We had the strangest experience on our last day in Bagan. It started in Ananda Temple, a large very popular Buddhist temple complex in Old Bagan. Over the course of the 15 minutes we spent there while we were walking around, 4 separate groups of junior high age kids approached us and asked to take a photo with us.
We originally thought we were being distracted so they could pick our pockets, but as the last group of starstruck teenagers took a zillion photos of us with them on their phones, we came to the conclusion that they were just very fascinated by us for some reason....we figured that it was possibly a school outing from a town or city that doesn't see tourists and the fact that we were foreign, white and tall they all wanted pictures with us. Most Burmese men are shorter than me, so Scott at 6 feet towers over them. We had a good laugh about it and went about our day.
Later that day around 6pm, we decided to take our scooters out for a ride around the residential side streets and explore the little town we are in. We ended up finding this cool temple on a hill overlooking the river and a pond filled with giant catfish. The pond had a bridge that went out into the middle and ended at a pagoda sitting area. We were the only white people in sight and as we walked onto the bridge and we realized quickly that it was filled with about 50 kids (13-15 yr olds) and we were literally instantly swarmed.... You would think Justin Beiber himself walked onto that bridge the way the reacted. We then proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes taking what must have been hundreds of pictures with EVERY single kid. They were completely enthralled by us. The young boys were all over Scott posing with their arms around him, the little girls were all over me holding my hands, posing for photos with their heads on my shoulder. It was the most hilarious, adorable thing I've ever experienced. After about a half an hour of this, I was like "Scott, we need to get off this bridge or we'll be here for hours!"... We finally extricated ourselves and will no doubt be on 50 Burmese children's Facebook profile picture today.
We spent our last morning up before the crack of dawn, racing to our favorite temple on our scooters to setup for some spectacular sunrise photos. The temples were shrouded in mist, hot air balloons filled the sky and it was a perfect last morning in Bagan
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| We look so haggard because we woke up at an ungodly hour and rode scooters 30 minutes to the temple we watched the sunrise from. |
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