Kyaiktiyo

Our next stop was Kyaiktiyo, to see the famous golden rock. This balanced rock is supposedly held in place by a single strand of Buddha's hair, and is one of the most sacred places in Myanmar.

The hotel we were staying at gave us a lift to the starting point for our journey; we travelled in real style this time - in the back of a truck. When it arrived, I did wonder quite how I and some of my companions were going to manage to climb up into it, but I was relieved to see that they had a handy set of steps for us. So we clambered in and made ourselves as comfortable as we could for the short trip.

The journey up the mountain to the rock is an adventure in itself, as you are once again in the back of a truck, although this time there is the added luxury of benches to sit on. They do pack you in though, and the truck doesn't leave until it's full, and with the occupancy numbers based on the somewhat smaller build of your average Burmese person, it is rather a tight squeeze for us westerners, especially those of us with big bums! We countered this by paying for a couple of extra seats, so we could have one less person in our rows. You can also opt to pay more for the added comfort of sitting in the cab at the front, but that is still quite cramped and not so much fun.

The trucks wind their way up the mountainside at a fast pace, so you are in for a bumpy and twisty journey that I enjoyed, but not everyone does. The trucks don't go quite all the way to the top, but they do go further than they used to, so by taking it to the second stop, you can avoid most of the walk. And if you really can't be bothered to walk the last bit yourself, there is always the option of paying to be carried up in a chair.


Having made it to the top, our first stop was for lunch. As you might expect, this place attracts thousands of visitors, so they is no shortage of shopping and eating opportunities. As we made our way down a large flight of steps - past the shops of course - to the wide street with all of the restaurants in, we could already see and hear the women calling to attract us to their place to eat. It was a huge cacophony of calls, accompanied by the rapid beckoning motion of the hands. Strangely, as soon as we passed a restaurant, the woman for that place would stop, obviously not having any expectation of being able to draw us back, so as we progressed down the street, the sound gradually dwindled.

After lunch, we went to take a closer look at this big rock. It is quite big, with the rock itself being twenty metres high, with a seven metre temple on top. All covered in gold of course, which you can add to if you buy a bit of gold leaf - and are male!

I know this is a sacred and famous place, but personally I just wasn't that impressed. It felt very commercial and perhaps it has lost something of its prestige as a pilgrimage site now that you can take a truck up the mountain, rather than having to make the journey on foot. I always think of a pilgrimage as having to be hard work. Mind you, given that I wasn't impressed after getting the truck up here, I'm sure I would be even less happy if I'd walked up.

Honestly, whilst I know this place will be a must see for many visitors to Myanmar, I felt that I could happily have given it a miss. To me there are many more interesting and unusual temples and sites to see, not least of which would be two that are coming up in the next posting.rd

Bago and a big Burmese Python

En route from Yangon to Bago, we stopped off at the Taukkyan War Memorial and Cemetery. Over 30,000 people from Commonwealth countries died in service during World War II; the memorial shows the names of 27,000, while 6,374 are actually buried here.


It is a beautifully designed cemetery and memorial, and the place is immaculately maintained, with lovely frangipane trees.

We arrived in Bago in time for a quick lunch at a small place at the side of the road, and then we all took out the hotel's bicycles to see a few of the local sights. Not being a regular cyclist, I can't say that I felt overly comfortable on a bike with a hard saddle, only one gear and some pretty lousy brakes, but thankfully most of the way the traffic wasn't too bad, so I survived - though I had an incredibly sore bum by the time we got back.

Our first stop was the Shwemawdaw Pagoda, which looked OK from the outside, but whilst some went in, we found a cafe. We also found a few puppies, which kept us occupied for a while.

The next stop was supposed to be another pagoda, which I forget the name of, but that went out of the window when I mentioned that I had read that Bago had a snake monastery, where they had a huge Burmese python. With a few directions from locals, we made our way up the quite bumpy track, where we were greeted by lots of the people who lived along it.




We reached the monastery, and sure enough, there was the snake. The monastery keeps the python because it is believed to be the reincarnation of a former abbot. It is said to be around 120 years old, and at over five metres long, it may well deserve its claim to be one of the biggest snakes in the world. It takes five monks to move it.

From here, we went back to where we were staying, with the intention of going just a tiny bit further up the road to see the Kyaik Pun Paya, with a huge Buddha facing out in each of the four directions. However, by the time we got back to road, my backside hurt so much that I couldn't bring myself to do that final bit, and turned into the hotel and got a head start on the beers instead. Nic carried on to it, but didn't take a camera, so no photos.

P.S. very sad to see the recent flooding here

More Yangon

Our afternoon sightseeing was done in one of the little open back truck style taxis. This was quite nice when driving along, as the breeze provided some relief from the heat, but unfortunately, being in Yangon, we spent a lot of time crawling through the traffic jams, so most of the time it was just stiflingly hot.

