No Shweat

Our last activity for the first day as a group was to go at 4pm for the sunset time at Shwedagon Pagoda, which is one of the most impressive places in the world.

It is the most holy of the thousands of pagodas in Myanmar, and an incredibly beautiful, and yet slightly disturbing, shrine to Buddha.

The reason I say it is slightly disturbing is that it has a bit of a Disneyland feel to it.  Don’t get me wrong – it is jaw-droppingly beautiful.  We walked around, stunned by the incredible ostentatiousness of it.  It’s also hard to believe you could have such an expensive place in a land with so much poverty (40% poverty rate).

I know I sound conflicted about it, but at the same time to me it blows away the cathedrals of the west (except maybe Gaudi’s cathedral in Barcelona – that’s still the most impressive place I have ever been).  There is no question that if you get the chance to be in Yangon, you have to go.

It took us about an hour to walk around the whole thing (you can do it much quicker, but you need to stop, stare, photograph, wander into smaller pagodas and shrines to Buddha).  The sunlight was magical on the western side of the complex, reflecting off the gold of the very large main pagoda.

There is so much to see and wonder at that words – and even pictures – don’t do it justice.  Carol was a little disappointed that Ye Ye didn’t walk us around, pointing out the different meanings of buildings and carvings, etc., but I understood why – it would have been like herding cats to keep us from wandering off, so instead he gave us 70 minutes and a meeting place to join back up.

I think in an earlier post I had mentioned how important the days of the week are in the Buddhist faith – there are “corners” for each day of the week (two for Wednesday –both morning and afternoon) at the pagoda.  We found each ours – I was born on a Friday which is represented by the guinea pig (but it’s a fierce guinea pig!  And smart too!) – no wonder Honey Passacantando liked me – and Carol was born on a Sunday, which is represented by some weird mythical creature.  (Okay, there is not much you can do to make a guinea pig more impressive – but I will be fine the rest of my life knowing I’m just a guinea pig).

At the shrines, there are Myanmarish (again, a made-up word) praying and pouring water on the small Buddha (apparently you pour one cup per year of your life, so I wouldn’t have had time for 54 cups!).  There were some tourists pouring water as well, but I’m not sure that’s appropriate (Carol felt the same way) so we did not.

I got lucky at one point, because I saw a person with a tripod and filtered lens taking pictures to the west.  I went behind him and saw what he was shooting – a shrine top with the sun behind it.

We met up as a group again and headed off to dinner.  This is a shorter blog than the pagoda deserves, mostly because I’m blown away and speechless.