After a 14 1/2 hour bus ride I finally arrived in Hpa-an (pronounced Pa-an) I get seriously car sick so I am blessed with my body Shutt...

Beautiful Hpa An

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 After a 14 1/2 hour bus ride I finally arrived in Hpa-an (pronounced Pa-an) I get seriously car sick so I am blessed with my body Shutting down on busses so I slept like a baby for 14 hours! 

I stayed at Soe Brothers and it seemed like all the tourists stayed there so it was really easy to meet people and book their tours.


The first day I relaxed a little and then I rented a bike and went for a stroll around town.



Once I came back I was texting with my friend Remy from Belgium and he said I should do the Bat Cave tour since it was pretty awesome. I quickly went to reception and booked the tour for that afternoon. I got picked up and went to the cave with 3 other girls. I had no idea what the Bat Cave was and I thought it would be just another cave with Buddhas but it actually was a cave with hundreds of thousands of bats in it and at sunrise they all come out.

We sat and waited for the bats, we all had our cameras ready because we thought it would last 30 seconds with thousands of bats coming out. We were so wrong! Bats went out of the caves for a good 15-20 mins, there were at least 10 times more bats than people at Trump’s inauguration! It was just mind blowing! It was one of the craziest things I’ve seen!

Of course we get to pay!

View from the top of the caves!

All those specs are bats!



Hpa-An is the city of Caves so on my 2nd day I took a tour with Soe Brothers and it was the best decision! For only 5,000kyats a tuk tuk took 6 of us all over town to see the different caves in the area.

To be honest visiting 5 caves was a little bit too much. Once you’ve seen one you have pretty much seen them all (sort of.) They all have a gazillion Buddhas all around but they differ on the size of the buddhas and the quantity.

To enter a temple one has to take their shoes off and walking in these caves was a little disgusting because you could smell the stench of bat pee (and probably poo) and we walked bare feet all over them!






Praying

These statues look more like giant piñatas
Claire in the tuk tuk... Welcome to Hpa-An! 


When we arrived in one of the temples we were shocked to see that yound boys and some men were picking up fish from the shallow and muddy water and putting them in big buckets (probably to sell or eat).


Then I saw this one man  who was actually taking the fish from the shallow water and transferring the fish to the deeper side of the river so they would survive.

 Kyauk-Kalat pagoda, temple in the middle of the water!


We then quickly stopped Lumpini gardens, where hundreds of buddhas sit one behind the other!

For our lunch stop we went near some holly pools... in one of them there was a sign that read "Don't swim lady" hahaha


My favorite cave was Sadden cave, it was massive and we walked from the entrance all the way to the back of the cave and ended up by the lake and we took a boat back to the entrance. The boat ride was my favorite part, we went through a cave and then rode in a canal surrounded by green all around… so peaceful and beautiful :)




Construction in the cave... Nails and all!



Going through a cave!

How beautiful is this view?




The last temple of the day was the funniest, lots of lights and colorful statues of monks... It seemed like the Disneyland of temple caves!
Guess what I did on my last day ?

Of course I went on a hike! A hike all the way way way up  to the monastery on the top of the mountain.

I spent the morning sleeping and being lazy double thinking this idea of hiking up for 2+ hours but since I didn't have accommodation I decided to go.

I moved from my hotel to the backpacker downtown in hopes to find somebody going to the mountain too. I arrived but could only find people who had already done the hike. Then I saw my friend Claire and decided to go out for Burmese food.

The best Burmese food I've had so far!

With a full tummy I decided to go pick up my bag from the hostel and take a tuk tuk to the bottom of the mountain. As I was leaving I heard that two other girls were going but they had motorcycles so they were going to go later. 
I got my bag and was putting my shoes on when a girl asked at reception how to get to the mountain so I immediately jumped in and said I was going; she asked me to wait while she put her shoes on. As I was waiting I went to the top of the stairs, looked down and a girl screamed "are any of you going to climb?"... is this for real?!? Did I just get two other girls to go with? As I always say God's timing is perfect.

We rode a tuk tuk for half an hour and we got to Lumbini gardens, the start of the hike.
Look... the temple on the tippy top of the mountain (on the left)


Of course I told them (Nicky and Amit) to go ahead since I am so super slow and that I would eventually catch up but they said no, they said we would do it together. 

The first half an hour was cruel, I regretted eating so much Burmese food because I honestly thought it would all come out. Slowly but surely I was able to walk and not give up. This same day thousands of women have marched across cities all over the world to show the power of women and here I was walking up a steep mountain with 2 other girls that despite of being from different countries, different religions, and not knowing each other more than 30 minutes, we empowered each other to push ourselves and accomplish something. This is nothing compared to a March or what the March was meant to be but it shows the beauty of human beings. As I was walking up I couldn't help but think "we run the world"... we truly do! Maybe in 2020 we will have a women really running the world!

The hike was hard (for me) but the fact that I was doing it with Nicky and Amit made it so much better. It got me thinking about my journey and how amazing it has been to meet so many awesome strangers that have become my friends and have made this experience unforgettable.


The hike up took us 2:36 minutes (minus 6 minutes because we were checking in) and we had a couple of picture breaks. The views were so beautiful but sometimes I felt like I was so focused on catching my breath that I forgot to enjoy the view. Near the top the hike got easier and although we (by we I mean I) were super sweaty we got some selfies! (that I can't find anymore)

Once we reached  the top we all felt very accomplished. 

We were received by a monk who collected the 5,000kyats donation for sleeping in the monastery and put some orange string around our wrists for good luck.

The view from the monastery was very beautiful, we could see green all around us and sunset was amazing.


Pagoda at sunset.





At the end of the day it was about 15 travelers staying up in the monastery so we all chatted and got to know each other before dinner.

 For dinner we gathered in the restaurant and had a nice veggie meal.

The next day we all woke up for sunrise, which happened to be just outside of our room.








While we were visiting the temple we were shocked on how they handled garbage. There were several garbage cans and when one was full one of the boys working in the monastery grabbed the full can amd dumped it to the side of the monastery right down the mountain!!!!!! I couldn't believe it! It was so sad. My friend Dennis asked the boy why they did that and that it looks ugly and the boy responded by saying that he shouldn't look down, that he should look up at the view. So sad!
Shortly after sunrise we went down and started the journey to the golden rock. Overall, it was nice to go up and make new friends but it didn't feel all that special or very holy, it just seemed like any other hike and sleeping in a share dorm :(
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About Post Author

Hi! It's me... Andrea! In 2016 I decided to drop everything and take a year to enrich my life and travel around the world. It turns out the world is just too big for 12 months! Still on the road and sharing my experience as a solo female traveler around the globe!

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About me




Hi! It's me... Andrea!

In this blog you can live vicariously through my journey around the world!

Please feel free to share tips or places to go!
Contact me: andreaheartstraveling@gmail.com