Wednesday 25 February 2015

24th February 2015 Bagan from the beginning

A really early start for Owen and I as we due out of town at a cafe to run a time control, a hurried breakfast consisting of rubbish omelette but Owen was pleased with his muesli (weirdo).  We again fought through the sixty billion mopeds that were waiting to be mowed down by the red hilux that we have become so fond of over the past month, we arrived at our control to find an open sewer running through the front, no coffee was on offer here but after telling them that 150 westerners will be arriving demanding coffee they sent a boy running off down the road with a wad of their filthy money in hand returning with some NescafĂ© one shots for the competitors, they only charged about seven pence per cup so we weren't going to ask for a more decent coffee!  We had the music playing on Owens speaker and even some of the competitors had a boogie in this foul smelling roadside dive.

We packed up eventually and headed in the direction of Bagan, there was a competitive section on the way and here we learnt that Peter and Zoe managed to pull it out of the bag and overtook Gerry and Matt to end the rally in top spot in the classics, the vintageants has been won by Bill and Scott in the wonderful fuel injected Chevy Coupe.  It was a busy afternoon when we first came across an Alvis who's fuel pump had failed at the lunch halt, we'd been tow starting this all week and assumed that's all it needed so Owen tugged it off down the road but didn't come back for me, getting worried I hitched a lift with the boss and came across Owen covered in fuel halfway through fitting a new pump. The next car needing our assistance was the vintageants winner Bill who'd broken a brake pile, one was duly made and fitted and they left towards their award, a Bentley had ignition problems and this was rectified using a metro coil, this car currently has metro carbs, 2 metro ignition leads and now the coil, going to make this a mission to turn this lovely fifties Bentley into a 1986 metro by the time we've finished!  
We passed the odd hill where there's a beautiful monastery on top, I've seen this picture in many chinese restaurants over the years, funny how it's in Myanmar!

Coming into Bagan down the very steep hills where one of the other Alvis' had wrong slotted and was stuck in a monastery beached on a large rock, with some ingenious use of pallets, stakes and tow ropes we managed to remove the car and the crew happily left to continue the journey.  Bagan was a total surprise for me, pagodas and temples everywhere, there are around 1500 currently but there used to be 10 times that before it was bombed in the war!
We even managed to get to go through the ceremonial arch unlike Paris and receive some glass wear to commererate this momental journey all of us have taken!  Congratulations to all finishers and commiserations to those who didn't make it to the end for whatever reasons!

A cocktail party in the towns viewing tower before the prize giving started, I had sour rum to start with then had another and then needed just water as I hadn't realised how strong this stuff was, onto the prize giving, without Phillip Eds sister assisted the clerk of the course John in dishing out the bowls to the award winners, Peter and Zoe summed up the event very well and led us into a slide show of the event up to and including this lovely ending to an amazing journey.


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