Ngar Htat Gyi , Chauk Htat Gyi, Maha Kyein Payagyi @ Yangon- Day 1

After lunch , Uncle Chen asked us where do we want to go to as we still have some time before catching our bus at 7pm to Bagan, we asked  if it is possible to get to the reclining Buddha ( Chauk Htat Gyi) and Uncle Chen said yes and got us a taxi and off we went. We did not have to pay entrance fee to get into Chauk Htat Gyi, Uncle Chen explained that ‘Chauk’ mean Six and Htat mean level or storey.

The reclining Budda was huge and  I do not often see such a handsome and charming looking Buddha statue..

It wasn’t  easy to take a picture of the complete statue from the front  because of the sheer size of is as well as the beams and columns that obstructed the view. Luckily there was a raised platform  that allowed us to take a ‘whole’ image, check out the size of this …This is the largest reclining Buddha statue in Myanmar

Extracted from : http://www.myanmars.net/myanmar-travel/myanmar-yangon/chaukhtatgyi-pagoda.htm

Work on this image started in 1899, the donor named U Hpo Thar being fired by his ambition to make it a model edifice not only in this country but in the whole world as well. By 1907, the image of the Buddha half reclining on a royal couch on his flank, one hand propping up his upper torso was completed. From afar one might have mistaken it for an image in the seated posture.

The image then had a length of 195 feet (59.28m) and a height of 100 feet (30.4m) from the surface of the couch to the halo round the head with the height of the couch itself 5 feet 6 inches above the platform. Extensive reconstruction completed in 1973 extended the length of the image to 216 feet (65.85m) with the height of the couch however, reduced to 4 feet (1.22m). Originally the axis of the head turned towards the west and the visage faced the south, but the reconstructed image has the head aligned towards the east and the visage facing north.

There are 108 marks on both the soles of the Buddha statue

And from the plague, i learn that the marks represent the three worlds. 1- 59 indicating the inanimate world (Okasaloka) 2- 21 indicating the animate world (Sattaloka) and 3- 28 indicating the world of the Conditioned (Sankharaloka), clicked on this http://www.myanmars.net/myanmar-museum/buddha-footprint.htm to find out more about the description of the marks.  

At this time we did a time checked and again the clocks were a bit behind the time shown on our ‘adjusted’ watches, Myself and AhPhenng being pretty insistent so far that our watches were correct and any other time piece showing other time were wrong. Thennnn…we realised ( after half a day) that Myanmar is 1.30 hours behind KL time…and not 1 hour as our ‘adjusted’ watch…..tsk tsk tsk.

A rather cute looking Buddha statue and the offerings of flowers and water , the image  looked really minute compared to the reclining Buddha ( you can see part of the soles)

We exit Chauk Htat Gyi and Uncle Chen guide us to cross the road and Voila, we were at Ngar Htat Gyi Pagoda

Foreigners had to pay an entrance fee before entering  Ngar Htat Gyi. We had to do some fluid adjustment and the lady at the counter so kindly took us to the washroom, the washroom were kept under lock and key- with  shiny new spick and span flush toilet..we were greatly impressed, we wanted to wash our hands but found that the taps were dry,  kind lady had to take us  to another area, this  was a large shed with a few planks of wood for flooring and a cemented ‘pool’ of water, we later learn that this was the washroom for the locals..oh..err…

We walked back to the main shrine, and saw these fans hanging from the ceiling – look closely, the fans was made from lots of Kyats ! These are donations from the devotees, these are different from the thai temples back home where the donation money are usually ‘pasted’ on branches to make a tree-liked structure ( click here )

Uncle Chen told us that ‘Ngar’ mean Five- so this is a five level/ storey structure compared to Chauk Htat Gyi which is six level/storey . From the WWW, I found that this method of qualifying temples by levels/ storeys seemed to be a development which began during the second Innwa period ( also known as  Ava period , which was 14^th – 16^th century )

The Buddha Image at Nhar Htat Gyi has intricate looking objects protruding from his head, shoulder and arms- these are called ‘magites’. And there were more ornaments worn across the robes.

Another version of the special markings on the soles of the Buddha’s feet

A large bell

A combination of statues and painting which create an interesting illusion..

We exit Ghar Htat Gyi and this being mainly a blog about food , I won’t be able to complete a posting without a picture of food , so here it is, this stall was set out just outside the gate of the temple..grilled ladies fingers, deep fried tau kwa ( hard tofu), grilled hard boiled egg, something that looked like fish balls ( ?) and dunno what those black thingies were.

