THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Mike Ives
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| Hot air balloons flying over the temples of Bagan, Myanmar, in March. Credit Minzayar Oo for The New York Times |
BAGAN, Myanmar — The vendor watched as members of an increasingly rare species — tourists — walked through a dirt parking lot toward Pyathat Gyi Temple, one of more than 2,000 religious monuments here on a riverside plain in central Myanmar. Many of Bagan’s monuments were restored by Myanmar’s former military government in the 1990s, after a previous earthquake, in a way that international experts criticized as heavy-handed. Bagan’s monument complex is a crown jewel in a tourism sector that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and has grown rapidly since Myanmar, a majority Buddhist country, began a rocky transition toward democracy in 2011. [
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| Pilgrims at Pyathat Gyi Temple. Credit Minzayar Oo for The New York Times |
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