Yangon - Shwedagon Paya

The Shwedagon Paya (Pagoda) is the main reason for coming to Yangon. It's a massive complex of temples sitting atop a hill overlooking central Yangon. Sitting on top is a humongous zedi - a bell shaped dome, rising a hundred metres from the platform. It's truly an amazing sight, but it's not the only attraction up there.


The zedi is surrounded by a huge array of other, smaller temples and structure. Each of them has been built as a donation by the great and noble citizens of Myanmar over the centuries. They're all different in size, design and age. Rather than looking like a jumbled mess, the buildings all mesh together to form a coherent piece of religious architecture. Either that, or it’s the Buddhist version of Disneyland.

Approaching the complex is nearly as much fun as the temples. The proper way of doing it is to enter at the southern side. This side has a wonderful arcade of shops leading up the hill. It’s basically a huge covered staircase with shops on both sides. I arrived just as it was raining, so it also gave some protection from the rain. If you’re too lazy to walk up all the stairs, there’s also an elevator that will whisk you to the top without any effort at all. For once, I decided the proper way to do things was through manual exertion.

Being a Buddhist temple, you have to take your shoes off. This applies as soon as you walk onto the shopping arcade area. In addition to taking your shoes off, some nice people come and take some money off you too to store your shoes. That’s in addition to the little urchins who want a donation to give you a plastic bag to put your shoes in. It’s all a bit of a scam, but it is more convenient than carrying your shoes around with you.


Once inside, it’s a bit daunting. There’s just so many temples to look at. They all have their own distinct purpose, are dedicated to something specific and all look different. This is where the guides come in. As soon as you enter, you get mobbed by polite English speaking guys in nicely ironed white shirts. They’re subtle about being a guide. They start telling you some exciting facts, which then leads to them asking if you would like then to show you around. One guy gave me a sob story about wanting all his children to be educated and one is going to be an electrical engineer. I’m sorry, but I don’t do guides. They always seem to drone on and on about nothing in particular to try and justify their existence. Unless the attraction is amazingly complex, I much prefer just to walk around and look at the pretty buildings.

There was one funny guy who kept asking me where I was from. I said “Australia” and then he said “Ahhh, Austria”. I tried to point out that Austria and Australia were actually not the same place. He was not convinced. He was sure I was really from Austria and was just being difficult. I said “Auf Widersehn” and wandered off. Mind you, I’ve heard that a lot of American tourists arriving in Austria expect to see kangaroos and koalas, so perhaps he wasn’t too bad…

The guides are also very keen to point out the significance of pagoda having eight sides. Under the local Buddhist customs, the day you were born on determined your astrological sign, rather than the month or year. As there are eight sides and only seven days in the week, Wednesday gets two days – morning and evening. It’s meant to be auspicious, as the Buddha was born on a Wednesday, apparently.


The guides all carry around little books that list all the dates since year dot and tell you what day it was. I cheated and worked it out using the calendar in my mobile phone. The guides seemed to be very disappointed when I told them I already knew my birth date.

Anyway, once you know your birth day, you find the approach shrine at the base of the zedi, then go and pray or something. You also have the option of pouring water over the Buddha of your birth day if that takes your fancy. It’s all done for a small fee, of course.

The approach I’ve adopted with Burmese temples is to walk around once for a quick orientation, then walk around a second time for a more detailed look. This works well, because all the temples are round! Unfortunately, I kept running into the same guides at the same point each time!


This was the one place in Yangon that I ran into other western tourists. It was quite shocking. I was too used to being the only white guy around. It seemed wrong to run into other tourists. Didn’t they realize that I had booked Burma for this week? It’s my turn to be the only white guy in town! They really should be more considerate and wait their turn! It confused the locals though. They didn’t know which white guy to laugh at.

Just as I was about to finish my second lap, the rain came absolutely slamming down. A proper tropical down pour. I sought refuge in the “Northern Adoration Hall”, which was a pretty hall with a wide roof. I was also joined by a herd of monks, who were very friendly and chatty. At this point, a fun game started. I wanted to get a picture of the monks in their natural habitat wandering the pagoda. Meanwhile, they wanted to get a photo of me whilst I wasn’t looking. There was much giggling involved, mostly from them.

As the rain eased, I wander out for the exit. It looked like it was going to rain for the rest of the day and I didn’t have an umbrella. It was an amazing place to visit and I will be back every night to see the sun set and chase a few more monks.