For breakfast this
morning we ate our way through a big pomelo I bought yesterday,
supplementing it with some crackers and cake. We then sat and watched
the world go by our train window: children on their way to school;
bullock carts and more bullock carts; rows and rows of peanut plants
growing in fields surrounded by palm trees; young girls getting water
from a deep well; more bullocks pulling ploughs; strange, low
palm-leaf dwellings with a brick chimney at one end.
We arrived at the
station in Bagan quite a bit earlier than expected and had our
customary mad scramble to get everything together and off the train.
As we stepped onto the platform, we were approached by a local guy
with wispy facial hair. As the script requires, he asked us where we
were going, and with that, Kate and I took an instant dislike to him.
He followed us into the station building, quoting us 15,000 kyat to
get into town, but we did our best to ignore him as we bought our
return tickets to Yangon. By now the station was virtually empty –
there was just us, our oily tout and his mate. They continued to
follow us as we left the building, now dropping the price to 12,000.
But the guy we bought the train tickets off had told us that the
standard price for a taxi into town was 4,000-5,000, so we told them
5,000 or nothing. They laughed our gambit off, so we blew them off
and walked up to the main road (in the fairly extreme heat). They
hopped in their van and followed us out, continuing to ask us where
we were going, but we had had enough, so we just completely ignored
them and eventually they got the message and drove off, leaving us
standing on a street corner wondering how we were going to get to our
hotel. (On the way out, I spotted a lizard on a tree – a blue
lizard! I wasn't hallucinating the other day.)
After a short while,
a minivan came along and stopped beside us, but it wasn't going where
we were and looked too full to fit us in anyway. Not long after, a
taxi came past, but it already had a passenger. And then, not long
after that, another taxi arrived, empty this time, and the driver
wound down his window. We told him where we wanted to go and he
quoted us 7,000, which was close enough for us, so we hopped in and
off we went. Shortly after, he pulled over and told us we had to buy
our entry tickets for Bagan. The woman selling the tickets spoke
English and after our driver had a word with her, she asked us where
we were going. We explained and she spoke to the driver, who clearly
had no idea where our hotel was. After this little discussion, he
seemed happier, and we all jumped back into the car. Soon enough we
arrived in New Bagan and made our way through and out the other side.
I spotted a sign to our hotel, but the driver just drove straight
past. When we pointed it out, he reversed and made the turn and
there, finally, was our hotel.
Which proved to be
quite fancy. Kate had got a really good price on the rooms – it
transpired that the hotel was quite new and had yet to establish a
presence on the various booking sites as it didn't have enough
reviews, so it was offering good deals to get people in. We had two
adjacent rooms with air conditioning – an absolute must as it's
extremely hot here – well into the high 30s.
After checking in,
we walked (slowly, zigzagging from shade to shade) towards town and
stopped at a small restaurant for lunch. We were given a small bowl
of absolutely delicious locally grown peanuts when we sat down. We
were the only diners, but the food was good. On the way back to the
hotel we stopped at a little stall opposite that had ebikes for rent
– electric scooters/mopeds that you can rent for next to nothing
and ride around the temple complex at your leisure. The other popular
options are a horse and buggy (slow and bumpy) or a bicycle (hot and
tiring) – no contest.
For dinner, we
walked a bit further into the main part of town and stopped at a
restaurant called Black Rose, where we had some delicious curries and
some blissfully cold beers. On the way home, we spoke to some guys at
another ebike stall whose prices were significantly less than we had
seen quoted elsewhere and arranged to have two of them dropped off at
the hotel tomorrow morning.
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