One thinks it would be hard to lose the second largest reclining Buddha in the world. Apparently that would be wrong.
Believed to have been built in 994, the Shwethalyaung Buddha is huge, at 180 feet long and 52 feet high. However after a 1757 pillaging of the area, the world lost track fo the Buddha, only to have a British railway engineer accidentally rediscover it, completely overgrown with jungle, in 1880.
The Buddha was given a giant mosiac pillow in 1930,a nd is currently kept under a rather unnattractive enourmous shed.
A number of other giant Buddha's can be found throughout Bago, however the Shwethalyaung Buddha is the oldest and most revered.