Hpa-An Weekend

A couple weekends ago we visited a new part of the country with our friends Adam and Derryck - Hpa-An in Kayin State in Southeastern Myanmar. It’s about a 5-6 hour drive through lots of little towns and some beautiful countryside. As you get closer to Hpa-An you start to see limestone karsts popping up out of the rice paddies. It’s very dramatic!

Hpa-An is known for its Buddhist caves and sacred mountains. Saddan Cave, in particular, is quite amazing. A 15-20 minute barefoot walk through Buddhist relics, caverns the size of football fields, huge stalactites and stalagmites, suspension bridges, and thousands of bats on the ceiling, leads to an exit on a lake.

From this beautiful spot we had fresh coconut and watched the canoes come and go. Then it was our turn to take a canoe through another small cave and some flooded rice paddies and back to the entrance of the cave. It was super fun!

We stayed at Keinnara Eco Lodge (formerly Hpa-An Lodge) at the base of the sacred Mt. Zwegabin. It’s a lovely place to stay with beautiful views. We went to the bat cave one evening to see the 500,000+ bats leave for their evening meal. They decided to be a bit lazy that night and leave after the sun had set but it was still very impressive to see such large numbers, and it was so silent.

Hpa-An was great, we had a wonderful visit!