Hotels near Kinmun

The locals like anywhere in Myanmar are gorgeous and helpful and the town is lovely. We ate local and it was great. It's easy enough to bike around town, I'd prefer to hire a scooter which at first didn't appear to be supported by locals. To see the Golden Rock Pagoda, Kyaiktyo Pagoda, you need to go up on a truck. This is not recommended if you do not like being squished 6 to a row on a platform that is one hand wide, hard board, with less than 30cm space between you and the metal hand rail, the worse roads up, industrial level noise, unnecessary waiting periods in hot 'sardine canned' styled space with literally no safety assistance. A serious and unfortunate disaster waiting to happen. WALK there. Do not take a truck!

Kinmun is the foot of the mountain where you start your really crazy bus ride (be warned!) to the Golden Rock. Pilgims in the thousands visit from pre dawn to night to visit this important place. The village is busy. However for non Buddhists/foreigners/non Burmese speakers read your travel guide carefully for procedure, time required and cost before committing. The alternative is to download the photos and enjoy the Pepper Grove Resort.

The trip to Kinmun was fun and places are unique and interesting. I just wish the locals love and respect their town (and the world) enough keep it cleaner. They spit everywhere and throw stuff all over the place.

Don't go when there is any kind of holiday as there are thousands of people who go there and spend the night camped on top, which makes it impossible to get near a railing for photos. At the check-point for foreigners there are toilet facilities....

We only saw the "bus station" of Kinmun, which is a very busy place because that is where one gets the "truck bus" to the Golden Rock. A "truck bus" is a very heavy duty truck that has seating for about 42 people on the truck bed, arranged in 7 benches, each bench seating 6 people. The truck ride up to the Golden Rock takes about 40-45 minutes and is like a roller-coaster ride: fun for some and very scary for others, including us. There are many hair-pin turns and the drivers go around the so fast that we worried about the truck tipping over. Our worries must be exaggerated because we never saw a tipped over truck.