Golden Rock – Mt Kyaiktiyo
The Golden Rock (also known as Mt Kyaiktiyo) was a 7 hour bus ride from Yangon, followed by a 50min absolutely crazy truck ride. They put rows of wooden benches at the back of an open truck and fit 7 people on each row. We must have been around 50 people in total on this truck. Then it went at an incredible speed up the mountain, people were holding on to each other, bumping into each other at each turn. It was like a roller-coaster! No joke….
Once up this mountain, I must say I wasn’t too thrilled about the golden rock. It’s basically a rock covered in gold that lies on the edge of a cliff, as if it was going to fall down any second. People believe that the rock stays balanced because of a precisely placed Buddha hair in the stupa on top of the rock. It is a major pilgrimage site for Burmese Buddhists and many people dream of going to the Golden Rock at some point in their life. So there is supposed to be a magical atmosphere about this place with the rock floating in the clouds above the coastal plain.
However, when I arrived, it was pouring and there was basically no one else there. It was me and the rock. The visibility was maybe at 25 meters, so there was absolutely no view from the mountain top. On top of that, I wasn’t even allowed to get anywhere close to the rock (there was a big sign “No ladies allowed” in front of it). Hotels were also going to charge me 4-5 times more than anywhere else in Myanmar, which seemed clearly exaggerated for the experience that I was getting. So I decided to look around and stop by at places that seemed like hotels, but had no English sign in front of it. It only took two trials until I found a hotel that accepted me “illegally” for a much more reasonable price. I say illegally, because officially only certain hotels are allowed to host foreigners, the remaining hotels are for Burmese. Many of these Burmese hotels are just as good though, only cheaper, because they don’t need to pay the foreigners’ tax to the government.
Once my hotel situation was resolved, I went back to the rock, but slipped on the wet tiles. It was still raining at this point, and you had to walk bare-feet as soon as you were within a few hundred meters from the rock. My knee and foot started bleeding a lot, but it was just a superficial wound and I was going to simply ignore it and move on. However, four construction workers who were carrying heavy material up and down the mountain immediately dropped everything they were doing to attend to my minor wound. One person brought a bowl of hot water out of nowhere to clean the wound, the other person brought bandages (never mind that I had my own bandages that I kept waving at them…), and yet another person brought a chair and an umbrella. I was basically sitting there, in a state of total disbelief, watching these heavy-duty construction workers make such a fuss about my tiny little insignificant wound. I am just amazed at how much Burmese care about foreigners.
Once the construction workers let me go, I decided I would just sit next to the rock and wait as long as it would take for the weather to clear up. The weather couldn’t possibly be this bad for the whole afternoon. So I ended up sitting there from 2pm till 7pm. It stopped raining pretty quickly, but it remained foggy for the rest of the afternoon. However, every now and then, the sun would come out and and it would clear up for 20-30min. In those moments, I really realized the beauty of this place. The view from the mountain top was incredible and the golden rock was shining in the sun.
In the evening, many more people gathered around the rock, and as it was getting darker the fog made the whole place look very mysterious and enchanting. The sight was breathtaking in its own way. People were hanging bells at the gate around the rock on which they wrote prayers for the future, and men added thin layers of gold to the rock (they were basically sticking incredibly thin layers of gold leaves onto the rock). It felt like a really magical place.
I went back to the rock to see sunrise. Sadly, it was so cloudy that the sunrise wasn’t really visible. However, there were so many people offering full trays of breakfast food to Buddha. They had to pile the trays on top of each other to make them fit. I was quite impressed seeing so many people offering real-world food in an extremely poor country to an abstract entity. I couldn’t stop wondering what was going to happen with the food once breakfast was over. I hope they distributed it to people.
After the whole golden rock experience, I wanted to go back to Yangon and then Bagan on the same day. It was a bit tight in terms of time, so I had to take the Yangon bus by 7am. I asked a guide (one of the few people who speak English), about his bus recommendation. Moments later, he offered me to drive with him and his group of four Thai tourists. I couldn’t believe it, Burmese are just too kind! Here I was, driving in a private AC bus for 7 hours for free. On the way to Yangon, the guide also made all sorts of phone calls to book buses for my onward trip. And of course, at the lunch place we stopped at, he ordered for me. We each had 4-5 different dishes which were by far the best ones I had had in Myanmar so far. What a great way to end my golden rock experience!
See more pictures here.
