The Shwedagon Pagoda
The Shwedagon Pagoda is located on Sanguttara Hill and the magnificent golden stupa is visible from many parts of Yangon. It is one of the oldest (2500 years old) and most sacred of the Buddhist sites in Myanmar, as it enshrines eight strands of Gautama Buddha's hair and other holy relics from three other Buddhas. Because it contains the relics of four Buddhas who have attained Enlightenment, it is also known as Shwedagon, the Reliquary of the Four.
What started out as a 27 foot (8.2 meters) pagoda, today stands at 326 feet (100 meters) from its base. The pagoda itself is adorned with 27 metric tons of gold plates and thousands of diamonds and precious gems like emeralds, rubies, sapphires and topazes. The orb a the very top houses a 76-carat diamond and we were able to see this using one of the binoculars on site.
We took our time waking around this beautiful pagoda, as there was a lot of other things of interest to see. While walking around the pagoda we saw the eight planetary posts representing the eight days of the week (Wednesday is divided into two), where people come to pray on their birthday. So for example if you were born on a Sunday, you would go to the Sunday post, give offerings and pray.
The entire Shwedagon Pagoda complex was amazing and this main bell-shaped pagoda/stupa is one of the most spectacular, impressive and beautiful stupas we have seen during our travels in Asia and this alone was well worth the visit to Myanmar.
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