Perched on a Strand of Buddha's Hair

Picture from Wikipedia--The boulder is covered with gold leaves adorned by devotees.  Read more about this amazing pagoda and its mythical story by clicking HERE.

From my parents in Myanmar:

I just heard a gecko revving up with his obnoxious call, kind of gargling at the first and then going into a loud, nasal geck-ooo, gecko; took me right back to our early days at Kamalganj. Inside our room we have a little tik tik lizard who chirrups occasionally. We traveled north from Yangon today to Mon State and got here a couple hours ago; I expected to drive up to a little hotel downtown on the main street, but instead we pulled up to an incredibly lovely “resort” in the middle of lush trees and flowers. We had driven through mile after mile of rubber plantations, and suddenly pulled into this wonderland. 

Driving up to the resort, we drove through rubber trees, rows of papayas, lemon trees, and interestingly, pan vines…the leaves they wrap betal nuts in. The pan leaves and the nuts are slightly narcotic and a hot item all throughout Asia. The dining area is a large open veranda with a teak floor…you leave your shoes before stepping onto it. It is surrounded by bougainvillea, frangipani trees, banana plants and coconut trees with orchids growing out of their bark. The air is dense with sweet smells and almost dizzyingly exotic. The hotel isn’t what you’d think of as a 5 star place; the rooms are semi-attached at the top of the hill, each with a sweet little veranda with two heavy wooden chairs, where we sat and watched the wind rustle the coconut palms for as long as we dared as darkness fell (it’s a malarial area). Our room has a small airconditioning unit that barely cools the room, two dim lights and no mosquito nets . There is a TV but no reception.

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Now it’s Monday afternoon. We ate fried rice and egg for breakfast and took off by 6:30 a.m. to see the local attraction; it’s a big one. The Kyaikhtiyo pagoda rests on an unlikely foundation; an unwieldy rock balanced crazily upon another rock on top of a mountain. It is at this site that Buddhism came into Burma, and it is their most revered site. To get there, you leave your car at the foot of the mountain, climb a wooden platform onto a flatbed truck fitted out with two x four benches, each about five inches wide, jammed in at one foot intervals. After jamming every single person that can possibly sit on this arrangement--Meredith was sitting with his legs splayed out because there simply wasn’t enough space between benches to accommodate his legs--the truck lurched off up the mountain.

It was a crazy, amusement park kind of ride for the next 25 minutes, the truck went as fast as it could around hairpin turns, bouncing over potholes and careening from side to side. Everyone in the back of the open truck gripped the person next to them, braced to offset the current turn as one collective body, a strategy that was pretty good except when we hit a pot hole everyone bounced into the air and came crashing down into new formations. Meredith was holding on to the low rail as he was on the outside and I was clinging to his leg so I wouldn’t smash the old man behind me. It was a very entertaining ride and incredibly beautiful, reminding me of the pictures I have seen of the heavy forests in Rwanda, with mist coming off the hills. I almost expected to see gorillas coming out of the trees.

When we got to the end of the line, there was still close to a mile to hike up a very steep incline that zigzagged to the top. We could see the golden pagoda in the distance and knew we had better get going, as it was only going to get hotter. I think that I was about as hot as I can ever remember being. To our astonishment, there were curious contraptions right out of old, old pictures; a reclining bamboo chair on two bamboo poles, carried by 4 porters. There were plenty of them and one attached itself to us, asking if we would like to ride. We declined repeatedly, but they patiently and discretely walked behind us, much like vultures who knew we would fall eventually. It was so hot and steep, the air so thick that we were streaming with perspiration, I in my long skirt that was prerequisite for this area.

Your dad takes blood pressure medicine that dehydrates him when he is in the sun, and it was clear that this was not going anywhere good. He began to get nauseous and dizzy and his vision was swimming. (it was about a constant 30-40 degree incline on a concrete road in the full sun with little shade. The temperature was probably in the mid-80’s as we began and became hotter as the day wore on.   Dad really did not want to get into one of those chairs, but finally I persuaded him…I was afraid he was going to have heat stroke. He finally gave in and I DID NOT MAKE A JOKE OUT OF IT because he felt really bad. A staff member with us said she couldn’t go on and we finally persuaded her to take a chair as well. That left me, the government doctor and the driver and we took it carefully to the top.

There were lots of fancy buildings, one honoring the goddess who is believed to be looking after the mountain, and the pagoda, which is believed to be 2000 years old.

When we all got to the bottom again around 11:30, we bought drinks and expected to be able to get on the truck and return to our car, but it turned out that the truck only went when it got full. So there we waited for nearly two hours.

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Mom and Dad finally got back to their rooms, where they drank water all afternoon.