I don't know about where you live, but here in Brazil, Myanmar isn't really a popular destination. So how did I end up going there?
So, believe me or not, this was one of the only times that we decided to plan our travel with an agency (which trust me, you can do what they do) and when we arrived at the place to talk to them, there was a beautiful picture from Myanmar. Right there and then I realised it was a place I wanted to go to, although I knew very little about it.
So I got home and searched for Myanmar and thought it seamed amazing and it was a done deal, it was included in our plans for our next trip.
When we finally got there we got to explore a few different places, so first we went to Mandalay, and let me tell you, I had never seen anywhere like it. Pretty much the whole city is dedicated to their religion, buddhism.
Our first stop was a place where the statues were made. So first, they would make a mold out of clay, with so many different sizes and shapes, but most of them were meant to be Buddha's, then when it was dry, they would turn it upside down and fill it with copper. When the copper was dry and cold, they would remove it from the mold and polish it.
Our second stop was to see the place where they made gold leaves to cover the buddhas and pagodas. It is a long, hard proccess, the gold was put in a kind of bag, then hit hundreds of times so it would get thinner and thinner until it looked like what we are used to seeing.
The last stop was to see how lacquering was done. The base object is made out of thin layers of wood, it is first sealed with a layer of lacquer and then put to dry for about three to five days. Then, it is polished so it's surface is smooth to apply the second coating of lacquer and put to dry once more. The third coating of lacquer is done by mixing lacquer with fine clay in order to get smooth lacquer surface. Then the object is coated with a lot of layers of pure lacquer. The craziest part is that the whole process can take from six to ten months, so long! As a final proccess, the object is dry polished and drawn onto to make it look prettier.
Of course, after all of that we went to a few temples as well. In all of them you have to be barefoot to go in. Around the city, it is very commom to see wooden things that look like trees with a lot of objects like soaps, toothbrushes, food and more hanging on them, it is the way people usually donate to the monks.
After Mandalay, we went to Bagan and it was there that I truly fell in love with Myanmar. Centuries ago, around the 1200s, Bagan had over 10 thousand temples and pagodas built. With time and weather, most of them were distroied, but there still are over 2 thousand of them. They are mostly built with bricks and the look of the city, with this many, is unique and beautiful.
The best part of the trip was going on a hot air balloon flight and being able to see these wonders from above.
To top this incredible city, we watched the sunset from a little hill and it did not disappoint, at all!
Our last city was Yangon, a huge, hustle city, the biggest in Myanmar, filled with skyscrappers and pagodas.
We visited the Shwedagon pagoda, that was packed! It is huge, has different colors and styles and SO much gold. There, we learned that people would donate pretty much all their gold to the pagoda, including their rings, so a part of it was made out of these rings.
If you ever wonder whether you should or not go to Myanmar, do it! There is just so much to see and a the culture is very different from ours, where everything revolves around religion. It really is incredible.
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