Uncle Chen stopped a taxi for us, and told the driver to send us to the bus station, we said our good byes and thanked Uncle Chen for his kindness- his reply was that it gives him great pleasure to show the temples to people that are interested to visit temples, this also gave him the opportunity to gain some merits as well as fill up his free time. There is still hope ..there are good people in this world …well, in Myanmar anyway! Thank you so much Uncle Chen. You are a gem and so much more..

On the way to the bus station , whenever we see any interesting buildings, we will be totally excitable and point to it and asked the driver the name of the building, sometimes we understand him and sometimes not and I think this was mutual lah….suddenly he asked ‘ you want see temple, free no need money’ ..we weren’t sure about the timing  and asked him do we have the time, Mr Driver didn’t say anything and we started to see some familiar landmarks that indicated that we were on the right route to the bus station..oh..well..look like we are going to the bus station …then after a few turns , we found that we were in front of the golden gate of the temple and Mr Driver stopped the car and then told us that we could leave our shoes in the car..we got out of the car and saw this…Woooww Weeeee…

This temple was not named in the guidebooks that we have been referring to , when writing this piece I was looking up the WWW for a name of the temple and found this website http://www.adit-htan.org/projects.htm and I hope that the name –  Maha Kyein Payagyi is correct. At this site, you can also have a look at the picture of the statue while it was going through construction.

The statue looked completed but most of the structures surrounding the four sides of the large sitting Buddha are still being  constructed .

This sitting Buddha has a height of 129 feet and 6 inches .The location of the temple is at Thu-nan-dar street, (Ta-talin-gyat) Ward, North Okkalapa township

Intricate arch of  the entrance / exit of the temple

Outside the temple, there were ladies selling flowers for offerings, these flowers had a pleasant fragrant

Apart for offerings, there was also a van with the young lady selling lottery

Myanmar Day 1 : Shwedagon Pagoda @ Yangon, Myanmar

I was in Myanmar for a holiday…

To start from the beginning, a few months back, out of the blue, I received an e-mail from Chunny and AhPhenngg : W.Hoong and myself  have booked AirAsia tickets to Myanmar from 19^th Dec to 5^th Jan, would both of you like to join us ? My initial reaction was , aiya… work commitments, family commitments, budgetary commitments, time …oh..pening kepala,  i don’t want to think about it. Then came October and oh..ok..time to re-look at this, phone calls were made, and Yes !! Let’s go to Myanmar! But maybe not for such a long trip, we decided that we will be able to make it from 19^th – 26^th Dec..Yes, everyone can fly…

On the 19^th, had to get up early as the flight from KL to Yangon was at 6:55am, which meant having to be at LCCT by 5:30 ( I  didn’t have any luggage to check in), and also meant that I  have to leave the house by around 4:30am, which meant having to wake up a bit before 4a.m…Zzzzzzzz…was this really a holiday ?

On board AK1424, flight time for KL to Yangon is 2 hours and 35minutes. Seated next to us was a Myanmar fella who spoke some English (and we later found to speak some Malay as well) , he worked in Sibu, Sarawak for 2 years and he was returning home to see his Mama. When asked what did he buy for his Mama, he said Batik  ! According to our new friend, Malaysian or Indonesian batik is expensive in Yangon, so this was a good present for his Mama…

Disembarked and we were very impressed with the Yangon International Airport`s arrival hall.  http://www.ygnia.com/ but not so impressed with the immigration…the queues were rather long, Chunny was trying to sync her watch with the local time , earlier on board when the pilot announced the local time, he mentioned that Yangon`s  time was 1 hour behind KL`s, so we all scoffed at the clock at the immigration hall which was showing 9:20 , whereby  my adjusted watch was already at 9:50am, clocks that didn’t run on time is not just a Malaysian thing lah ! while in queue, we struck up a conversation with a fellow Malaysian lady who was carrying a large knapsack and seemed to be a lone traveler, She would be traveling alone around Myanmar for 20 days and have been backpacking solo in many many countries..very challenging and brave…I declared this lady as my new hero, I tabik you !

The toilets at the airport were sparklingly clean- Malaysians  should learn something here !

