Monywa

The main reason for visiting Monywa was for another one of Nev’s world wonders, the Bodi Tataung Standing Buddha, the second biggest statue in the world.  The statue was around 20 miles from Monywa.  We arrived in Monywa without any booked accommodation, and the guest house we picked from the lonely planet was fully booked.  We chose another Hotel at random, and without checking the rooms, which ended up being a big mistake, paid for one night.  The room was really grim, opaque gloomy windows cast a dim glow, the bathroom was infested with flies, and the whole room was incredibly dirty.  We initially planned to chill for the day and get adjusted to the new town, but because the room was so bad we decided to escape the gloomy hotel and visit the big Buddha.

We jumped into the Burmese equivalent of a tuk tuk, which is basically a motor bike with a passenger carriage welded onto the back.  We chose possibly the worst tuk tuk in town, it was unfathomably slow.  After chugging along at 15mph, frequently having to jump off at the slightest inclination of a hill while the tuk tuk trundled up passengerless, we arrived an hour and a half later. 

The big Buddha is quite an imposing sight.  It’s on top of a hill and stands nearly 130m, 35 storeys tall.  It can be seen for miles around, and it was cool watching it getting closer and larger the nearer we got to it.  On paper and in photos, it doesn’t look that attractive.  It was only finished a few years ago, and after visiting other modern temples in Burma I thought it was going to look rather cheap and tacky.  I was looking forward to asking Nev, “Why did you put this on your list?”  But I was wrong, it looked good.  Not only is it massive, with a great location, but it was a high quality statue.  It’s been built well, it’s flawless well at least on the outside, and as it’s brand new the paint job looks great, it really dazzles, like a big golden, erm well Buddha, in the sun light.  It was built by a celebrated monk, his life’s work was to build giant Buddhas the length and breadth of Burma.  Unfortunately he died before his last conception was materialised.   He also built a giant reclining Buddha which is situated at the foot of the Big standing one. 

The whole area is a very interesting site made up lots of different pagodas, hundreds of Buddhas - big, small, sitting, standing, reclining, and the newest one being built a giant sleeping Buddha, well one lying down anyway.  There are also loads of additional features, like the army of monk statues collecting alms in procession all the way up the hill.    But the centre point is definitely the biggie standing up.  

It was getting dark, and we noticed that there were spot lights facing the big Buddha.  We decided to hang around until dusk to watch the statue become illuminated.  We found a good spot on the top of a facing Pagoda and stayed until sunset.  It took a while for the Buddha to light up, half the spot lights didn’t come on at all, but it was worth it, it stood out even more, illuminated in the darkness. 

 We decided it was time to set off, we found our tuk tuk driver and hopped in.  He then passed me a torch and asked me to shine it on the road, apparently not only was the tuk tuk slow, but the lights didn’t work.  After holding a torch for nearly an hour, my hand started to get numb and I had to pass it on to Nev for the final leg. 

The next day we woke up and went downstairs for breakfast.  As soon as we sat down, our breakfast was presented to us, it was suspiciously sudden.  In fact it there was nothing suspicious about it, our breakfast consisted of the typical eggs and toast, they’d cooked them up, possibly hours ago, and made no shame of hiding the fact.  It was possibly the worst breakfast I’ve ever had, the eggs were slimy and cold, I didn’t even attempt to eat them, Nev had a wee chew and instantly regretted it.  We checked out as soon as we could and fortunately found a room available at the guesthouse we tried first the previous day.

We then set off for the big Buddha again.  It was nice to visit it a second time, and it looked just as impressive.  You can go inside it, we arrived too late the previous day, and we were glad to find the entrance open when we arrived.  When it’s finished it will be possible to walk all the way to the top, but at the moment it’s a work in progress, every floor is being painted with stories from the Tripitaka, and wooden flooring is being laid down.  It’s only half complete and we could only get half way up.  The mid-lower floors have some unusually grim paintings which seemed to portray the Buddhist hell.  Giant Ogres pound men and women with clubs in some illustrations, in others witches are eating babies, and people are being mashed by giant rolling spiky killing machines.  It was rather weird. 

Not many western tourists go, and when we were walking around inside, we were asked by a Burmese man, who spoke excellent English, if we were Buddhists.  He must have thought we were on a pilgrimage.  We also made some more random photo friends outside the statue, with a few of the locals wanting their photos taken with us.   After a couple of hours we’d had enough and decided to head back for Monywa.

It was a Sunday and there was football on telly.  We’d noticed a Shan restaurant whilst wandering around the previous day, and thought it’d be a great place to watch football and get dinner at the same time.  They did some BBQ food too, so we thought we’d string it out, order some BBQ starters, have a couple of beers and watch the 12:30pm (UK time) kick off, then order the main affair for the 3pm game.  We picked out what we wanted for the BBQ, when it arrived the food was excellent. 
The atmosphere was fun too, the Burmese love their football.  We were rather stuffed after the first course, and only ordered three of the main dishes.  We were used to small bowls of food from our previous experience of Shan restaurants, when the food arrived the portions were triple the size we were used to.  We managed to scoff it all down, the food was really tasty, but it was a struggle.  The restaurant staff leave all the plates on the table so they can figure out what you’ve had and calculate the bill at the end.  When we’d finished, we looked like a couple of fat pigs sat next to a mound of empty plates, it was a bit embarrassing.   

We had another early night and decided to go back to Mandalay the next day.