Phaung Daw U Pagoda Festival is one of the popular festivals in Shan State and it draws crowds from all over Myanmar. The main attraction is the procession of four golden Buddhas on a royal barge to each village around Inle Lake. The barge is pulled by hundreds of leg-rowers. The Buddha statues have lost their shape because devotees have been plastering them with many layers of gold leaf. To the devotees, the plastering of gold leaves is a sign of reverence.
The fifth golden Buddha stays behind in the pagoda. The story is that all five sunk to the bottom of the lake during a storm in 1965, and only four were recovered. The fifth one mysteriously re-appeared full of algae in the pagoda. Since then, this fifth Buddha has never left the pagoda.