With sleepy eyes we ate breakfast, and whisked to the airport, to fly to Bagan, via internal flight.
I was almost grounded because the security officer found me carrying 8 AA rechargeable batteries for my flashlight in my pocket. Luckily, Johnny was around to solve my problem, by suggesting to pass the batteries to the airline crew, and to be returned to me again in Bagan. Phew... I never know rechargeable can be that dangerous. May be I could hijack a plane with that. Later, I understand that if it is in the cabin bag, there is no problem, but not in the pocket. Whatever the logic is until now I still don't know, but hey, I can put the batteries in my cabin bag, no problem. Comply with the rule, enjoy the trip.
Anyway, the allow me to board the plane after I parted with my batteries. Off we flew!
The food on the plane was bad, but again, it is the same as the food at some budget airline, and some of those don't even serve food.
After several rounds of coffee, some of us started to recover our itchy trigger finger and started shooting. Some did it on the plane, while others after the plane has landed.
First destination after we landed in Bagan, is the hotel. We were pleasantly surprised to arrive in a nice resort style hotel, named Tharabar Gate Hotel, which is named after one of the ancient gate in Bagan. Each bungalow is divided into 2 rooms, with high ceiling, and some wall painting. Pity I do not have any picture of the room.
After a short rest, off we go to the ruins, with 2 samanera in tow. We reached at one of the thousands of temples and pagodas in Bagan, and a local lady with her 2 sons waited. They were our first models!
And here is the closeup of the brothers.
We were blessed with beautiful weather and sunlight, and then a bullock cart pulled by a couple of ox passed by, followed by a sheppard hearding goats. So we shot them too, going left... going right... going away... and coming towards... until the oxes and the goats were tired.
Especially the goats, who moved here and there, and not getting any time to eat any grass. I was wondering if they are about to scream "MOVE HERE, MOVE THERE, MAKE UP YOUR MIND!
Then by some luck, 2 local ladies carrying firewood and freshly cut grass on top of their head walked to our direction and they become our second models. Not only that, the is a bonus where both of them were smoking cherut, a local version of cigar which is made of tobacco and the soft skin of corn. Click on the picture to take a closer look.
And then, the 2 samanera who came with us became our next target.
We shot them until it is 11:00 am and we have to ferry them so they can eat lunch before noon, else they will not be able to eat again for that entire day. One of the regulation that they have to follow is to eat 2 meals per day, breakfast and lunch, and nothing to be eaten after 12 noon. Lucky them.
Not ready for lunch, we then went to a nearby village to take pictures of the villagers and their children. They were so happy to see us and young mothers brought their babies. And this particular girl even brought out her skipping ropes and started skipping in front of us! There are more smoking elderly, and another bullock cart, but there is so little space here, thus I decided not to post their pictures.
We also met a young boy who just came back from fecthing fresh drinking water for his family. He could carry the 2 pails which in total probably weight more than 20 kilograms on his tiny shoulder.
From there we continue to a wooden monastery to take more picture of monks. But I think a more interesting picture for you is this young enterpreneurial young girl who managed to sell one of us some hand made decorative butterfly for 1000 kyat (US$1).
We were very hungry, but still we went on and on, this time to another temple, after fetching back the 2 samanera. They continued to be our models for the rest of the day.
Finally, LUNCH! It was at really nice restaurant by the side of Irrawaddy river. The picture below is not taken by me as I am inside. It is taken by Felicia Teh, a member of our tourgroup.
After filling our stomach with yummy food and cold myanmar beer, we are back shooting again. Again with the 2 samaneras we went inside a temple and took more pictures.
When it is near the time for sunset, we went to another temple and went up to take pictures of scenery with the sunset.
The shooting goes on even after sunset. We had our dinner at a puppet theatre cum restaurant.
However, if you are in Myanmar, don't especially go if you intend to watch a puppet theatre. You could probably be better of eating elsewhere (probably cheaper), and go watch the puppet theather in Yangon. See my post on day 8.
The only special thing we had there was this sugared banana, probably served with some local alcoholic beverage and lit up when served.
Finally we went back to hotel to download pictures from memory cards to our harddrives and recharge our batteries again.
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