Joe Louis vists the Bagan Golden Palace
As I entered Old Bagan through the Tharabar Gate on my shoddy, squeaky bike I immediately noticed a multi-level pyramid of shiny golden squares stretching into the sky in the recognizable stacked Asian architecture. I parked my bike on the side of the dusty road and walked over to the large, arching gateway. A security guard sleepily sat in the shade of the entrance walls, waiting to collect admission fees from incoming visitors.
Young tourists took pictures in front of the imposing edifice ahead. The building was pretty and regal in its stature. Its spires formed arrows that pointed directly up, commanding the eye to notice the size. The golden color of the edges spoke to an importance of its inhabitants. Indeed, the Golden Palace was once home to the Royal Family. Now it’s halls host cultural performances and government affairs.
I opted not to go inside the palace. While impressive to look at, something about the Golden Palace did not appeal to me. The guard and the admission fee created an unwelcome separation unlike the hundreds of other temples in the immediate vicinity that I was able to ride up to and explore with no hindrance. But more off-putting was the building itself. It looked too new. Too shiny. Too fake.
Many of temples in Bagan have had restoration work done to prevent them from complete destruction. Evenso, they maintain a semblance to their old characters and still have an old world appearance. The Golden Palace, recently renovated and restored in the mid 2000’s, looks like a newly built building trying to mimic an older version of itself. Because it was created for tourists to visit, I found it hard to relish in any historical significance assigned to its ancestor.
See what other blogs are saying about the Bagan Golden Palace:
“As I found out, over the course of many years UNESCO had actually spent millions of dollars on restoration projects following the 1975 earthquake in Bagan. Apparently some of the restoration and re-construction projects have been done rather unprofessionally and without the expertise of educated historians or skilled labor, leaving Bagan today as a somewhat Disney like fantasy version of its former self. The following result seemed to be that a 1996 submission to UNESCO only made it to the Tentative List…
The recent additions of a really ugly and out-of-place Viewing Tower, a newly invented Bagan Golden Palace and a monstrously huge Archaeology Museum probably didn’t help to convince UNESCO to positively re-consider the nomination. Also the fact that some of the bigger, most tourist frequented temples had turned into what was best described as souvenir shopping malls seemed slightly concerning and was best avoided…”
–See the World in my Eyes
