4:30 p.m. – We walk for ten minutes to Shwedagon Pagoda which is absolutely massive and beautifully decked in gold! We pay a foreigner entrance fee and we're given surgical masks to wear. In all of the pagodas, it’s compulsory for shoulders and knees to be covered and footwear is not allowed. G. is Buddhist so she kneels down to pray and also takes part in some of the rituals such as bathing of the Buddha. A friendly local joins us and explains that there is a corner in the pagoda for every day of the week and we should go to the corner based on the day that we were born. It turns out that my friend was at the wrong corner and now has to repeat the ritual at the correct one, haha! The local continues to follow us which makes us uncomfortable so we tell him that we're fine to explore on our own. (Later on, I watched another traveller's Instagram Story where the exact same thing happened to her and it turns out that the local guide ended up demanding a large tip. Turns out we were lucky to have escaped that trap.)