Worshipping is a common practice all over Myanmar. People donate different types of goods to the buddha statues. This includes sticking tiny sheets of gold leafs to the buddha statues themselves. Almost all of the gold leafs used for this type of appreciation are produced in small mom and pop style shops around the 36th street east of the railway in Mandalay.

We just followed the monotonous sound of the hammers to find the shops along the street. Young men are standing in line to carry out the laborious work of hammering the coin sized gold pieces which are cut from a thumb-sized stick of gold. After hammering for half an hour, the resulting plate is cut in 4 pieces from which each is hammered again for another hour. Which is then cut into 4 pieces again and hammered for another 5 hours to achieve the final incredible thin state.

Fun fact The time is measured by a half coconut shell with a little hole in it. Once it sinks to the ground of a water filled bucket one interval is finished.

Fun fact 2 The guys are able to tell the progress of hammering by sticking the package to their upper lip. The heat of the package tells them if the job is done or not.

This job is very well paid. You can tell by the time required to get this right. It takes more than one year to have the right technique to hit the package of wrapped leather, bamboo paper (which they produce themselves) and the gold coin right on spot. Most of them are not able to carry out this profession longer than 10 years, because their backs will not proceed beyond this point.

The second step in the process is carried out by girls only. They wrap and pack the hammered slices and make sure the customer gets a full gold leaf on the carrier paper. A pack of gold leafs goes by 7.000 – 9.000 Kyats. Depending on the size. This is about 5,00 EUR (1.000 Kyats = 0.70 EUR).