Win Sein Taw Ya

Win Sein Taw Ya is a hollow reclining Buddha of around a hundred and eighty metres lying along a hillside south of Mawlamyine, begun in the 1990s and still not finished. You go in through a door in the side and walk through corridors on several levels filled with life-size dioramas: scenes of Buddhist hells, of the life of the Buddha, and of moral instruction, some of them lurid and none of them subtle. On the hill around it are hundreds of standing monk figures leading up the slope and a second, smaller image under construction.

What you actually see

• The image - a reclining Buddha of around a hundred and eighty metres, hollow inside.
• The interior corridors - multiple levels of painted dioramas, including graphic hell scenes.
• The monk figures - hundreds of life-size standing figures ranged along the approach road.
• The unfinished works - scaffolding, rebar and a second image, the site still being built.

When to go

November to February is the comfortable season. The interior is dim and airless at any time and is worst in the afternoon heat. Weekends bring local visitors and the corridors get busy.

Honest expectations

The hell dioramas are genuinely graphic and not suitable for every visitor or every child. Interior lighting is patchy and the corridors are hot and poorly ventilated. The site is a permanent building project, so parts are always closed off.

Nearby

Mawlamyine is twenty kilometres north, and Kyaikkami is on the coast to the southwest.