Beautiful hotel and really amazing staff but this hotel is located in the middle of nowhere. Part of the UNESCO agreement for Bagan to become a World Heritage Site was that any new hotels should be built away from the temple areas and so a hotel zone was created outside of New Bagan. The problem for the Gracious Bagan is that they are currently the only hotel in this hotel zone and so they really are out on a limb. As a consequence, there are no restaurants, shops or anything nearby so you cannot just go out on an evening without pre-booking a tax
The first sign that the hotel was so far out of New Bagan was that the flat rate taxi price from the airport to New Bagan was doubled! The hotel does have a shuttle service at certain times of the day that drops you off in the centre of New Bagan but if you require a taxi at any other time, it takes a minimum of 10-15 minutes for the taxi to get to the hotel.
I arrived early evening and so was pretty much limited on my first night to eating in the hotel restaurant. I found the menu to be extremely limited and there was nothing on the menu to cater for a vegetarian although they did make a vegetable curry for me.
In the end, I opted to rent an E-bike from New Bagan to allow me the freedom to come and go from the hotel as I pleased, but the road from New Bagan to the hotel is not well maintained or lit and so it is not the safest of journeys to make after dark.
Overall, a lovely hotel in an awful location.