Mingun
The first time I encountered the LP book for Burma, I was fascinated by the cover.
And this was the closest imitation we could do (obviously, we didn't have zoom lenses).
When we did our research, the Mingun temple wasn't in our original plan. We originally planned on going to Yangon, Bagan and Myanmar, so we researched the temples in these areas and it seemed like this LP cover temple wasn't there.
Good thing I read the chapter right after Mandalay, and discovered that Mingun, the town that had this particular temple.
Though we had doubts and questions going to Mingun at first, because you have to travel by boat from Mandalay, which takes about an hour, and information on how to rent boats in the book weren't so clear. It's as if you can't preplan and book it, and haggle the boat ride when you're there.
Good thing our travel agent was able to fix our boat ride, and included it together with our airline and land transportation requests. And the best thing was, her rate was even cheaper than the published rate in the books.
So when we arrived in Mandalay, we drove to the dock where the boatman met us.
There are actually public boats or boats that you can share with others, but we didn't want that. So we got our own boat, which was actually big.
We even had our own deck, which was really cool.
It kinda felt awkward, especially after seeing some boats that were full and cramped.
Our boat looked something like this:
And then we passed by other boats that looked like this:
So most of the time, we pretended to sleep on our way to Mingun. Haha.
When in Mingun, there are 3 notable places to see.
First is the Mingun Paya, a huge unfinished temple, which could've been the largest in the world.
They stopped constructing the temple, because an astrologer claimed that once the temple was finished, their king would die.
The pictures don't do justice, but the whole structure was really massive!
The whole structure had cracks, thanks to the earthquakes that have come by, the biggest of which was from 1839.
Despite its hazardous state, we still opted to climb up the structure. Gladly, it was already late in the afternoon, so our feet didn't hurt as much. Yes, we were walking barefoot.
But when we got up there, we saw the whole of Mingun. It was a beautiful sight.
And we could see the Hsinphyumae Pagoda in sight! My dream white temple!
The Mingun Temple also had a huge bell, which was then the biggest. Now, Moscow houses the biggest bell.
We even went inside it, and found too much vandalism.
After the bell, it was time to go to Hsinphyumae Pagoda.
Seeing it up close was amazing. It was one of those "I'm actually here" moments. It was eerie too, because it wasn't as busy as the other temples, we were the only ones there that time.
We went up, and went around, and yes, barefoot.
The day being cloudy was actually a blessing, if it were sunny, we probably would have a hard time going up. With temperatures going up to 41 degrees celcius, it would be close to impossible walking the complex barefoot.
This is one of my favorite shots of the temple.
I can just imagine how the stupa was during its days. With monks praying, and people going up and down the steps, it would've been an amazing sight to see and experience.
And on our way back to Mandalay, I think we slept on the boat the whole way, thus, we got our t-shirt tans.