After 3 days at sea we sailed up the massive Irrawaddy (Irramuddy?) River past paddy fields by the thousand to Yangon’s river port.

We set off on our 2 day excursion to Yangon and Bagan. The “main road” from the port to the city is a pot-holed, congested 2 laner. The infrastrucure here has a loooong way to go!

When we reached the city outskirts it looked like many other big Asian cities: lotsa people, lotsa stalls, terrible traffic.

Our one stop in Yangon was the amazing Shwedagon Pagoda. Gold with precious stones on top …

It’s hard to capture the scale of this place. But here’s a (feeble) attempt.

The Buddha images come in all shapes and sizes, (but not fat ones: they are Chinese) …

Being a Sunday, there were lots of locals about. They come here just to hang out with Buddha and eat lunch …

Some of the detail in the little temples is quite amazing, and the gold everywhere a bit overwhelming.

One tradition is to wash the Buddha that celebrates the day of the week of your birth. Jan Monday, Geoff Wednesday.

Back on the bus we drove past just a little of old colonial Rangoon which looked quite nice in parts. It included a huge British founded University and 2 impressive artificial lakes.

To the (fairly chaotic) airport and a flight on that well known carrier Mann Yadanarpon Airlines (they have only 3 planes!), to Bagan. Jan was a little nervous, but plane was new and the fight perfect.