We flew Air KBZ from Yangon (ရန်ကုန်) to Nyaung-U (ညောင်ဦးမြို့) / Bagan (ပုဂံ)
Monday 21 October 2013: Yangon (ရန်ကုန်) - Nyaung-U (ညောင်ဦးမြို့) / Bagan (ပုဂံ)
As the trip notes promised, it was indeed an early morning flight from Yangon (ရန်ကုန်) to Nyaung-U (ညောင်ဦးမြို့), the airport and small town that serves as the entry point for (old) Bagan (ပုဂံ). We said a 4.30am au revoir to the Asia Plaza Hotel and drove through quiet streets to Yangon airport, where we sat with lots of other tourists waiting for the morning departures to start. Air KBZ proved to be at the tail end of the manifest but a smooth flight took us north to Bagan, with a bird's eye view of fields, winding rivers, vast lakes and forests, and, as we came into land, the famous plain of pagodas.
After we'd settled in at the New Park Hotel (very nice villa-style rooms), Josh took us on our orientation walk, starting with restaurant row (very handily located at the end of our street) and then on along the main road and into Nyaung-U where he left us to our own devices. In the company of some of the other single ladies on the trip, we explored the market, which was fascinating. I should have bought some souvenirs there, but it felt too early on in the trip.
After an early but lovely, tranquil lunch at The Beach Bagan open air restaurant, overlooking the Irrawaddy / Ayeyarwady River (ဧရာဝတီမြစ်) and accompanied by the occasional cooling breeze, I headed back into the markets for another mooch, and then wandered back to base and sat out on my veranda reading until it was time for our sunset visit to nearby Shwezigon Pagoda (ရွှေစည်းခုံဘုရား). Another lovely late afternoon to twilight experience, this time with everyone taking advantage of the opportunity to pick Josh's brains as we strolled round.
Together with Anna and Miriam I lingered to watch twilight turn to night, before returning to Restaurant Row and joining the others for a smashing meal at the newly opened Bitmo: highly recommended, it's a lovely place run by a young couple - he waits on the tables, she makes all the meals from scratch. It's on your right as you walk along Restaurant Row towards the main road, just before Weather Spoon's (which would prove to be much better than expected! Another Restaurant Row recommendation - don't be put off by the name).
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We flew Air KBZ from Yangon (ရန်ကုန်) to Nyaung-U (ညောင်ဦးမြို့) / Bagan (ပုဂံ)
Monday 21 October 2013: Yangon (ရန်ကုန်) - Nyaung-U (ညောင်ဦးမြို့) / Bagan (ပုဂံ)
As the trip notes promised, it was indeed an early morning flight from Yangon (ရန်ကုန်) to Nyaung-U (ညောင်ဦးမြို့), the airport and small town that serves as the entry point for (old) Bagan (ပုဂံ). We said a 4.30am au revoir to the Asia Plaza Hotel and drove through quiet streets to Yangon airport, where we sat with lots of other tourists waiting for the morning departures to start. Air KBZ proved to be at the tail end of the manifest but a smooth flight took us north to Bagan, with a bird's eye view of fields, winding rivers, vast lakes and forests, and, as we came into land, the famous plain of pagodas.
After we'd settled in at the New Park Hotel (very nice villa-style rooms), Josh took us on our orientation walk, starting with restaurant row (very handily located at the end of our street) and then on along the main road and into Nyaung-U where he left us to our own devices. In the company of some of the other single ladies on the trip, we explored the market, which was fascinating. I should have bought some souvenirs there, but it felt too early on in the trip.
After an early but lovely, tranquil lunch at The Beach Bagan open air restaurant, overlooking the Irrawaddy / Ayeyarwady River (ဧရာဝတီမြစ်) and accompanied by the occasional cooling breeze, I headed back into the markets for another mooch, and then wandered back to base and sat out on my veranda reading until it was time for our sunset visit to nearby Shwezigon Pagoda (ရွှေစည်းခုံဘုရား). Another lovely late afternoon to twilight experience, this time with everyone taking advantage of the opportunity to pick Josh's brains as we strolled round.
Together with Anna and Miriam I lingered to watch twilight turn to night, before returning to Restaurant Row and joining the others for a smashing meal at the newly opened Bitmo: highly recommended, it's a lovely place run by a young couple - he waits on the tables, she makes all the meals from scratch. It's on your right as you walk along Restaurant Row towards the main road, just before Weather Spoon's (which would prove to be much better than expected! Another Restaurant Row recommendation - don't be put off by the name).
DSC01808_small