We only had a day to spend in Hpa An and we decided to see as much as possible. We signed up with a tour offered by Soe Brother’s Guesthouse which was set out to visit 8 sights in and around Hpa An. At 6 am, we were woken up by the gongs and chants of monks walking in the streets. So we decided to get breakfast and at 8 am, the only six foreigners in Hpa An all gathered in a tuk-tuk and set out towards our first stop. Driving through the city in that little tuk-tuk was an adventure. It had rained the days before and the roads were in terrible shape. On top of that, it turned out to be a full moon festival in and traffic was quite crazy. People from all around Hpa An were coming into town to celebrate; they were beautifully dressed and waved as we were passing by.
op was a buddhist cave filled with all sorts of statues and incredible views over Hpa An. Nothing like I’d seen before. 
As our tuk tuk was heading towards ‘Kyauk Kalap’, we got stuck in the most crazy traffic jam I have ever seen. All of a sudden, we were surrounded by cars, vans, tuk tuks, motorbikes and jeeps. We decided to get out and continue our trip on foot, like the other people who were going to Kyauk Kalap to celebrate the full moon.

Once arrived at Kyauk Kalap, we were overwhelmed by the many people celebrating, listening to music, watching the boat races and coming up to us to take pictures with us.

It then started to rain and this only made the traffic jam worse. In the end, we only did two our sights out of the eight we were supposed to see but that was more than enough for me. The sights we had seen, the people we had encountered, it was all incredibly beautiful and overwhelming. If it hadn’t rained so much, I would have loved to spend a few more days in Hpa An enjoying the karst peaks shooting out of the rice fields, the many buddhist caves and little fishing villages.