Page 167 - The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

Around MAwlAMyine SoutheaStern MyanMar 165
Nwa La Bo
• Daily during daylight hours; closed during rainy season • Free
High up in the hills 20km north of Mawlamyine, Nwa La Bo – a stack of three slender
gold-covered granite boulders, balanced end to end and crowned with a small pagoda
– stands proudly overlooking the far-off Thanlyin River. From afar, the entire thing
looks a little bit like a gigantic, golden gnome. Despite the fact that its creation
purportedly pre-dates the Golden Rock at Kyaiktiyo, and regardless of its much more
precarious placement, Nwa La Bo is far less revered than its more famous cousin,
mainly because the rocks house less distinguished hair relics. Pilgrim numbers peak
during the pagoda festival held in the second half of the Thingyan water celebration
each year, and at weekends locals come here in greater numbers. There are a few more
outcrops of rock nearby, but the hiking is limited – it’s basically a pleasant, peaceful
place to sit and watch swifts flitting above the shrine.
arrIVaL anD DeParture nWa La Bo
By pick-up Pick-ups to Kyonka village (K1000), at the foot at 11am every day for the top of the mountain (K2000 3
of the mountain, leave when full from outside the market return), leaving from just inside this entrance – unless
on Mawlamyine’s Lower Main Rd. there are enough visitors to fill subsequent trucks, you’re
By motorbike taxi A motorbike taxi to Kyonka costs faced with a long (7km), unshaded walk to the top with no
K5000 for the return trip, and a private taxi to Kyonka is water available en route, although there is a small teahouse
around K25,000 with waiting time. at the top. The 11am truck usually returns to Kyonka around
Kyonka to the summit Once in Kyonka, the entrance to noon or a little after, though it’s best to confirm this with
Nwa La Bo is marked by a golden archway. A truck departs the driver.

Khayone Cave
• Daily 6am–dusk • Free • Hpa-An-bound buses pass the road to the cave, from where it’s a 10min walk
Around 18km northeast of Mawlamyine on the road to Hpa-An, the otherwise flat
landscape suddenly gives way to a single sheer-sided limestone karst hill. At its base is
Khayone Cave. 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 is said to possess a
medium to counsel local women.

PALM WINE AND TODDY TAPPERS
Toddy, or palm wine, is responsible for hangovers everywhere from nigeria to Papua new
Guinea. All over Myanmar, where it’s known as tan-ye, you’ll see spindly bamboo ladders
leading up spiky palmyra palms – a sure sign that a toddy collector is at work nearby. A
collector, also known as a tapper, will fasten a bamboo tube around the cut stem of the tree’s
flowers, and gather the sweet, white sap that drips out. The sap is then left to ferment naturally
for a few hours, producing a cloudy, lightly alcoholic beverage. Sweet and slightly sour, toddy
must be drunk on the day it is produced, before it turns into vinegar. Happily for the toddy
tappers, however, leftover toddy can be evaporated and turned into delicious and exceedingly
addictive lumps of caramel-coloured jaggery, often served at the end of a meal and jokingly
called “Burmese chocolate”.

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