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.

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!