The Golden Rock: A roadside attraction too far from the road

Lonely Planet books have been our guides for most of our trip and we’ve found their recommendations to usually be on the money. Every now and then, however, they get one wrong. The Golden Rock is one of those times.

The Golden Rock

Lonely Planet listed it as a “You haven’t been to Myanmar until you’ve been here” type of place, so we were pretty excited about seeing it. We knew it was a large golden rock, but little more than that. Reading other travelers’ blogs just made it more mysterious with rumors of scary truck rides, puking monks, and stories about the rock.

In truth, it’s not much to see. There is a large gold-painted rock with a small stupa built on top. At some angles it looks like it’s falling off, at others it looks perfectly normal. We were told that according to legend a relic from Buddha keeps it perfectly balanced, but to me it looked suspiciously like the mountain top had just been carved to look like a separate bolder.

The real reason the rock hasn’t fallen yet… Jami doing the hard work.

While religious, the rock is surrounded by a kitschy plaza with souvenir shops that take away from any spiritual setting. To me, it most closely resembled a classic Americana roadside attraction. The world’s largest ball of twine might be okay for a break from driving, but certainly not something for which you should go out of your way.   The plaza is so large that it overwhelms the rock itself, which is left appearing as simply one of the many activities in the plaza.

The plaza, surrounded by tacky shops

Regardless of our thoughts on it, the rock is one of the most important shrines in Myanmar, and most of the tourists were religious pilgrims. As before with Varanasi, I enjoyed being among “local” tourists.

Pilgrims praying facing the rock.

Monks praying in the “No Girls Allowed” section

The town below the rock, Kyaikto, is small with a single main street. It’s fairly isolated, with most shops geared towards tourists, but the surrounding countryside is beautiful and it had a fantastic sunrise.

The street in Kyaikto

Sunrise

We were looking forward (at least I was) to the ride up because we had heard so many stories about it from other travel blogs. The only way up to the rock is via truck transports. They pack people in, and while the ride is somewhat rough, it appears to have gotten much better from the earlier days. Nobody threw up. Nobody was screaming. One thing that hadn’t changed was the odd money-collecting. Tickets for the ride were paid not when you entered the truck or left, but right in the middle, when it was most inconvenient to reach into your wallet and count cash.

Squeezing people onto the truck

A full truck heading up

Holding on for the ride…

Collecting money in the middle

Additionally, the truck stopped several times on the way up and down to collect donations. They never spoke in English so we weren’t sure what they were collecting for or why they had different collections on the same truck ride, but each time a few of the local pilgrims would donate some cash.

While the commercial exploitation and the less-than-spectacular rock were disappointments for us, it was still a cool experience and a great view, although not worth the day-and-a-half it took us to reach the rock.  With only limited time in Myanmar, we should have spent the time elsewhere.

The rock is located above beautiful hills

A restaurant with quite a view.

Hopefully Lonely Planet give a little more of a heads up along with its recommendation in the next edition of the book.