As we approached the airport to catch our flight to Bagan, the old capital of Burma, I finally realized the error of two days earlier. As we pulled up to the front of the airport and stopped right in front of the 10 foot tall sign that warned, "Drug trafficking may result in the death penalty" I realized we were the first people at the airport. I shrunk into my seat realizing that two days earlier I had set my watch one half-hour back instead of one half-hour forward. The sun rising over the pagoda at 7:15 now made perfect sense. I looked over at my very sleepy bride expecting a slap to the back of my head. She was too tired to care. So we waited. Within twenty minutes the airport staff arrived and began unlocking the doors and turning on the lights.

Three hours later within a hundred miles of the Bangladesh and India border we descended to several thousand feet and banked over the forty square mile plain of Bagan. Out of the twin turbo-prop airplane window the early morning light revealed an amazing number of ancient stupas, as gold spired pagodas are called. We could see the plains sprinkled with burnt umber (not just a crayon color you know) and sienna colored brick temples and pagodas topped with golden spires reflecting the warm light of the early morning sun. A light mist filled the space between the temples as the sun pulled itself higher into the sky.

Outside the airport in Bagan another stained tooth tout who appeared to be the twin brother of our friend in Rangoon, eagerly gave us advice as we explained we had no accommodations. He delivered us to a nice guest house/hotel across the road from a golden peaked Pagoda known as Shwe Zi Gon Paya. Nice accommodations for US$20 a night. Horse carts, bicycles, motor scooters and large vintage 1950 trucks dominated the dusty streets and the mist turned out to be a sweet smelling wood smoke from morning cooking fires lingering close to the ground throughout the area. An occasional cart pulled by Brahma bulls or an overloaded bus encrusted with bodies would ramble our street.

After settling in we rented bicycles for 60 cents a day and explored the nearby town on Naung-U. We passed the wood carving shops and teahouses but were caught in the full force by the open market's tractor beam set on "tourist". We practiced our negotiating skills over bronze Buddha statues, woodcarvings and longhi, a type of sarong the locals wear. Anybody who pursues a career in sales needs to visit the markets in SouthEast Asia. We played our part in the most shameless displays of ruthless sales tactics I have ever seen. Like vultures swarming around a kill they employed textbook tactics and strategies like align and redirect, reciprocity, fear of impending loss, bait and switch…you name it.. A Hollywood acting coach could learn a thing or two from these simple masters of sales tactics.

Theft is almost unheard of thanks to the government's punishments delivered by the government. Several times we had people chasing after us with items we had left in horse carts, taxis and at the airports. I am sure that they would even return your trash fearing that an accusation of theft.

After a visit to the market on our last day in Bagan we settled into a local restaurant in front of large plates piled high with steaming fried rice and noodles. As small chunks of chicken meat played hide and seek with our chopsticks we watched across the street as a little old lady (must've been in her 70's or 80's) climbed onto the open hood of one of the vintage 1950's trucks. A boy crawled under the truck and drained some fuel from the underside onto a stick with rags tied to it to form a torch. The boy handed the woman the torch which she ignited and held over the engine compartment as four young strong men pushed the heavy truck down the middle of the street buzzing with motorcycles. A man behind the wheel let out the clutch and in a cloud of smoke the engine erupted to life. The woman, having awoken the dragon, threw the torch to the ground and the boy stomped it out. It was the craziest alternative to glow plugs for starting a diesel engine I have ever seen.

Bagan is one of the world's most peaceful, spectacular locations, and one of the three best Buddhist archeological sites along with Angkor in Cambodia and Borobudur in Indonesia. Although it is not recognized as a UN World Heritage Site, most likely for political reasons, it is certainly worthy of the honor. Most of the 2,500 pagodas were built by the ruling king at the time or a wealthy family to make atonement for some sin and as a means to achieve immortality. Most of these temples were built in an area occupying 16 square miles on the Eastern bank of the Ayeyarwaddy River that flows South out of the Himilaya Mountains to the North. Most of the pagodas were built between the 10th and 15th centuries and the majority of them were significantly damaged in a 1975 6.8 earthquake. SLORC, smelling a tourist dollar like a sleestak smelling Chaka the monkey boy, has done an equally devastating job at over-restoring the damaged brick temples. Fortunately their work is slow and many of the temples lie as they have for the last thousand years or so. We cringed at the thought of what this area might look like in ten years.

We asked several locals where the best place to see the sun setting might be and then we set course to avoid those spots. With our tattered map in hand we rode our cruiser-like bikes over the dirt roads away from the temples and pagodas most severely infected with the few tourists visiting the area. We pedaled hard to keep our speed up and avoid the thick dust from stopping our tires like mud. We explored massive stone and brick temples with high ceilings and gigantic Buddha statues facing in each of the four cardinal directions each with a different hand posture or body posture. What made our explorations so authentic were the archeological relics just lying around. Small stone carvings, small headless statues, large Buddha statues and pieces of facade. The government's Machiavellian methods for dealing with theft is motivation enough for just leaving things as they lie, but the relics lay unprotected and it appeared the locals had taken some liberties with the some of the sites over the years.

Although some temples were equipped with locked iron gates, most had wooden signs politely requesting tourists not to climb up to higher floors. The small twisting stone staircases proved to be too tempting in some places and we snuck up a few of them not knowing what to expect. Cool and damp they hid flights of mosquito. Moving slowly up the cold stone steps into blackness and then around a corner back into daylight spilling through a stone window arch, the rooms would open up to reveal more passages, some out onto the temple rooftops. If you've ever fantasized of living an Indiana Jones adventure this would be a great place to get warmed up. It was really cool.

After four days we were exhausted from the routine of a 5:30 AM wakeup followed by several hours of climbing on the temples then returning to our room to hide from the midday heat only to return to another set of temples and pagodas in the late afternoon to cling to the rocks like monkeys while watching the sun set. As a sign of respect shoes must be removed before entering or climbing on a temple. The balls of our feet ached by the end of the day from walking bare foot on the hard stone and the first few steps of each morning were a quite painful.

We returned to Rangoon by airplane suffering from symptoms of temple overdose. As spectacular as they were, we needed a break. We spent the night at a hotel near the airport and caught our flight to Bangkok early the next morning. This time we arrived at the airport at the correct time. That same evening we settled into our assigned seats on the second class sleeper car of the train to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. The attendant folded our seats out into beds and we were asleep before our heads hit the pillow as images of golden spired pagodas and great kings and monkey warriors pitched in battle swam through our heads. Giddy with our new romance with Burma unconsciousness descended on us like the darkness after the warm sunsets we had shared for the last four nights.

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