Sorry, no pictures to show yet….please bear with my ramblings…

After getting our luggage, before leaving the arrival hall, we spotted the foreign exchange counter and we changed our crisp new US Dollar ( it was mentioned in forums and guide books to bring crisp , un-torn, unlined US dollars and only notes issued after 2006 are accepted)  for some Kyats ( pronounced as ‘chats’), the rate was   1 USD to 848 Kyats, I changed USD300 and in returned received 254,400kyats…I felt very rich  …

Got our luggage x-rayed before leaving the arrival hall, and outside the arrival hall, it was like a marketplace, everyone was hassling us to get on their taxis. Our plan was : try to get the bus ticket from Yangon > Bagan on that same day, and if not possible, we would spent the night in Yangon and leave for Bagan the next day. We saw a face that we liked (and who seemed to speak better English than the others) and pulled the young man aside to negotiate the fare. His family name was Lin and we told him our plans and he suggested that he take us to the ‘highway bus station’ to get the tickets  for 8000Kyats and after some haggling, smiles and shoulder pats- we got that down to 7000kyats. W.Hoong  seemed pretty impressed with our bargaining  skills…

Lin is a part time taxi driver and a second year Uni Student majoring in Maths, his Dad is Chinese, they sometimes celebrate ‘kongxi fa chai’ – meaning Chinese New Year. En route to the town area- there were peddlers offering the newly enacted Act, 2013 Ang San Su Kyi’s calendar –with pictures of her taken with President Obama and other head of states.

When we arrived at the bus station, Lin asked around for the bus services to Bagan,  and we finally got to the right bus operators. We were worried about the condition of the bus (quite a number of fright stories from the online forums) and the bus operators let us board the bus to inspect the condition – the bus was in pretty new condition and the seats looked comfortable . Sold ! The tickets were priced at 15,000K (a bit more than RM50) from Yangon > Bagan. The bus would leave the station at 8 :00 pm and arrived at Bagan the next day at about  4 to 5 a.m.

The bus operator allowed us to leave our luggage at their office and we challenged their hospitality further by asking them if we could make some calls. They obliged and W.H called the guesthouse at Yangon to cancel our pre-booked rooms for that night. And again imposed on them that we want to make a call to Bagan to re-confirmed our rooms. There were some vigorous ‘No’ all around but when we suggested that we pay for the call, one of the guys took out his iPhone and allowed us to make the call to Bagan – which he later didn’t charged  us… Ah..you nice chappie you…

We had a few hours to kill, so we decided that we would tour Yangon and asked Lin to drop us off at Shwedagon Pagoda, that cost us another 8000K, which we decided not to negotiate as Lin had been patient and kind to wait for us while we settled the bus tickets. So, our suggestion is > to cut taxi costs – don’t bother to get the tickets at the bus station but get it downtown , you might have to pay a bit more for the bus tickets, but it will work out to be cheaper than having to pay for the taxi fare to the bus station.

At the grounds of Shwedagon Pagoda, it was nearing lunch time and we were feeling a bit hungry so we decided to explore around the area before entering the pagoda to see if we could find something for lunch.. We saw an astrologer, with his/her tagline – ‘a face may lie but a palm will not’…but i wonder, would an astrologer lie ?

There were many stalls selling wood carvings,  statues, calendars  and souvenirs items

A stall  selling offerings – bananas and coconuts

A stall selling betel nut chew 

The charges for a meal seemed rather steeped around the Shwedagon temple area so we decided to chew on biscuits and leftover bread for the time being…

And we stepped into the sun and the Magnificent  Shwedagon Pagoda…

We decide to conserve energy by using the elevator to get into the temple rather than taking the stairs…and as we do not want to ‘tie’ ourselves into having to leave the pagoda using the same gate, we decide to carry our shoes along ( suggestion : carry a shoe bag, plastic bags etc for this purpose). The entrance fee for foreigners to Shwedagon are USD5 / pax and if you retain the sticker , you can come in again within the same day without having to pay the entrance fee again . We were  also given  a card with pin code for Myanmar Hotspot – free wifi!

We entered Shwedagon through the north gate .

Shwedagon was as magnificent as I remembered it ( this was my second trip to Myanmar and my third visit to Shwedagon).

There were so much to Oohh and Ahhhhh over and we had merely moved a few meters from the entrance

This was our first day in Myamnar and everytime we see the monks walking passed , it seemed like an auto-reflex to take some pixs.

