It is built almost entirely of teak, including 147 teak pillars, each 3 feet around.
The soft, worn-smooth floor boards, make you glad that you are barefoot. There are no nails - teak pins hold it together.
There is a bamboo Buddha...
with 1.6 foot ears.
Why the long ears? 1. As a child in India, the Buddha, then prince Siddhartha Gautama, probably had pierced ears with weights on them, a custom of the time (500 bc). 2. Long ears are associated with wisdom and knowledge of all things.
Arching over the Buddha ("Buddha" is a title, not a name, thus "the Buddha"), is a beautiful ceiling.
with many windows for light to affirm his enlightenment.
Across the road from the monastery is a small temple complex, with pagodas from the Bagan era (11th and 12th centuries), with some original stone carving.
Our last image of Hsi Paw was this very determined procession of nuns, perhaps on an alms mission.
Our next stop, several miles from Hsi Paw, was the Baw Kyo Pagoda, which was established in the 13th century.
Inside the glittering exterior pagoda is the original...
less flashy, but more appealing, somehow.
Still, the more modern parts had a distinctive style and beauty.
The inner pagoda contained 4 yellow champak wood statues, three of them a meter high, and this one, inexplicably, a foot high, and so covered with gold leaf its expression is lost, tho one assumes it involves a smile. The obscuring is entirely the fault of male pilgrims - women are not allowed into the interior.
We then set out in earnest for Mandalay, dropping to the bottom of the Gokteik Gorge and up the other side...
on a series of hairpins that were made all the more challenging by the presence of many super-long semis, as well as every other kind of vehicle, including countless motorcycles.
Our intrepid driver patiently worked us through, however, and we pressed on, stopping only for lunch at an open air restaurant in Pyin Oo Lwin, famous for its strawberries that are grown out back...
(we had great yogurt strawberry smoothies), and renowned for its Les Schwab style waiters.
vvvv
We nearly managed to take off without paying when D and I each thought the other had paid, but we woke up before getting back on the highway.
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