Picnic on top of the thousand pagodas

Got up early this morning and had a classic asian breakfast...rubbery egg on toast. We then had a knock at our door and the hostel man told us that our bikes were waiting outside for us! They had bought 2 for us when we had specifically asked for 1. They said that it was 'possible not' so with a cheeky bit of bribery we got one bike for 10000 instead of 8000 kyat. We rode to black bamboo. It was so nice not sweating and pedalling up the hill. We both looked ridic on it but it was hilarious! We E biked it to the local market. It was one of the coolest markets I have been too. Masses of different types of chillies in baskets, masses of strange leave things (they all have them as snacks out here. Apparently it tastes like whiskey says U Ott Ta Ma), masses of onions that they sat on and they all kinds of different vegetables and fruit. We bought some little pots to take back home. They are very sweet. The women that sold it to us was very annoying as she kept putting more pots into our hands to buy. Also in the market lots of women were selling longyis and I told a women 'no thanks' but she just wrapped it around me!
After the market we headed to black bamboo and asked them to put our sandwiches into boxes so we could take the away with us, then went to a little shop to buy some milk wafers and keros (oreos) for our picnic. Set off and headed to Shwezigon Pagoda. When we arrived we parked our bike and 2 different ladies came up to us and pinned plastic butterflies onto us and said it was a present. We told them to keep it as we weren't going to buy anything from them. Walked further up and got another butterfly and we told them the same but they were super nice at the time about giving us a present. On our return from the pagoda, we offered them the butterflies back as we knew they would take them
back anyway. They snatched them off us and got very grumpy. Morag has a picture of me when they gave it to me and then the aftermath which is hilarious. Quickly drove away from them and cycled back past our hostel and into Old Bagan. We were suddenly amazed by the view. There were literally so many pagodas. We drove along a little dusty track to get to the first pagoda. We were the only people there except a man painting. He showed us the Buddha and then showed us where the stairs were. The stairs were literally so steep and it was very dark! The view from the top was incredible and the man took some surprisingly good pictures of us. We then headed to a different pagoda and had lunch on the top. It was so nice as no one was around and the view again was better than the last with even more pagodas in site. Crazy place to eat a picnic. Got some more pretty cool pictures of us at the top. Next place on our little E bike was Htilominlo Temple. Bigger than the other two which were pretty small in comparison. We realised that we had got slightly burnt and we had forgotten to take sun cream with us. So a really nice girl the same age as us put dunaka on my face outside the pagoda. They all wear it out here for protection from the sun and because it makes them look beautiful (apparently). So I was attracting a lot of Burmese men after my new makeover! To be honest I felt a little silly. I had my longyi on and dunaka on my face and arms! Slowly scootered to Ananda Temple and had 5 people taking a picture of us next to a huge golden Buddha. We are famous in Burma!! I then had a man try to steal my iPhone case as he told me he couldn't buy them out here. When we walked outside of the pagoda we had to run as the floor was super hot, ran to a puddle to cool my feet down!
Went to Thatbyinnyu Temple and a 'new to be tourist guide' came up to us and asked if he could practise his English with us. Told him yes and we scottered to a different temple that was smaller but you couldn't climb to the top. He kept asking strange questions and said 'if you met a nice boy in Bagan, would you have fun with him?' Think he soon got the point that we both didn't want to chat to him and in the end he wasn't going to be a tourist guy but he just wanted to sell paintings to us!! We then scooted to a different temple. Where children got annoyed as we wouldn't buy there postcards. Lots of them have pretend drawings of paintings that they drew. After that temple we headed back to take a shower before heading back out scootering as fast as we could to get to Shewe for sunset. Unfortunately the sunset was a bit of a downer,but the views were still incredible. I trekked all the way back down the temple so we could have a drink up there. I was nice just sitting up there. We were the hardcore sunsetters and stayed there until the very end with a couple of other very keen photographers. Scootered back in the dark, we had a light on the front of our E Bike. Was funny we overtook a guy on his bike but he then peddled on ahead of us. So I pedalled as fast as I could and used the electricity. He stopped to take a picture as I think he was getting tired of trying to stay infront of us!! We went straight to get supper. We went to Holiday Beer Inn. Then food was pretty disgusting so we headed to weather spoons for pudding! I just had fruit. It was another very fun evening! We have our bike back...very sad!! Tried to organise something with them the next day but they just kept laughing at us constantly. We're not really sure why...Anyway, started walking back. We both had the sorest legs ever. So we bartered with a trishaw man. A trishaw is a bike and at the side there are two seats. The man was struggling a bit whilst cycling so I hopped out a couple of times and gave it a running push. The first time I did it he got quite a big fright! Achy legs whilst trying to get too sleep!