About six months ago I had taken all my APS [1] analog images to a professional scanning institute to be transformed into digital images. The pictures of my trip to Myanmar in 2001 were among this batch. Despite some compromises, I am happy with the result. I looked at the pictures and thought (half a year ago) that I would like to write about Bagan at some point. So this text is more of an interim blog post, because I remembered being in Bagan again today, when the task was to write a haiku on a specific topic. The text also may be seen as a haibun [2]. The haiku is this one [3]:
red balloon hissing
above the red brick temples
Buddha stays golden
And with this haiku I remembered the time when we were in Bagan and got up before sunrise every morning to watch dawn and the variety of temples. Every morning we went to a different temple area and looked at the different ans also changing colors and the rising mists. And this came to mind again today. Then I looked at my old diary again and fresh memories came back – total recall. We had come to Bagan and had chosen a specific hotel, a hotel with small bungalows. At least that's what we discussed with a travel agency in Germany [4] and thought that's how it would have been implemented. But the travel agent had booked a completely different hotel, which interestingly enough had the same name as the one in which lobby we were currently in. But we didn't know that, and we said to ourselves in the hotel lobby: if we don't get a room, we'll sleep here in the lobby. Once determined we uttered loudly our intentions. It was a bit nerve-wracking with phone calls to the local tour operator in Yangon, but in the end we got the two most beautiful bungalows, although we were told that we might have to move out of these and move to another bungalow, but we stayed there the whole time. And it was an interesting time too. During a state visit, the Chinese president [5] at the time stayed in a hotel right next to our bungalows that had been made available just for him. At this point, all operations on the Irrawaddy River [6] like ferry services were restricted or no longer available. But our morning wanderings through the temples were unaffected. I really enjoyed my time there and in one of these pictures you can see me 22 years ago.
Now, let's come to some preliminary notes on the temples of Bagan. Bagan is located on the eastern bank of the Irrawaddy River in the Mandalay Region. Bagan was the capital of the Kingdom of Pagan (original spelling) and a major center for Buddhist scholarship and learning from the 9th to the 13th centuries. There were over 10,000 temples and other religious structures in the area, of which more than 2200 still exist. Two events after my visit are worth mentioning. Bagan suffered considerable damage during an earthquake in 2016. And in 2019, Bagan was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. More on Wikipedia, of course [7].
Links and Annotations:
[1] Advanced Ohoto System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Photo_System
[2] „Haibun (俳文, literally, haikai writings) is a prosimetric literary form originating in Japan, combining prose and haiku. The range of haibun is broad and frequently includes autobiography, diary, essay, prose poem,[*] short story and travel journal.“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haibun
[3] https://www.facebook.com/NaHaiWriMo/posts/pfbid0Svj1r22XHQqtjczxqy2VZQAiNP2gvBECmxPXpMfUiVT966BwTyjdfDifVonpXMVEl?comment_id=2008544846177303 [4] We even supplied the address from the Lonely Planet guidebook on Myanmar.
[5] Jiang Zemin (江泽民). I've found an article on this state visit: President Jiang Zemin Holds Talks with Chairman Than Shwe of the State Peace and Development Council of Myanmar. https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/gjhdq_665435/2675_665437/2747_663498/2749_663502/200112/t20011213_518585.html
[6] The Irrawaddy River is officially romanized as Ayeyarwady River.
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagan
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