Bagan (Day 3)

Events of Sunday, 1st May 2016

On Sunday, I walked to the Clinic just after 8.00 a.m. The Doctor had already started work and he hold me that there had been 60 registrations at that time.

I'll describe my morning observing Dr. Hla Tun's consultations in a separate post.

A startling storm

There was a vicious thunderstorm around lunchtime and the electricity went off. The rain was very heavy for a while. The Clinic have some sort of standby generator (I didn't discover details) but they didn't use it - they just carried on using battery lighting until power was restored, after around an hour. The temperature was much more comfortable after the rain, most of which dried up quickly. I took the opportunity to leave the clinic and walk to the hotel with a view to exploring on foot. But the temperature was rapidly rising again, so when a middle-aged guy on a motor cycle offered a boat ride, I entered into negotiations.

A relaxing cruise on the Ayeyarwaddy

Briefly, we made a deal and I had a splendid cruise lasting one hour on his longtail boat with a roof which could have carried a couple of dozen tourists rather than one. We went up river almost to the Swezigon Pagoda before returning to the shore close to my hotel (I say 'shore' because there's no actual jetty but if you're lucky - I was - you keep your feet dry. It was late afternoon when we returned - a good time to watch the activities of the local people, many carrying out ablutions and clothes washing.

Related posts

Next post describing this trip.

All my posts on this trip can be found here.

My pictures

There are a few pictures of this trip here.

More pictures will be posted as soon as possible.