Pagoda paradise

The quirky, crumbling complex of Bagan in Myanmar is a good approximation of heaven on earth

The Road to Mandalay  docks next to what our guide assures us is an “unremarkable house”. But the unprepossessing concrete mansion that hugs the upper banks of the Ayeyarwady (the river Irrawaddy to the Anglicised) has a contemporary history — it is the residence of the estranged brother of the “The Lady”. In Myanmar, nobody calls the wildly popular former dissident and now State Counsellor Aug San Suu Kyi by her name. The cause of the tension between The Lady and her brother is lost to younger memories, but the house is certainly a poor introduction to the spectacular temple