Yesterday
was yet another day for us to remember always. It was really a memorable time
visiting one of Myanmar’s most important pilgrimage sites, which includes the second
tallest Buddha Statue in the world, the largest reclining Buddha images in the Country,
the park with more than 1000 Buddha statues each under a Bodhi Tree and the
amazing Thanbodday Pagoda with its more than 500,000 Buddha statues. Actually, Monywa
is just one of many Burmese cities, but these mentioned three special places will
certainly raise your eyebrows.
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| The Beautiful and elegant standing and reclining Buddha statues. |
Starting our
journey at 4:00am in the morning, we drove straight to the Bodhi-Tathaung,
which houses the largest standing Buddha in the world, Laykyun Setkyar, at 127
m in height and nearby is the largest reclining Buddha image in Myanmar, at
100m long and 27m high. One can see them from miles away, and it is impressive
to watch them get bigger and bigger as you draw closer and closer. Both the images
are hollow. In the standing one, we can climb almost to the top floor (6-7
floors not finished yet). We passed through beautiful colors and paintings climbing
higher and higher… We went up to the 27th floor (there is 33 floors and the
last five was not accessible) barefoot. As it is the month of April and the temperature
outside was very much high and you can only imagine how the situation would be inside
and that too climbing up to 27 floor with stairs (No lift). A giant sitting
Buddha statue is also in the process of building very near to it...
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| The Thousand Buddha’s statues each under the sacred Bodhi trees |
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The Thousand Buddha’s statues each under the sacred Bodhi trees
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Not far from
the giant Buddha statues, there is an ancient park with thousands Buddha's
statues under the sacred Bodhi trees, Being able to enjoy a one-thousand Bodhi trees
with Buddha images together in one place within one’s eyesight is a moment which
will never fades away and from there we can see the elegant standing and
reclining Buddha statues as well. |
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| View of Thanboddhay Pagoda |
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| Front view of Thanboddhay Pagoda |
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| A Closer view of Thanboddhay Pagoda |
After that,
we visited the Thanboddhay Pagoda, a huge temple covered with more than half a
million Buddha images from big down to tiny! Every inch of the structure,
exterior as well as interior, is covered with these Buddha images. There are many
big statues, but the majorities are little statues decorates every wall,
archway and niche of the temple. They are not all immediately obvious, but when
you start looking more closely, you can see the small white statues everywhere.
We arrived
back around 10:30 am and after having lunch, every one of us had a good rest
after the long, tiring but memorable visit to Monywa.
Picture Source: Internet
