Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Phra Ouk and Mong Khong Shwetu
Open access 24hr • Entry covered by main temple ticket
Set atop a small hillock next to the road, the pint-sized
Phra Ouk Paya
is said to have been
erected as a talisman by King Phalaung in 1571 when warned of external threats against his
kingdom. The building comprises an unusually shaped, angular little brick stupa-shrine, with
a disproportionately large stone doorway (probably a later addition) and a chain of Buddhas
set in niches around the base, looking out in all directions over the surrounding countryside,
perhaps in order to face off approaching invaders.
The
Mong Khong Shwetu Paya
(1629) on the opposite side of the road is a good example
of Mrauk U's later style, with a tall and elegant sandstone stupa (although parts of the stone-
work are beginning to sag with age) topped with a distinctive star-shaped finial and finely
carved double niches arranged around each of its four sides.
Pizidaung Paya
Open access 24hr • Entry covered by main temple ticket
The
Pizidaung Paya
is said to contain a testicle (
pizi
) relic of the Buddha - although this
sounds suspiciously like another Burmese cock-and-bull story, and the site's main attraction
is its gorgeous view of the nearby Kothaung. There's not much left of the temple itself, situ-
ated on a hillock right next to the road junction but surprisingly easy to miss. Much of the
shrine has collapsed, leaving one Buddha sitting lone and proud at the top of the hill, with
four more Buddhas seated in the remains of the ambulatory below, also now open to the sky.
Kothaung Paya
Daily 7am-5.30pm • Entry covered by main temple ticket
Built between 1554 and 1556, the gigantic
KothaungPaya
is the result of a piece of shame-
less one-upmanship by King Dikkha, who ordered a building large enough to store 90,000
(
kothaung
) Buddha images, just that little bit bigger than his father King Minbin's landmark
temple, which could hold just 80,000 (
shittaung
). Dikkha's vainglory did him little good: he
reigned just three years and his vast temple fell rapidly to pieces (its marshy location causing
the foundations to subside) and had to be meticulously put back together again in a massive
restoration programme starting in 1997.
Even by Mrauk U's outlandish standards it's a singularly strange structure, looking like
some kind of huge Buddhist bomb shelter, its stepped sides stacked with hundreds of mini-
stupas. There's nothing else like it in Myanmar, although it does bear a certain (probably for-
tuitous) resemblance to the great stupa-mountain of Borobodur in Java.
Entrance is from the east. Inside the walls (which are sandstone on the outside, and faced
with brick within), most of the temple is actually open, split on two levels, with corridors,
now largely roofless, around each level and a large stupa on the higher section. The
outer
corridor
(on the lower level) is particularly fine, its walls finely carved with thousands of
