Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Around 18km northeast of Mawlamyine on the road to Hpa-An, the otherwise flat landscape
suddenlygiveswaytoasinglesheer-sidedlimestonekarsthill.Atitsbaseis
KhayoneCave
.
There are two small cave systems here, one reached by a road lined with a picturesque queue
of life-sized monk statues, the other reached by a straight access road; the main cave is at the
end of the latter.
While Khayone Cave is nominally Buddhist, arrive around 7-9am and you will coincide
with the crowds of locals who come to pray to the local
nats
whose images stand alongside
rows of golden Buddhas. Inside the entrance is the statue of a
zawgyi,
which visitors rub in
the hope of driving away sickness; nearby is the effigy of an education-promoting
nat
riding
on a
hamsa
, where students leave hopeful bunches of flowers before their exams. Like a sort
of cave-bound clinic, Khayone is also the site of faith-healing sessions and regular morning
seances, during which one of the three
nats
depicted sitting in a row by the cave's exit pos-
sesses a medium, and local women wait patiently for its counsel.
Win Sein Taw Ya
Daily 7am-dusk • Free • Take a bus or pick-up towards Thanbyuzayat from outside the market on Mawlamy-
ine's Lower Main Rd, and get off at Win Sein Taw Ya (hourly; 40min) - the junction marked by a golden gate-
way topped with two large cranes - from where it's a 2km walk to the Buddha
Evenifyou'vevisitedenoughrecliningBuddhastolastalifetime,domaketimetovisit
Win
SeinTawYa
,which lounges across a series ofhillsides 22km south ofMawlamyine en route
to Mudon. The eight floors inside this 180m-long reclining Buddha figure are neither com-
pletenorstructurallysound(someofthestairwellsonthethreefloorsopentothepublichave
chalk crosses on the walls to indicate that they're not safe for public use), but it's still fascin-
atingtowanderamongtheunfinisheddioramasofBuddhisthells(thewomenbeingpunished
inexplicably wearing jeans shorts) or scenes from Jataka stories that fill the giant concrete
shell.
Theninety-something-year-oldmonkwhodreamtupthisbizarreprojectisbusysupervising
construction of an even larger statue on the opposite side of the narrow valley, which will be
even larger, if it's ever finished.
Thanbyuzayat
Buses to Thanbyuzayat (hourly 6am-4pm; 2hr) run from Lower Main Rd beside Mawlamyine's market
THANBYUZAYAT
, 64km south of Mawlamyine, was the end point of World War II's in-
famous
“Death Railway”
,
constructed by the Japanese using forced labour at appalling hu-
man cost. Some 1.5km south of Thanbyuzayat's clocktower, a
steam locomotive
(painted
with the Myanmar Railways insignia) sits on a section of track to commemorate the railway.
