The pottery district stretches a mile south of town beyond the Ayeyarwady bridge site. A block or two inland, several ‘factories’ are housed in bamboo-thatched barns, which shelter as many as 60 potters working at hand- or foot-turned wheels. Visitors are welcome to nose around and you’ll also see kilns, drying yards and piles of rough clay being chopped.
Beyond Letyway Kyaunggyi monastery you’ll see almost every open space filled with large amphorae waiting to be shipped on river barges. Homes, many of them old wooden affairs with distinctive portal-arches, double as shopfronts selling vases, jugs and mustard pots (from K200). While some are vivid green (notably big owl-figure vases), archetypal Kyaukmyaung designs are usually glazed a rich glossy brown that’s casually daubed with swirls of beige-yellow, the latter apparently taking its colour from old batteries.
