After our excellent lunch with Nyunt, our taxi dropped us off in the center of downtown Yangon at a central golden pagoda. We planned on walking around and looking at the old buildings.
After a few stops at different crumbling buildings, we decided we needed something more to eat, plus it was getting to be excruciatingly hot. So we decided to collect a bunch of street food specimens and convene in a large central park complete with sculpted shrubbery and a large fountain to try them out. Out of 5 things that we collected, we found one winner which was an indian sort of savory crepe. The food scene in Yangon is a difficult one to break into. Its a lot of deep fried stuff, a lot of meat and a lot of stuff that is unidentifiable. There is also the Indian influence though, so we found some crepes that were filled with indian spices and possibly some chick peas. And they were delicious. And then theres always fresh fruit sold pretty much everywhere on the street like it was in Thailand.
Right when you think it can’t get any hotter, the sun starts to go down, and suddenly you have a 2nd wind. We thought sunset would be a good time to visit Shwedegon Paya, Yangon’s #1 tourist attraction. We didn’t have much time to loose, but we made it there by cab in time to see the massive upside-down golden dinner bell slowly morph into a mega glowing spaceship in the night (see pics).
You have to ascend probably about 4 stories to reach the base of it (stairs or elevator) which is surrounded by a large marble platform, maybe 75 feet wide. All around the edge of that are shrines to the days of the week, smaller pagodas, temples, buddhas and a hodge-podge of other golden structures which would be too numerous to count. Its all outdoors.
I can only describe it as magnificent. You’ll just have to look at the pics. Its truly a must-see, for the beauty and immensity of the thing, but also the people scene around it. You had to leave your shoes downstairs so everyone was walking barefoot. Most people were either sitting down in various places on the platform or just walking the circle around the pagoda (it takes around 20 minutes to walk it). Other people were meditating or chanting solo or in groups in different areas. Other people were hitting giant bells with tree limbs the size of an arm. There were monks in their robes taking photos on their iPhones, there were teenage couples holding hands and walking, there were people washing the buddhas at the different stations of the week. I saw very few european tourists (aka white people). Maybe 1% of the folks there or less. Despite the couple thousand people there, it was very peaceful.
The shrines dedicated to the days of the week (and 2 shrines for Wednesday because they divide that day into 2 days and have an 8-day week) had a life-size white stone buddha in the center of a big stone bowl and people born on that day dipped cups into a bowl of water and “washed” the buddha by pouring the cup over its head. They did this repeatedly, maybe once for each year of their age? When night fell thousands of wicks in oil were lit around the entire base of the pagoda (see pic).
We stayed about 2 hours just walking the circle, taking photos from different angles (I literally couldn’t keep my camera in my pocket), trying to meditate, just taking in the scene.
At around 10pm we took a taxi to the Chatrium hotel, where rumor has it you can use their pool during the day. We wanted to check it out for future reference.
