South of Old Bagan is a relatively new settlement area called New Bagan. Our guide said that the people living in New Bagan used to live in Old Bagan. They are the families that took care of the temples and pagodas in Old Bagan. But the military government of Myanmar moved them out of Old Bagan for “archeological purposes”. The government wanted to protect the archeological integrity of the area and make needed repairs. At any rate, these people got displaced but didn’t move very far and they are still beside the Irrawaddy River. We walked through the village and met various people, got to see several houses, watched a young person doing her homework, and so on.

1. This is the first woman that we met in the village. She is standing outside of her house. Her family had gathered plants along the roads to feed to their livestock, in this case oxen. They are chopping up the feed on the ground.

2. The second photo is just a close-up of the woman.

3. The third photo is another family that we met. They had a nice house and a nice complex, along with five children. You can see the pipe coming off the rain gutters and they had some piping that took the water and funneled it into the big clay pots on the ground in the back right.

4. This child was one year old that day and he was learning to walk using the home-made walker that you see in the photo.

5. The young men of the village were playing ‘cane ball’ and I joined in for about ten minutes. They keep a 4-5 inch rattan ball in the air by all means except their hands. Despite not being a soccer player, I did okay.