Myanmar Religious Places To Visit

 

Myanmar (also known as Burma) is the most religious country in the world in terms of large amount of Buddha Images, Buddha Statues and Buddha true relics, large proportion of Monks (SaYaTaw) and Myanmar people who faith in HtayYaWarDa (ေထရ၀ါဒ).

It is an attractive place to visit for tourists according to the ancient cities with ancient pagodas, the ethnic groups, culture and traditions. It is also an interesting country in political environment because of Aung San Su Kyi, daughter of General Aung San who is father of  Independence of Myanmar, who leads and walk a long way for true Democracy from 1988 till now for Myanmar people . Myanmar is now a Democracy and the government changes political plan towards for growth and development of the nation.

It is also a country with full natural resources such as timber, petroleum, natural gas, hydropower, mines of Ruby and precious stones.

According to the geographical location such as mountain ranges, rivers, forests, lowlands and highlands, the weather is cloudy, rainy, hot and humid in some area and cool, cold, heavy snow and bad weather in some area.

There are many places to visit around Myanmar country, the following religious places are recommended for the foreigners/tourists and visitors to make a visit.

1) Shwedagon Pagoda (ေရႊတိဂံုေစတီေတာ္)

Shwedagon Pagoda, located in Yangon, is the oldest historical pagoda in Myanmar(Burma) and around the world according to more than 2500 existing years. The relics of four Buddha: the water filter of Kakusandha, the robe of Konagamana, the staff of Kassapa and the hairs of Gotama, had been enshrined. The current height is 326 feet above the platform and the perimeter of the base of Pagoda is 1420 feet, the surface is covered with solid gold plates of 8688 at the base part and 13153 at the upper part of Pagoda, the crown or umbrella is tipped with over 5448 diamonds and over 2317 rubies, sapphires and other gems and the diamond bud at the very top is a single-76-caret-diamond.

The most significant religious festivals of Shwedagon Pagoda are :

• Tabaung Festival : On the Full Moon day of Myanmar month Tabaung ( between February-March)
• Myanmar New Year Festival : Known as Thingyan Festival or Water Festival (in April)
• Buddha Day Festival : Known as Kasone Festival on Full Moon day of Myanmar month Kasone(between April-May)
• Waso Festival : At the beginning day of Buddhist Lent of month Waso(in July)
• Thadingyut Festival : At the last day of Buddhist Lent of month Thadingyut(in October)
• Tazaungdaing Festival : Race of Weaving robe for Buddha and Lighting festival(in November)

2) Mahamuni Buddha Images (မဟာျမတ္မုနိဘုရား)

Mahamuni Images, located in Mandalay, is one of the five likenesses of Buddha during his life time. The size of statue is 12.5 ft height, 6.0 ft shoulders and 9.5 ft waist and 5.9 in thick gold coated.

3) Kyite Hte Yoe Pagoda (Golden Rock) (က်ိဳက္ထီး႐ိုးဆံေတာ္ရွင္ေစတီေတာ္)

Kyite Hte Yoe Pagoda is a well known landmark for Mon State and located on the top of KyiteHteyoe hill at the town named Kyite Hto. It is 24 ft height pagoda built on the gold leaves covered rock, 3553 ft above sea level, clinging to the top of the mountain. Buddha’s hair relic is enshrined into it. The most pilgrimage season is from November to December and officially prohibited to visit during raining season.

4) Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda (ေဖာင္ေတာ္ဦးဘုရား)

The pagoda Phaung Daw Oo is located in Inlay lake at the township of Nyaungshwe in southern shan state and five small gilded images of Buddha, which have been covered in gold leaf, are housed in it.

Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda Festival : is one of the famous pagoda festivals in Myanmar. It is 18 days festival starting from 14 days before to 3 days after Full Moon day of Thadingyut according to Myanmar calendar(roughly in between October and November). During this festival the four Buddha images housed in royal barge are ceremonially trip to all villages around the Inlay lake. There are many dance shows  and the attractive one for visitors especially for foreigners is boat race with only one leg rowing.

5) Kyite Kha Mee Pagoda (က်ိဳကၡမီေရလယ္ဘုရား)

Kyite Kha Mee Pagoda is located in the township Kyitekhamee of Mon state. It is situated in water over the sea and two-level walk way is connected to it the upper level is usted during the high tide. According to this pagoda history, the Buddha image on the raft floating from Siri Lanka supposedly attached here in ancient times.

Thank You & Warmly Welcome To Myanmar!