By far Yangon's most amazing sight is Shwedagon Pagoda. The temple complex began about 1,500 years ago, when legend has it eight of the Buddha's hairs were buried here.



The temple is built atop a small hill, and reached by walking up one of four elaborately covered stairways lined with merchants selling amulets, religious pictures, offerings for monks etc. At the top of the stairs is a vast marble floor with an enormous gold stupa at center (next post). But surrounding this main stupa are hundreds of smaller temples, all extremely intricate and very colorful. These serve a variety of purposes. Many were donated by past kings, some serve as schools for young monks and others are donated by groups from other parts of the country. In addition, there are seven small temples scattered around the circumference, one for each day of the week. The superstitious Burmese place great stress on which day of the week they were born, and they visit their birthday's temple as their first port of call at Shwedagon. Overall, the color scheme is reminiscent of the temples of Thailand, but the architecture is quite different, and reminds me more of Nepalese temples.