I'd never heard of Bagan until I began reading the LP on Myanmar before my trip. Sounded/looked interesting. Ancient capital from the glory days of Burmese riches. It's a small town, to say the least, surrounded by hundreds of ancient temples/stupas/palaces/zedis/whatevers built during a religious frenzy of what appears to be one-upmanship. Like Mandalay, it is a dry town, like a desert. The temples are spread out over an area I would guess to be about 10 square kilometers? Maybe more. They are connected by dirt/sand paths of varying widths. There are probably 7 major temples, the ones the tour buses deposit tourists at, and to these the dirt/sand paths are a bit wider. Between the lesser temples, the path can be wide enough only for two/thre bicycles. These paths are relatively deserted and I enjoyed walking them.

What you're supposed to do in Bagan is photograph sunsets/sunrises. Fields of temples, mist, oddly colored sky. And there are some spectacular views to be captured here. Though I never managed to rouse myself early enough for a sunrise photo.

I was in Bagan four full days. Too many by any measure. You can see everything there is to see in two days. After that, you are just wandering around, trying to avoid touts, who appear in even the most remote-seeming temple. The big thing there now is sand painting. There are some patterns someone has distributed and everyone and their sister is painting them.

Using sand. What they do, apparently, is apply a layer of glue, followed by a layer of sand and then paint the sand. It's an interesting medium. I found one guy who was doing sand painting on a sort of thick rubber/tar canvas. One painter told me the idea to do sand paintings is but two years old, originated by the local chief of police? But who knows. I bought several. Even though they are just doing tracings, they are pretty cool looking.

The locals in Bagan TRULY suck. Touts nearly as agresive as you find around Delhi. I sometimes had to be quite rude to simply be left alone atop one stupa or another, trying to just sit in peace and enjoy the view, with some "painter" asking me if Chicago was near Los Angeles, or do I know Eric from America.

He'd been in Bagan last year, according to one painter.

Aside from touts and painters, the locals just seem utterly sick of tourists and were just downright rude and obnoxious through most of my stay. Shouting, pointing and laughing, like you get in China, groups of teenagers acting cool to impress their girlfriends by being rude to the Westerners. If it wasn't so beautiful there, I'd even say don't bother going, the people are that unpleasant. But, it's so amazing. You climb up on one of the five or six temples they still allow you to climb and in every direction, as far as you can see, there are temples and ruins of temples. It's really spectacular. Just don't let yourself get stuck there for more than two days, and work on your "No English, Polske!" line for the touts.