Bagan

I must be honest, I had never heard of Bagan prior to contemplating my trip to Burma. This is really remarkable since it is an equal to Anchor Wat by nearly any measure.

There are about 4000 temples of varying sizes spread out over an area the size of Manhattan. It is really awe inspiring to be standing on a temple, made in the 1200's, and seeing hundreds of beautiful temples in every direction. Standing there, I thought, "damn that's a lot of temples". I also thought it is strange that a great tourist attraction can come from an obsession, building thousands of temples over a couple hundred years can not be a good use of a communities resources....just an obsession.

For all its' beauty, the area is blighted with sellers of all sorts of trinkets. They surround the larger temples and even some of the small ones. They hound you until you feel like you can not wait to get away. It is the same at Anchor Wat, but it is still too bad. Still well worth it.

One of the greatest sites I have seen.

This one is special, not because of its' size or grandeur, but because of its' age...300 AD.