A great trip
Published/Last edited or updated: 25th June, 2016
A trip to Jaun Yua can include a wander around the remote and friendly village, a boat trip up the picturesque Ye River and a spectacular sunset visit to a hilltop pagoda. This fascinating and unusual half-day excursion was suggested and facilitated for us by the helpful Starlight Guesthouse staff.
From the village jetty, your guide will hire a motorised longtail boat to carry you further upriver. Our stops included a beautiful sandy beach, a tiny riverbank pagoda and a small fruit farm. The river at this point has a mainly rocky bed so it’s crystal clear and perfect for swimming off the sandy beach. Karen people float large rafts of bamboo, cut in the hills upstream, to sell in the village and watching them punt the wide rafts downstream is fascinating. Another sight may be the myriad sheets of betel nuts drying on sandbanks. Our guide told us they were one of the village’s main crops, being exported from here as far as India.
A large gold and green painted column or tower emerging from the waters and topped by a Buddha image indicates a small pagoda at a fork in the river. Here we went ashore to visit the pagoda with its small chedi and nat shrines and to take a look around the temple’s fruit and vegetable garden. How far upstream you go depends upon water levels and how much time you have, but during dry season you may find yourself getting out to push at certain points. The tree-lined river is beautiful and a good spot to catch glimpses of kingfishers, herons and egrets along the banks.
Back in the friendly village, a wander around and stop at a local tea shop was followed by a climb up to Shwe Maw Daw, the hilltop pagoda at the western end of the village’s main street. A flight of steps lined with Buddha images takes you up to a gold-painted chedi on the summit, from where you’ll get stupendous views of the surrounding countryside, back over the river and across to the mountains on ... Travelfish members only (Full text is around 400 words.)
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Mark Ord
Based in Chiang Mai, Mark Ord has been travelling Southeast Asia for over two decades and first crossed paths with Travelfish on Ko Lipe in the early 1990s.
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