Thousands of devotees flocked to a monk palace of kaleidoscopic colours in southern Myanmar this week to dance, sing and pay their final respects at the lavish cremation of a local celebrity monk.
Abbot Kay Lar Tha was just 48 when he died last year from leukemia in Mudon village in eastern Mon State.
It took his faithful followers nine months to raise the $80,000 needed for the extravagant cremation -- a fortune in one of Asia's poorest countries, where a third of people live in poverty.
