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Shwedagon Paya (pagoda) is the main landmark anywhere in Myanmar and so it should be considering it is covered with sixty tons of gold, which at today's prices is something over a billion dollars. Not bad for one of the poorest countries in the world.
I arrived at the Shwedagon Paya. I was pleasantly surprised to do so given the number of tricky left hand turns and resulting near misses; taxis and private cars, unlike buses and trucks, don’t drive with a spotter leaning out the left hand door watching for gaps in the traffic.
Tempted as I was to walk (you can see this 98m gold thing from most parts of the city) it was simply too hot to make the gamble in a taxi unappealing.
The stupa (paya in Baman, big rock thing in English) was built between 1500 and 2000 years ago, depending on which story you want to believe, to house six hairs of Buddha. No idea how they got six hairs from a shaven headed monk, but there you have it. Like most temples and stupas in this part of the world (Asia), this one has been rebuilt several times, its most recent renovation
since 1975.
For some reason, the thing is recovered in gold every year, which probably isn’t great for the national treasury. So far, sixty tons of gold have been flattened out and stuck on the stupa, which at today’s prices is something over a billion dollars. This sort of had me wondering why waste so much money on it. But then again, Australia spent far more taxpayer money building an opera house, the sole use of which is to entertain the middle and upper class. It doesn’t even house any of Buddha’s whiskers.
One thing that struck me on arriving was that for the main tourist attraction in Yangon, there were remarkably few tourists. I came upon only about 30, mainly Thai, tourists in about four hours, compared to hundreds of natives.
They were all very friendly to me and I had a chat to a few as I walked around anti-clockwise. Nobody was so rude as to point out that I was walking the wrong way. I honestly don’t think they cared.
The monks here are really genuine people with no pretense or airs as I came across in Korea and Thailand. You wouldn’t guess
most of them were monks without the robe.
For all my cynicism about religion and religious buildings, I gotta say, this place was rather awesome.
When I first read about it I was inclined to compare it with its opposite number in Laos (which houses one of Buddha’s teeth or nose hairs) which seems to have become a tourist attraction simply because it’s a tourist attraction. Sort of like the big pineapple in Queensland.
This five hectare compound is filled with stupas, temples, and other religious stuff which, alone anywhere else, would be tourist attractions themselves.
There’s also a bit of history here: I noticed the gun emplacements on the way up. The good old British had turned the most sacred place in Burma into a fort.
Later in the afternoon, after several cigarettes and a few laps of the stupa, the flagstones cooled down enough to walk on without getting 3rd degree burns, and the locals came out to play.
A courtyard on the North side of the Stupa was the focus of most activity. This was the wishing area where locals pray for health, money, husbands, and MP3 players. A steady stream of
ceremonies, mainly weddings, seemed to be going on until almost evening, when rain cleared the place of all but the most devout (or desperate) worshippers who remained kneeling in puddles.
Once the sun went down the holy gold spire was alit with a golden glow from spotlights and the holy shrines were lit by a funky green fluorescent lights with flashing neon halos. It was an interesting transformation.
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John
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hairs of the buddha
In Kandy the cutural capital of Sri Lanka, they have the temple of the tooth, buddhas tooth. Now us Brits at some stage of history were not happy with the locals believing in this so we smashed the tooth into dust with a hammer, and threw the remains into the sea, but, now heres the thing, the power of the buddha recovered the tooth dust from the ocean and it ended up whole again and is back in the temple of the tooth where it resides to this day. beliefs eh?.....tsk tsk