Buddha's Footprint Trip

We had our first real day off yesterday, and went out exploring further than our usual forays to the market or shops. It was Manja's first proper free day in a month of being here, due to a shortage of volunteers. I had a roughly outlined plan to surprise her with a couple of places that I had heard about from another volunteer that sounded worth checking out.

Border crossing boat

So, after a nice sleep in (well not for me, I got up early to ring Dad for Father's Day) we eventually cleared out of the house about 11am. First stop: find somewhere to have a coffee! And that didn't take us long. There are many nice places here in town, and we found one that served iced mocha-coffees for around half the usual price, and with twice the coffee. Actually, it's more a case of half the amount of ice! The other places just fill the cup with it.

Then we're off, but I've forgotten to bring the hand-drawn map with me! So we had a bit of fun locating the right street. What I first thought was the checkpoint we were looking for turned out to be only a taxi stand. It's hard to tell sometimes! We also discovered a gigantic reclining Buddha statue as a bonus. We'll have to check that out another day.

Soon we were heading out of town, and the checkpoint became obvious: machine gun equipped soldiers and a sand-bagged hut. This was more like it! No dramas for us to pass, it all just looks scary. The road was in reasonable condition for bikes - you can easily dodge the many pot-holes! This is farming land, with crops of corn, rice and other stuff. We had a cold beer by the river Moei, looking at Myanmar (Burma) on the other side.

Photo by Manja - seriously bad hair day! That's okay.

Further along there was some cool engineering in the form of a dam with a nifty overflow design to allow excess water to pass under the road, while keeping water for livestock/crops. At the base of the foothills we found a small village made entirely of bamboo, with some very shy but curious kids checking us out. This was the village where the staircase up to the "Buddha's Footprint" is found. They had rubber balls that they were throwing around, so I showed them some juggling which they seemed to like, as three of them never left our side after that!

Up the staircase we went, into some really thick bamboo jungle with volcanic-looking rocks everywhere. It was really steep - seemed similar to the Pyramid hike, near Cairns, only with a good concrete staircase the whole way. Our little friends even found some big leaves and started to fan Manja, bless 'em! The muggy jungle heat didn't bother them, and they jumped up and down the steps chattering away happily.

Up, up, up...

At the top is a shrine, a golden pagoda, and a glass case containing the footprint of Buddha. It's a naturally formed footprint likeness, that looks a lot like, well, Buddha's footprint! Our little guides(maybe they were guards?) hopped about all over the rocks like mountain goats and seemed to enjoy being with us. The visibility was good enough for us to see over the valley into the mountains of Burma.

Coming down, my legs were like jelly from the hundreds of steps but it was all well worth the climb. We pedalled back into town and chilled out with a beer and some local cuisine. Slept like a rock!

From the top, looking over the glass-cased footprint.