Our last stop on the lake one afternoon was the Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda. It turned out to be a very popular stop for both the locals and the tourists. The main attraction is five Buddha statues, though our guide said it was actually three Buddha’s and two monks. All five statues are covered with so much gold leaf that they are just blobs of gold. Each statue is nine to eighteen inches high, so not very large. The area of the Buddha statues was for Men Only.

During a festival around September to October, four of the five statues are loaded onto a barge and towed clockwise around the lake. They stop at many of the lakeside villages and the images are kept in each village’s main monastery each night.

1. Here is the Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda as we approached it by boat.

2. You can see just how popular this pagoda is for both locals and tourists. It was quite a boat traffic jam at the docks.

3. Here’s Vicky inside the main pagoda area.

4. These are the Buddha images, covered with gold leaf, and one of them is getting a few more leaves.

5. This is the replica of a royal barge that is used to house the images when they are towed around the lake. They get towed by several boats of leg-rowers with many other local boats in the procession. No power motors for towing the Buddha statues.