A hair of Buddha is said to hold the golden rock and prevent it from falling 1100 meters into the abyss. With a slightly more sober look, one could also say that a petrification between the golden rock and the underlying rock provides stability. So everyone chooses their own story, but the rock is impressive for everyone, whether tourists, monks or hordes of pilgrims. As golden as the rock shines, Buddhism also has its dark sides. Only men are allowed to touch the rock and stick gold plates on it, because women are too "impure".Men sticking gold But we decided not to be too annoyed by this backward thinking, but to take the country as it is and continue wandering through the events.The mood is good, snacks were balanced on trays on the head everywhere, people took a nap on mats on the floor and men carried visitors who were not good on foot in a kind of reclining chair right up to the golden rock (however for a fee, not as an inclusion offer).Chicken foot on skewerBuddhist nunsCrowd at the entrance To get back to the valley from the rock on the mountain, all visitors are crammed together on a truck like sardines. With tangled legs, it goes back to the valley on serpentine roads and at a breakneck speed.Selfie with the other sardines Next stop: Hpa an In this city, where we ended up now, there is a clock tower with an electric clock face, a night market by the lake, a massage parlor where only blind people work, and a hotel where flies lie dead in large families in the hallway.But the most beautiful thing about the city is its surroundings. We drove through the really beautiful surroundings in a tuk-tuk, a motorcycle with an attachment at the back, and stopped at temples built on vertical rocks protruding from the landscape. We visited Buddhas sitting in caves and stopped at skillfully carved sculptures in high cliffs.Carvings in rock wallsPagodas on rocksExcitement about giant fish At lunchtime we ate in a village where there was even a kind of swimming pool. But on that day, we simply forgot everything: flashlight for the caves, sturdy shoes for the mountain, and so our swimming things. But we had our camera with us!City swimming pool with pagoda instead of water mushroom But the most beautiful thing about this trip was the cave that you could walk through and at the other end of which small boats were waiting, which rowed you back outside around the cave. On our trip in one of these boats, we crossed another cave underwater, through which the boat first passed. Then we sailed through narrow channels and between almost kitschy beautiful rice fields. Only my hands disturbed this relaxed atmosphere, which griped the edge of the boat tightly, while our French fellow passenger was in a good mood in the boat.Boats in narrow channels In the evening, our tuk-tuk driver took us to another cave just before dusk, from whose crevice 30,000 bats fly out every day at exactly the same time. When the first ones came out, a few Burmese women called to each other and started tapping on their empty oil cans at a steady pace. With each tap, the whole swarm of bats flew up, turned away from the women, and instead flew in the other direction. Later, our driver told us that if the bats were not redirected by the steady beats in their flight path, they would fly towards the newly built bridge and collide with cars and motorcyclists. That's why the drum women stand there every evening and save many bats and a few people. Our driver tells, of course, about batsSelfie with our fun driver