You can read about  Shwedagon Pagoda here  http://www.shwedagonpagoda.com/ and here  http://www.shwedagon.org/index.php.  The information on my ticket stub says : the origin of Shwedagon Pagoda materialized in brilliant epoch in Buddhist history over 2,500 years ago. In India, Prince Siddahartha had just attained Buddhahood when he was visited by two brothers, Tapussa and Bhallika, merchants from Myanmar who offered a gift of honey cakes, in return, the Buddha personally removed 8 hairs from his head and gave these to the two brothers for enshrinement in their native town of Okkalapa, which is now the city of Yangon. On their return, the two brothers presented the Buddha’s hair to the King of Okkalapa who erected the pagoda and enshrined the eight hairs together with the relices of the previous three Buddhas. The original height of the pagoda was 66 feet. From the 14^th century onward successive monarchs in Myanmar rebuilt or reguilded it until Shwedagon reached its present height of 326 feet. 

There were some renovations going on around the Pagoda- i.e. some of the smaller structures around the pagoda  were covered up with attap mats

Below is the picture taken during my last visit in 2006 – without the mats/ covers

On the topmost of the Pagoda is the Diamond Orb with 4351 diamonds weighing 1,800 carats, the vane which with a length of 130cm and weigh 419kg, the umbrella  or ‘Hti’ with a height of 13 meters , and a total weight of 5 tons, out of which 500kg is gold.

It was interesting to find that the temple seemed to be a place that has assimilated into ones’ daily life…for instance meals were being had at the shrine halls

Err…one could even have a nap alongside the reclining Buddha..i wonder will this resting gentleman have holy dreams ?

And some weird tourist doing jumping jacks at the holy site..One other interesting fact I learnt was that, unlike tiles, marble flooring are real cooling even under the hot sun….what kindness to the feet under the scorching mid day sun ..

Offerings of candles ..

Drinking water were available all over the place and some of the vessels were rather cute

Golden opulence at every corner

Look up and you will see intricate carvings at the wooden columns

At the smaller shrines we saw devotees ‘bathing’ the statues of the Buddha and a rodent-liked animal at the bottom of the shrine, we observed what they were doing closely so that we do not offend anyone when we make the same attempt. We tried to count the number of times they bath the statue of the Buddha before they shower the rodent, but then some show the rodent before the Buddha, and another lady used three silver mugs at the same time instead of one..Grr…we lost count and gave up..

And  I did it my way……with humility and respect

NB: only afterwards did we learn that there was a specific animal for the  day that you were born,  and you were suppose to ‘bath’ the animal that represent the day that you were born in. I checked and I was born on a Thursday , and I ‘bathed’ the right symbol- a rat….Sunday is represented by the garuda, Monday –tiger, Tuesday – lion, Wednesday a.m – tusked elephant, Wednesday p.m- tuskless elephant, Thursday –rat, Friday – guinea pig and Saturday – naga

Novices taking a rest ..

Being loud Malaysians, our conversation were heard by an Uncle who was resting at one of the halls, he heard us conversing in Mandarin and asked us where we were from. We got to talking and found out that Uncle Chen origin was from Guangdong Taishan ! His Dad was a kuomingtang member and he migrated from China to Myanmar, we chatted for a bit and asked Uncle Chen does he know where we can get some decent lunch..and Uncle Chen offered to take us there. We left the golden  Shwedagon through the South gate

The South gate exit led us though a busy road , this stall was selling sparrows to be ‘set-free’ to gain you some merits

And we were still enthralled by the number of monks and novices we see on the streets

A stall selling fried snacks – some looked like samosa, spring roll and corn fritters.

The ‘public’ telephone service ..well, not many people have phones at home..

Took a last glimpse of Shwedagon

We walked and walked..i was at this point ready to faint from hydration and hunger but Uncle Chen walked on and on, probably trying to find a more suitable eating place for us..and finally!! After I think more than 20 minutes of walking, we got to a eatery..and saw a variety of dishes to choose from…fish, pork, chicken, mutton, brinjals, potatoes..macam-macam pun ada

We selected stewed pork, fish with capsicum and chili , fried brinjal to go with rice, and we were provided with two plates of  vegetables – one being raw vegetable consisting of cabbages, cucumber , chili padi and pegaga leaves , and the other was blanched vegetables including bean sprouts and some leafy vegetables. Oh, and soup was also provided. The soup was a sour soup ( kinda like the ones I tasted in Vietnam) and quite delicious- we had a few re-fills . The rest of the dishes weren’t too bad too..the cooking style would not be unlike the regular Chinese food with tauchue ( fermented soya beans), soy sauce and fish sauce. The meal below cost us 4,000K ( ~RM15)

While we were pigging out, a group of nuns came buy to collect alms and the girls at the shop offered the nuns scoops of uncooked rice.

I really liked the warm smiles of the girls from our makan shop in this picture..