Here's a temple, there's a temple

I found a somewhat reliable internet connection here in Bagan. At $2.50/hr, it's ridiculously expensive - this, in a town where you can rent a bicycle for 50 cents a day or get a a horse, cart, and driver for $5 from sunup to sundown. The "internet cafe" is nothing more than a small room with a desk, a plastic chair, an ancient computer, and a dialup connection. But, in its defense, it is the first connection I've found in Burma that has managed to connect me to the pathetically bloated Hotmail Live.

With over 4400 temples and stuppas scattered over a 42 square km plain, Bagan easily rivals the historic sites of Petra (Jordan) and Angkor Wat (Cambodia). While it lacks Angkor Wat's dense, lush jungle-ruins atmosphere, it makes up for this with sheer numbers. The structures range from small 2m stuppas to towering 70m high golden domes that dot the arid desert. The temples were built between 1100AD and 1300AD and most are in good shape, since the military gov't had them restored (with forced labor) after a devastating earthquake in 1975. Many of the temples' upper levels are closed to tourists, but you can climb up a couple of the reinforced temples for amazing views over the pancake-flat plain. As far as the eye can see, there are temples and stuppas, framed by the massive Ayeyarwady River and some mountains in the distance. It's absolutely incredible.

There are a couple of ways to get around: you can either rent a bicycle for the day, or a get a shaded horse-cart. Due to the oppressive heat (it's about 40 degrees Celcius at mid-day, with no shade for miles around), I opted to split a horse cart with two other travelers. Thus, I've spent the past two days bouncing around over dusty roads, staring at a horse's arse.