Bangkok #2

I spent the rest of my stay in Myanmar in some places not too far away from the capital. First, I made a little Buddhist piligrimage to Kyaiktiyo (which is pronounced like Chai-ti-o, no idea where all the k'-s came from), also known as Golden Rock. The rock is miraculously balancing on the edge of precipice, some even say floating in the air. From the start it sounded like a lot of crap, but I did it just for the 4 hours mountain hike. I started from Kinpun, a village with cheap guest houses and souvenirs market. Beside the usual t-shirts and necklaces, the souvenirs that are popular with locals to bring back from the piligrimage include models of various shooting weapons, made of bamboo, but still looking very intimidating, especially when carried by fighters with thanaka-covered faces.

The numerous food and drink vendors on the way are not too agressive, and surprisingly there isn't as much garbage as in some other important religious sites. The way is steep but nice, some beautiful views of the valleys below the ridge are revealed after a while.















While approaching the rock itself, my first impression was that a bunch of people are trying to test its miraculous balance by pushing it off the mountain. Actually, all these people are male devotees that apply stickers of golden paint to the rock surface. The women aren't allowed to approach the rock (even the magic has its limits) and make the prayings and meditation from a safe distance. The area around consists of restaurants and resthouses for piligrims, monasteries, many small temples where one can see the strange combination of Buddhism and Myanmar's traditional beliefs in nats, the guardian spirits. There are 37 of them, and together with Buddha's, that makes a lot of statues in the temples. Instead of hiking the way down, I decided to take a truck, which is the only allowed mean of transportation to and from the rock. The trucks are packed with 40 people, and needless to say, the benches are not designed for foreigners with long feet. Luckily, it's only a half an hour ride down.

My last destination was Chaungtha beach, a strange place.















Beatiful and long strip of white sand and coconuts, few budget guest houses and many luxury hotels, and more under construction, but looks like all this variety of accomodation is empty most of the time. Locals seem to visit on weekends mostly, and spend the time getting inside the water fully dressed and floating on tubes near shore. There are some monks hanging around, some of them look also like on family vacation, with cameras and all, and some walking around the guest houses, probably only the ones with foreigners, collecting 'donations'. I have to admit, that the pagodas on the beach facing the ocean, make the monk's life look pretty attractive.

The shopping opportunities in this place include many kinds of dried sea food, jewelery made of shells and bamboo strips hats. North from the hotels area there's a rocky area, where poor locals break rocks to build roads, followed by another beach, where there's nothing but coconuts and white sand. Anyway, Chaungtha is definitely not the usual backpackers beach, but is a nice and quiet place after all, with good accommodation and food. There was nothing more to do, except buying souvenirs in Yangon markets, getting the last opportunities for cheap and good Indian food and saying good bye to Myanmar.
Now in Bangkok, spending the last days of this trip...