And yet another day in Hpa-an, we climbed a mountain!
It’s called Zwekabin Mountain, and it’s the largest in the region–famous to all of our neighbors. Adam, Stephen & I were keen to climb, but Nu and every other Burmese person we talked to generally chuckled, and said, “Oh, I’ve done that already.” Nu later said, “You do it once for the experience, and twice because it’s really beautiful. But if you do it three times, you’re crazy.”
We started one day about 6:45am, and began trudging up the steps. Again, both Thailand & Burma love to take very beautiful places and cover them in gold and concrete. So the way up was extremely steep concrete steps.
Here is a photo before we melted from the heat, so pretty much just after we started.
After this, we weren’t fit for photos. But we did continue to climb, all 3600+ steps. Looking back, I probably shouldn’t have chosen to do that with as sick as I was feeling, but hey–you only live once!
And the views were stunning!
There were hoards of monkeys all over at the top of the mountain. They were very friendly, walking with us and mostly waiting for us to drop something of value. They did manage to steal a can of pseudo-Gatorade from Adam.
After a rest at the top, we headed down the other side, which was a more pleasant hike. It was more of a natural path with rocks, rather than concreted steps. And still the amazing views on every side!
