Rainy Trishaw Tour with Sammy and Tin, Bago, Myanmar

Upon our arrival to Bago, 2 hours North of Yangon, we were greeted by Sammy and Tin, who were local trishaw drivers. Trishaws are bicycles with eassentially a side car attached with one seat facing forward and one backwards. They assured us that they would be able to take us around most of the sights of Bago in the afternoon, despite the pelting rain. So we agreed to pay them the 3000 kyats ($2.50, £1.50) for the afternoon, and they started peddling us around. We tried to use our umbrellas to keep them dry, but after a while it was a lost cause. The streets were a swamp and the locals took to using canoes to transport people through the lower level streets.

First stop was visiting the happy cheeroot (cigar) rollers. They spend at least 10 hours a day rolling about a thousand cigars, all for about $1 pay. There were even some young kids there (3-4yrs) helping their mothers out, and one was using a pair of huge scissors that were bigger than he was!!!
As for the temples: if you hadn't guessed it yet, there are probably millions of temples in Myanmar - even more than other countries we had visited. We were able to avoid the $10 government fee, by waiting until the ticket checkers had left for the day. This allowed us to 'help' out Sammy and Tin with a little extra money that went directly to them and not the government. Bago had some wonderful temples and 90 m tall stupas, with the highlight being the 61m long reclining Buddha of Shwethalyuang. It is housed in a large building to protect it, but walking up to it, all you can see is a huge wall of torso, only to reveal the massive length of the Buddha at the end of the hallway. It's head was resting on some very ornamental pillows and the soles of its feet were elaborately decorated. Even it's baby finger was over 3m long. We visited more temples for the rest of the day, finishing with the tallest at sunset. Although the rain was still falling, the bright gold made for a neat contrast with the strange blue of the sky (double click for pic on Flickr).

We thoroughly enjoyed our day out, but mostly because of the drivers. Such nice men, and we were able to really 'talk' to them. There are so many things that locals won't and aren't allowed to talk about, but they seemed to open up to us a little. Recommendations to anyone heading to Bago! An excellent afternoon. *Stub