Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It's a demanding two-hour hike to the summit - up more steps than you'd care to
count, and with aggressive monkeys as constant adversaries - but once at the top
the rewards are staggering views, a small monastery and a stupa containing, yes,
you guessed it, another hair from the buddha. If you arrive at the top before noon
you can take advantage of a complimentary lunch (rice, orange and tea) and the
11am
monkey feeding
- different primates, different menus. The descent down the
east side of the mountain takes around 1½ hours, and from the bottom it's another
2 miles to the main road from where you can catch a pick-up truck back to town.
The whole trek takes roughly six hours or about half a day.
To get to the mountain, there's a pick-up every weekday at 8am, from a
stall
on
Ohn Taw St in Hpa-an, in front of the high school (K500, 30 minutes). You'll be
dropped off at the Zwegabin junction, where it's a 15-minute walk through a village
to the base of the mountain on the west side past hundreds (1150 to be precise -
don't believe us? Get counting!) of identical buddha statues lined up row after row.
Alternatively, a thoun beinor motorcycle taxi from Hpa-an to the base of the moun-
tain should run about K2000. At research time foreigners were not allowed to stay
overnight on Mt Zwegabin.
TOP OF CHAPTER
Myawaddy
058 / POPULATION C50,000
For decades, Myawaddy, located on the Moei River opposite the Thai city of Mae Sot,
alternated between dodgy border town (that is, when the border was actually open) and
intermittent battleground. But with the fighting between the Myanmar army and various
Karen insurgent groups now largely over, and with the 2013 opening of the border os-
tensibly paving the way for Asian Highway 1 (AH1) to be Southeast Asia's first real
transnational conduit, things are set to change for Myawaddy. This said, as of now,
there's still little of interest for most tourists and the town is really only a transit point.
Sights
There's little in terms of visit-worthy sights in Myawaddy. The town's most important
temple is
Shwe Muay Wan Paya
(Dar Tu Kalair St; daylight hours)
, a traditional
bell-shaped stupa gilded with many kilos of gold and topped by more than 1600 precious
and semiprecious gems. Another noted Buddhist temple is
Myikyaungon Paya
(Nat Shin
Naung St;
daylight hours)
, called Wat Don Jarakhe in Thai and named for its
