2007 Biking Burma

Golden Rock pagoda…

From Kyaikto town we took a truck up the mountain to visit Kyaiktiyo pagoda. This is one of Burma’s premier pilgrimage sites and the place was a-buzz with excited visitors.

We walked the last steep km or so along with monks and nuns and ordinary Burmese – men, women and children. A couple of men tried to persuade me to hire them to carry me up the mountain in a bamboo-slung chair, saying: “Mammie heavy. Very mountain. Chair carry.” As always in Asia my size engenders awe and laughter and comment. On our first night in Mandalay a man sat uninvited at our dinner table and told me I was “very fat”. “Overweight” was the considered, one-word verdict of another encountered on a temple staircase. When words fail, hands held rounded some distance apart serve to tell me how big I am (just in case I hadn’t noticed). To this I would respond with hands held about 20cm apart – the size of the hips of the average Burmese (resulting in much laughter). The Burmese are so tiny that many restaurants seat their clients on kindergarten chairs!

Kyaiktiyo pagoda is built atop a precariously-balanced rock, gilded and glowing in the setting or rising sun (we spent the night on the mountain and so saw the rock under both conditions). And the atmosphere is super with shaven nuns chanting and incense and candles burning and people enjoying their packed meals seated on the tiles in which they are clearly reflected.