Lord Mountbatten

We are not guide book travellers and do not research pages of text prior to arrival, we just go with the flow and find out when we get there. However, on day 2 we were very privileged to spend the day in the company of a guide, former curator at the Museum of Archeology who had been a guide to Lord Mountbatten. It was he who ensured the preservation of Bagan by instructing the British not to bomb the Japanese around Bagan during WW2. We spent the day being enlightened on many aspects of the temples: glazing, painting, Buddha stories and construction.

See here the story of the duck and the crow (the Buddha always recognizable with the umbrella above). Unfortunately the fine paintings cannot be photographed.

One of the more unusual pagodas and one of Mountbatten's favourites.
Bagan was a Unesco World Heritage site until 2000 when they withdrew in frustration at the attitude of the government which has every interest in taking the profit from tourism and no interest in spending the millions that this area deserves. Believing that they know what they are doing they have replaced the finest Italian restorers with unskilled, inexperienced workers to restore these fine works of art and the results are disastrous.
We finished the day with a river cruise at sunset.