Let's go to Bago!

You can see Yangon and Bago
(which is a state and a town).

On our second day in Myanmar, we arranged a driver to take us about 2 hours (only 65km - traffic!) north to the town of Bago, where there are more stupas, Buddhas and temples than you can shake an offering at. It was another very sunny scorcher of a day, so having an air conditioned car to jump into after each stop was quite the luxury. Our driver, Myo Chit, was very helpful and knowledgeable (plus a skilled and patient driver)!

Interesting side note - many of the cars in Yangon have been retrofitted to run on natural gas, which costs far less than gasoline. Gasoline prices were just about the same as in the US - which is incredibly steep when you consider that the per capita GDP for Myanmar is $1,711 - compared to the US per capita GDP of $52,852! But I digress...

Most of the graves were for British soldiers.

On the way there, we stopped off at a World War II memorial, which once again reminded me just how little I've ever learned about the 'Pacific Theater' of WWII. I had no idea how much of Southeast Asia was occupied by the Japanese - Indochina, Siam, Burma (now Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand & Myanmar), down the Malay peninsula all the way to Singapore, and branching out to the island nations of Indonesia, Philippines, and Borneo. Makes me realize that all my WWII education has been almost exclusively Euro-centric! What about you? 

These gorgeous red trees were
blooming all over the region

The inscription says "They died for all free men" in multiple languages.

A few kilometers outside Bago we stopped off at the four-facing Buddhas. I tell you - they like their Buddhas big here. Big and gold. Most of the pagodas/payas/stupas/Buddhas are intended to be circled in a clockwise direction, and all around the central structure there are smaller statues, shrines, and places for prayer and offering. The day of the week you are born appears to be the most salient factor in horoscopes and aspects of worship here, and there are small shrines for each day of the week - and two for Wednesday, morning and evening. 

Buddha and his buds had majorly tricked out nails. Love it!

This is an alms bowl that a monk will
carry around, collecting rice.

That is a LOT of rice -
look at the size of the pots
in the other picture!

We went next to a monastery, arriving just at lunch time. It was both neat and a bit weird to stand around with other tourists to watch the monks go about their daily business - but if they really minded, I guess they wouldn't encourage people to come? 

From there we went on to another large golden pagoda - though honestly the pictures look much the same! Even the names are a bit hazy already - it was hot, after all! I loved this picture - kind face.

Next up was a huge golden palace - stunning! This has been restored from almost total ruin, but inside they had huge logs from the original structure that had lined the throne room - the King who built the palace was famous for uniting many tribes, and the teak logs were sent from all over the country.

Throne room - these are royal golden spittoons!
This is a classy joint - you can't just spit it on the floor here!

We stopped for lunch and begged Myo Chit to help us find lephet thoke - a popular salad made of pickled tea leaves, tomatoes, peanuts, crispy fried beans, cabbage, raw garlic, chillies (optional) and a generous dollop of oil. It is hard to describe and might not sound good - but holy smokes, this stuff is amazing! Jacob says it is one of his top five favorite foods of all time. We had two orders of lephet with rice, and finished off with another helping of the plain salad. When we saw Myo Chit the next day, he warned us that we should not eat the salad again because we'd already had too much and would probably 'have troubles' - I think that was a kindly way of saying we'd be running for the Imodium.

Next we went to see a giant reclining Buddha - two, actually, one indoors and one outdoors.

The soles of the feet are usually my favorite part,
as they are often incredibly ornate.
Someone was seriously in love with their Bedazzler!

Looks pretty relaxed, huh?

I think this finally helps capture the enormity of these statues!
If I look like I'm about to jump, it is because you have to walk
barefoot and the tiles were burning my feet!
(Again, check out Buddha's toes!)

Aside from all the sites, it was wonderful to get to drive through the country and see how people live. Sometimes challenging, too, but fascinating. In our efforts to taste-test the three popular beers in Myanmar, we pulled over at a little road side restaurant and cooled off with a draught of Dagon. Beautiful as the countryside was though, we both passed out on the way back to Yangon. Once back in the city, we had sushi at Japan Japan - on the plus side, I'll say it was about as good as we should have expected for Yangon. But that was also the downside. We finished off our evening by perusing a grocery store, where we purchased 6 packs of ready-to-mix lephet thoke and 'Snow Lover Cracker Ice Cream Funnels' (Myanmar's version of a Cornetto)

Japan Japan - whatever the food was like, the decor was great!