From Team Joy to Team Sore Butt

Oh my butt,” Kristen exclaimed as she eased down on to her seat. “The double padding isn’t even helping.” 

“Maybe we should change our team name from Team Joy to Team Sore Butt?” 

Kath and Marie laughed and Willem seemed to shake his head as we headed out of the hotel area and on to the bike ride to the temples in old Bagan. 

Today had been explained as our short day, and after two days of 30 + miles on the mountain bike each day, we were ready for some down time. 

We had settled into a routine the four of us and William, our local Bagan guide that had met us three days earlier at the Bagan airport. And all of the angst over it not being the kind of traveling I like to do and the luxuriousness of the hotel seemed to dissipate once we were on our bikes two days earlier. 

We had a team of at least six people adjusting seats and doling out brand new helmets and offering us bike gloves as we prepared to set off from the Bagan airport on the small road that served as the main thoroughfare to Mt. Poppa and its temple that sat atop the  small mountain. 

Our first day was a series of mishaps – which perhaps we should have anticipated after the head of the local Bagan company outfitting us admitted that the helmets were brand new because this was their first cycling tour ever. William assured us that he had done others as a freelance guide, but suddenly the new gear took on an air of inexperience and we wondered how the day would go. 

We cycled out of the airport area and onto a small road that allowed cars to pass in either direction. Much of the day was along this road. We cycled through 200 hundred children headed home for lunch and past palm groves in the distance. 

There were bulls pulling carts with hay loaded into them and two woman perched atop the hay and small children that ran from their thatched roof houses to shout “mingalaba!” as we passed. We raised our hands in a hello greeting and shouted hello back in their local language. 

Before long, Marie noticed that Kristen’s back tire was flat and William and Chem, the support vehicle driver, pumped up the wheel with a small portable pump. Problem momentarily solved. 

We stopped at a palm farm and watched as they squeezed palm juice from the leaves and ate the sugary palm candy they offered us to temp us into buying some as souveniers. 

We sat at a small round table and drank green tea and ate Burmese salad that William prepared for us according to our spice preferences. I was hungry and gobbled up the peanuts and sesame and tea leaves as fast as he could make it. 

Afterwards, William realized that the extra inner tube he had was a 26 and wouldn’t serve Kristen’s wheel of a size 29. So he set to work patching the leak and we sat in the shade wondering how much of the ride we had left before lunch. 

As it turned out, quite a bit. And after an hour and a half, when William had told us we had 25 K left at least three times, we stopped for some Papaya and cookies at a village stand along the road. We rode past people crouching on the side of the road. William explained they were hoping for a donation from people coming back from the mountain. The woman smiled at us with wide toothless grin and seemed genuinely happy to have us at her store. To date, we hadn’t seen on local Myanmar person with anything less than a wave and a smile for us. 

We continued on and hit a stretch of steep uphill for almost a mile. I counted in my head to keep going and was grateful when we hit a flat stretch almost thirty minutes later. No way was I going to do that last 4 K if they were like that after lunch. 

Finally at 3 pm – almost five hours later, we reached our lunch spot. Our butts were sore, our brows sweaty and we were ready to eat and relax. 

Marie decided she wanted to attempt the  extra little hill to Mt. Poppa’s resort, while the rest of piled  into the support pick up for a short ride up the hill into the lap of luxury. 

We must have looked pretty funny riding up in the back of the pick up truck, our bikes bouncing around along with our bags and our dirty, smelly selves into this four star resort with an infinity pool underneath a view of the temple atop the mountain. 

“So yeah, if I am going to be spoiled and stay in fancy places, let them all be set in a natural setting like this one.

The rooms were set back in the forest with wooden balconies and spectacular views. Happy hour was served with the sun dipping low into the sky in front of us, the temple slightly to the north. 

We never wanted to leave and our only complaint had been that our arrival time of 4pm meant that the pool was freezing.

 These were problems of privielge for sure.

 

For the first time in weeks, I had real cheddar cheese and real brewed coffee for breakfast. Right after a shower so hot, it seemed to take layers of dirty skin off of me. 

We headed to the temple via foot, our bellies full, happy to hike for a change with a long bike ride still ahead of us back to Bagan. 

The 717 or 977 steps that lead up to the top of the temple were covered in monkeys just waiting for an unattended iphone, bottle of water or small snack to steal. Local men and women scrubbed the stairs as we walked up, but still we had the distinct sensation of walking barefoot through monkey feces and wondered what kind of diseases we could acquire along the way. 

We posed for pictures with the locals when requested, feeling like movie stars as the women grabbed on to our arms in the photos they took. 

By the time we checked out of the hotel, it was after 11 and the sun was high in the sky. We rode the 50+ kilometers back to New Bagan and our new hotel cursing the sun and the bike seats, but happy to snap pictures with the local children and buy dragon fruits and banana chips for the local market. 

We arrived in Bagan after 3 and had just a short hour and a half before we needed to be ready for our sunset cruise on the Irrawady river. 

We were relieved we had chosen not to bike to the shore and smiled our no thank you’s at the women and young girls selling bracelets, lungies and other arts and crafts. The long tail boats were loud and spit off dark smoke and I couldn’t help but think of how oh Poda had been on the tour David and I took last month.  

 I sent up a silent prayer that Myanamar had time left in its innocence before tourism ripped away its quaintness.

For sure, Bagan had tourism, but it wasn’t in your face. We managed to get off  the shore with only a small bump into another boat and headed out to eat more Burmese salad and watch the sun bid us farewell for another day.

 Later as we came back after sunset, we realized why William had been less than concerned about our small nudge into   the boat adjacent to us as we watched boats   seemingly play bumper cars as they raced against the current  and tried to find a place to anchor themselves on  shore. 

Bagan is literally covered with temples. Spires jutting up every few hundred feet, some restored after the 1975 earthquake, some from the 17th  century, each one with its own unique story. 

Kristen and I managed to bike to three before we were on people, temple and tour overload. Luckily Kath and Marie were fine to continue on with William and let us do our own thing. 

And off we went on a solo adventure – admittedly, only to the hotel with a stop at two temple like places on the way. But that was enough. 

We had settled into the tour and were enjoying the amenities of the pools that came with the hotel, but at some point, the information about Buddha and his life and what century each mural in was just background noise along with the Canadian family taking a gazillion pictures with each standing Buddha. 

We had made some new friends and had pushed past our comfort zones to find that we could be comfortably uncomfortable on the bikes, our butts wondering what we had gotten them into.