Luang Prabang and Pak Ou Caves

Up early today for a 6:00am pickup. We watched the monks doing their dawn alms collection. Very beautiful to watch. A large family had come to give alms and they were the centre of attention with lots of tourists taking their photo, even before the monks arrived.

The monks came in single file in their saffron robes accepting rice, bananas and other food without acknowledgement. When their bowls were full, or just at their choosing they take some food out of their bowls and give it to some poor children who were standing at the side of the procession.

Bagan - a city of temples

Today was a very early start, up at 4:00am. We had a quick breakfast at 4:45 then met Tun at 6:15 for the early morning drive to the airport. A bus took us out to our Air Bagan flight, a Fokker 100. We were welcomed on board and were soon in high in the air flying above the clouds.

As we approached Bagan, we could see multitudes of temples from the air scattered around the fields as well as on the mountains across the river. This was the dry season and many of the streams and smaller rivers were dry. The river also was very low with large sand banks exposed.

The plane landed onto a wet tarmac; a light rain had been falling earlier at 6:30am. Our new guide, Soe welcomed us and organised our baggage collection for us and we were soon in our car. After a short drive from the airport we stopped at our first temple. We got our first lesson in Bagan history and temples as we walked around Izza Gona temple. For example you can estimate the era of the Buddha statues: if the ears were touching the shoulders then it was likely built after 1100AD.