to man’s hubris, or perhaps a vain attempt to avoid hubris.  It’s the detritus of hundreds of years of futile construction attempting to secure a life after this.  It’s  akin to the Moai on Easter island and just as pointless. 

I gave it a chance.  But where is the craftsmanship?  I looked in vain for huge stones polished to a mirror or cut so fine a hair could not fit between or for stones covered in carvings of detailed subtlety.  What I got was a standardised brick and mortar structure, four big Buddha’s facing the points of the compass and numerous little ones in the connecting corridors. 

Numerous golden Buddhas - some very big

The largest structure in town is the modern Cultural Museum built in a couple of years, albeit with modern methods.  Even the largest of the historical structures would take a hundred brick layers next to no time.  Most of the detail being in the brick design, repetitive clay moulding. 

Architectural they are repetitious and boring with no particular merit except that one of the more recent ones features properly arched buttresses, unknown at Angkor.  This gave it the air of a western church.  It was far too small to be likened to a cathedral.  We both remarked almost simultaneously on how light and airy it was in the general heat and agreed that this was the nicest we had seen.  Good architecture does impress.

We walked a lot, caught a horse cab, not much faster but a lot easier on the legs, and a taxi to go further out.  I caught the strange bug that troubled me off and on for the rest of the trip and made me quite ill ‘til this moment. 

But the hotel was nice, overlooking the Irrawaddy.