Once we finally got moving, our first stop was at the National Museum of Myanmar. We only had about an hour, which was a shame because it was actually quite interesting, with various exhibits about the traditions and culture of the country, including music and the clothing worn in the different regions. The star attractions here though are the thrones of King Thibaw Min, the last king of Myanmar, in particular the very impressive Lion Throne.

After another crawl through traffic, we visited the Chaukhtatgyi Paya and its rather large  reclining Buddha, standing - or rather lying - at 65m long and 16m high. The positioning of the feet, which are covered in 108 sacred Buddhist symbols, is slightly staggered, meaning that the Buddha is depicted just before his death; had the feet been fully together, that would show him having just passed away.


This pagoda also had a round shrine that had eight sections, each representing the day of the week that you were born on, and the animal sign that means you fall under. Why eight rather than seven - Wednesday is split into two parts, the morning and the afternoon. With Nic and I both having been born on a Thursday, we fall under the rat apparently.

The idea is that you give an offering to the sign relevant to you, which generally consists of people pouring a cup of water onto it. Given that they get the water from the shrine itself, it didn't seem like much of an offering to me, but perhaps it's the thought that counts.

After the Buddha, we stopped at Kandawgyi Lake to see the Karaweik. You may remember from an earlier post that the Karaweik is the golden barge that looks a bit like a duck. This one is not only a replica, but it isn't even really a barge as it is concreted in position. It is supposedly quite a nice restaurant, but to us, it just wasn't worth the visit, especially when you spend so much time in traffic to get there.

I was more interested in seeing a group of men busy with the preparation of htamane, a concoction of sticky rice, coconut, peanuts, sesame, oil and ginger, that was being made for the full moon of Tabodwe festival today. Sadly it wasn't ready yet, so we couldn't get a taste. It did however give us an explanation for the strange cylinders that we had seen being given out to children as we passed a school earlier in the day; apparently the bamboo tubes would have contained a gift of htamane.


Our last visit of the day was the famous Shwedagon Pagoda on Singuttara Hill. According to legend, it is over 2500 years old, though experts put it around the 6th to 10th century. Either way, it is certainly an impressive pagoda, and with multiple other structures around it, there is quite a lot to see. It is dedicated to the four Buddhas, Kakusandha, Konasamana, Kassapa, and the one we mostly know about, Gautama. It is said to contain relics from all four, making it the most scared of places of worship in Myanmar.

Of course the usual no shoes rule applies throughout the complex, and that can be a bit of a shock when you first set your bare feet onto the terrace as it can be scorchingly hot after absorbing the sun all day.

The pagoda structure is covered in gold, and the tip has around 5450 diamonds and over 1000 other gems, with the big diamond at the top weighing in at around 76 carats. Just as well it is a long climb up or some non Buddhists might be tempted to help themselves to a few.

It was quite interesting to watch the Buddhist visitors making their offerings at various shrines that are relevant to them in some way. At the shrine which represents children,  expecting couples could be seen making an offering to try to influence what gender their baby would be.

Our guide Myo is from Yangon, and as we were sitting in yet another traffic jam on the way out of the pagoda, he told us that he was going to see his mother to have dinner with her after he had seen us back to the hotel. It was already getting late, and we weren't going anywhere quickly, so we shooed him off to see his mum and leave us to get back to the hotel - once he had given instructions to our driver of course.


When we finally made it back ourselves, a few of us headed out to a bar and restaurant at the top of the Sakura building, which had a great view of Yangon and the Schwedagon Pagoda. However the prices were as high as the bar was, so we soon moved on to somewhere cheaper.

The ghost town of Nay Pyi Taw

Ask most people what the capital of Myanmar is, and they will probably say Yangon, or maybe its old name of Rangoon. That would have been true up until 2005, but since then there is a new capital, and its name is Nay Pyi Taw.

Not only is this the new capital, it is a brand new city. For reasons best known to themselves, the government decided to spend a large chunk of the country's money, not on schools, health or helpful things like that, but on building a completely new capital city.

It has a huge, beautifully landscaped swathe of land, with fancy buildings for all of the various ministries, and an enormous government building. Not that you can get anywhere close to the main building with all of its security; it has its own extensive grounds and there are well guarded roadblocks closing off the roads around it.

And talking of the roads. In this country where even the main roads between cities are terrible, Nay Pyi Taw has been given eight lane superhighways, with perfectly smooth surfaces. And there is absolutely no traffic! Why no traffic? Because there's no one here.

The foreign embassies have steadfastly refused to move from Yangon, and so has pretty much īanyone else who has the choice. They built homes for the government officers, but apparently even most of them only live here during the week and go back to Yangon at the weekends. There are people on the outskirts of town, who used to live in the villages that were absorbed when the city was built, but other than that, few people actually live here, and hardly anyone visits except for business reasons.

Foreigners like us have to stay in one of the big business hotels that have been built along one road. They are decent enough hotels, but they are definitely intended for business and conference use, rather than tourists. Not surprisingly really, as there is not really anything much here to see.

They have put in a water park, presumably to give the businessmen something to do in the evening, but it is fairly unimpressive.

The main sight here is Uppatasanti Paya, a somewhat unimaginative copy of the famous Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon. Why they would choose to make a poor imitation of an already popular place, rather than build something new and unique, I really don't understand.


And while we are on the subject of things I find strange, there is a real obsession with neon lighting here. Not just this temple, all over Myanmar, Buddha images are dressed up like Christmas trees in twinkling neon lights.

They do have elephants here though. And not just any elephants, but white elephants. I say white, but like white people, they are really a kind of pinky-beige colour. We use the phrase 'white elephant' to mean something useless and frivolous, and that comes from the way these creatures are treated in much of South East Asia.

But whereas we use the phrase in a negative way, a white elephant is in fact a revered animal, because Buddha's mother dreamed of one when she became pregnant with him. So they are costly, frivolous and fairly useless, because they have to be looked after without being put to work, but they are also a cherished symbol of status.

As to Nay Pyi Taw itself, it was interesting to come here to see this new ghost of a city, and how it contrasts with everything else we have seen in Myanmar, but to be honest, unless you have time to kill, I wouldn't bother.

On a separate note, today we said goodbye to our government friend Mr T, as he was heading home. We were sad to see him go, as he always had such a cheerful smile!

Inle Lake by boat - part 2

After tearing ourselves away from the Burmese cats, we rejoined the others for a lunch stop, before getting back into those pesky boats. My anxiety wasn't helped by the fact that we seemed to break down again. Thankfully, after drafting in circles in the middle of the water highway for a while, we got going again.

After a morning of crafts and cats, by now of course, it had to be time for a temple, and we were soon at the precarious jetty of the Phaung Daw Oo Paya, a place famous for its five gold Buddhas.

Well I say Buddhas, but we will just have to take their word for that, as there has been so much gold leaf offering, that now they just look like golden blobs, or maybe a little pile of Ferrero Rocher. We asked Myo whether, as it seemed to us, it was disrespectful to effectively destroy a Buddha image in this way, but he assured us that because gold is a valuable offering, it is fine.


During the annual pagoda festival, four of these twelfth century Buddhas make an eighteen day boat tour around the lake's villages. They are taken out in a replica royal barge, which is decorated with a craving of the head of the Karaweik, a mythical bird.

They used to take all five out, but in the 1960s, the barge capsized, dropping all of the Buddhas into the lake. Only four were rescued, but when they back to the pagoda, the fifth one was miraculously already back on its shrine. They took this as a sign that this Buddha image does not wish to leave the pagoda, so now only the other four make the rounds.

Back onto the boats - which thankfully had moved to the slightly better landing area - and on to a place making mulberry paper and the rather beautiful paper umbrellas.

They also host a couple of visiting Paduang women, the ladies that wear the brass rings around their elongated necks. Now this was something of a dilemma for us, as we were both fascinated by this, and wanted to take photographs, but we also find the idea of women having to damage their bodies this way quite wrong, especially when we had heard that these days it is often done just to attract tourists.


So we were quite pleased that the two ladies were happy to discuss their neck rings and how they feel about them. The older lady has been wearing her 24 rings, the maximum number, for many years, and whilst she could remove them, her neck would not support her head, so it would be unwise. We picked up a set of rings and they are very heavy.

The younger girl only wears 17 rings, and she assured us that she did it through her own choice, and that with the lower number, she could safely remove them if she no longer wished to wear them. She did say that most girls now choose not to wear the rings, and they are not pressured into doing so. I hope that this is true, and have no reason to think she was not being honest.

As to why the Paduang women started wearing them, there is consensus that it was to protect them from a danger, but we have heard two different versions of what that danger was. One account is that the danger came from hungry tigers that would attack villagers, and the rings protected the areas they would bite at; the other is that it was to make the women unattractive to neighbouring tribesmen, who otherwise might kidnap them.

Back in the boats, we wound our way through the floating gardens, where the locals grow their fruit and vegetables on islands or on a sort of gazebo on stilts that they grow things over.

Our final stop of the day was at the Nga Hpe Kyaung, or the Jumping Cat Monastery, so called because the monks taught the cats to jump up through little hoops.

Sadly, though there are still cats there, they no longer jump. In another case of differing explanations, one reason is that there were complaints that Buddhists shouldn't make cats do things like that, whilst another is that the huge number of visitors were putting too much pressure for more frequent performances. The jumping cat photo is therefore borrowed from the Lonely Planet book.

So with our final stop of the day complete, it was back into the boats for the forty minute trip back. After so many ins and outs successfully completed, to my surprise, I actually found myself starting to relax a bit. After all, as one of our group had confidently said to me, "Don't worry, nothing bad will happen."

Famous last words there as it turned out. We were the last boat to arrive back at the jetty, and when we got ashore, we were surprised to see that one of our group was soaking wet from head to toe. It turns out that whilst she was trying to get out of the boat, it drifted away from the edge and she fell into the water. So, so much for me feeling better about these boats - back to hating them it is!