More Yangon

Our afternoon sightseeing was done in one of the little open back truck style taxis. This was quite nice when driving along, as the breeze provided some relief from the heat, but unfortunately, being in Yangon, we spent a lot of time crawling through the traffic jams, so most of the time it was just stiflingly hot.

Once we finally got moving, our first stop was at the National Museum of Myanmar. We only had about an hour, which was a shame because it was actually quite interesting, with various exhibits about the traditions and culture of the country, including music and the clothing worn in the different regions. The star attractions here though are the thrones of King Thibaw Min, the last king of Myanmar, in particular the very impressive Lion Throne.

After another crawl through traffic, we visited the Chaukhtatgyi Paya and its rather large  reclining Buddha, standing - or rather lying - at 65m long and 16m high. The positioning of the feet, which are covered in 108 sacred Buddhist symbols, is slightly staggered, meaning that the Buddha is depicted just before his death; had the feet been fully together, that would show him having just passed away.


This pagoda also had a round shrine that had eight sections, each representing the day of the week that you were born on, and the animal sign that means you fall under. Why eight rather than seven - Wednesday is split into two parts, the morning and the afternoon. With Nic and I both having been born on a Thursday, we fall under the rat apparently.

The idea is that you give an offering to the sign relevant to you, which generally consists of people pouring a cup of water onto it. Given that they get the water from the shrine itself, it didn't seem like much of an offering to me, but perhaps it's the thought that counts.

After the Buddha, we stopped at Kandawgyi Lake to see the Karaweik. You may remember from an earlier post that the Karaweik is the golden barge that looks a bit like a duck. This one is not only a replica, but it isn't even really a barge as it is concreted in position. It is supposedly quite a nice restaurant, but to us, it just wasn't worth the visit, especially when you spend so much time in traffic to get there.

I was more interested in seeing a group of men busy with the preparation of htamane, a concoction of sticky rice, coconut, peanuts, sesame, oil and ginger, that was being made for the full moon of Tabodwe festival today. Sadly it wasn't ready yet, so we couldn't get a taste. It did however give us an explanation for the strange cylinders that we had seen being given out to children as we passed a school earlier in the day; apparently the bamboo tubes would have contained a gift of htamane.


Our last visit of the day was the famous Shwedagon Pagoda on Singuttara Hill. According to legend, it is over 2500 years old, though experts put it around the 6th to 10th century. Either way, it is certainly an impressive pagoda, and with multiple other structures around it, there is quite a lot to see. It is dedicated to the four Buddhas, Kakusandha, Konasamana, Kassapa, and the one we mostly know about, Gautama. It is said to contain relics from all four, making it the most scared of places of worship in Myanmar.

Of course the usual no shoes rule applies throughout the complex, and that can be a bit of a shock when you first set your bare feet onto the terrace as it can be scorchingly hot after absorbing the sun all day.

The pagoda structure is covered in gold, and the tip has around 5450 diamonds and over 1000 other gems, with the big diamond at the top weighing in at around 76 carats. Just as well it is a long climb up or some non Buddhists might be tempted to help themselves to a few.

It was quite interesting to watch the Buddhist visitors making their offerings at various shrines that are relevant to them in some way. At the shrine which represents children,  expecting couples could be seen making an offering to try to influence what gender their baby would be.

Our guide Myo is from Yangon, and as we were sitting in yet another traffic jam on the way out of the pagoda, he told us that he was going to see his mother to have dinner with her after he had seen us back to the hotel. It was already getting late, and we weren't going anywhere quickly, so we shooed him off to see his mum and leave us to get back to the hotel - once he had given instructions to our driver of course.


When we finally made it back ourselves, a few of us headed out to a bar and restaurant at the top of the Sakura building, which had a great view of Yangon and the Schwedagon Pagoda. However the prices were as high as the bar was, so we soon moved on to somewhere cheaper.

A walking tour of Yangon

We had a lot of sightseeing to fit into our day in Yangon, and the heat makes it best to avoid being too busy around midday, so it was an early start for our morning walking tour.

It isn't the most exciting or picturesque of cities, but it is interesting for being a busy and diverse place, with a lot of hustle and bustle. We hadn't expected to see a cow standing - or rather leaning - outside one of the Indian temples though.

We walked through the food market, with its vast array of fresh vegetables and brightly coloured spices, as well as a few things that we had no idea what they were.

One of the little things that I rather like about Myanmar, is their use of small garlands of fresh flowers as offerings both to Buddha and at cemeteries in remembrance.


They also hang them in their vehicles, presumably to make them smell better. They use simple, fragrant flowers like jasmine and honeysuckle, and they look and smell beautiful.

After a quick refreshment in the form of a very sweet cup of tea in a little cafe, we were back out into the heat.

We have got used to seeing temples in all sorts of nooks and crannies in Myanmar, but still, we were quite surprised to see the Sule Pagoda sitting in the middle of a busy roundabout. I guess the traffic wasn't so heavy back in the early days of the British occupation, when Lt Fraser made it the centre of his newly designed city layout.

It is an important temple, with the main pagoda apparently dating back around 2500 years. According to legend, a very old Nat, or spirit, lived in this temple and told them where to build the Shwedagon Pagoda. I read that Sule also means to meet, so it is appropriate that it was also the focal point for demonstrators in the 1988 and 2007 uprisings.

Nearby, the beautifully manicured Mahabandoola Gardens provide a great backdrop for the impressive old buildings, including City Hall, which combines British colonial and Asian styles.


The gardens house the independence memorial, but also have a reminder that all is not yet well with Myanmar, as there is a long-term protest by people who had their lands taken and have been camped out for a year demanding its return to them.


 Our final stop as a group was at The Strand Hotel, the grand colonial hotel built in 1901 by the Sarkies Brothers, who were also behind the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. It is a simple but grand style on the outside, and the inside matches up. Some of us stopped for a drink in the bar, which wasn't quite as overpriced as you might expect. We also had a game of pool, and I am pleased to report that Nic and I beat Helen and Duncan.  In fairness, it was really Nic that beat them, as I only managed to pot one ball. But hey, at least it was one of ours!

After our moment of refinement in the bar, we succumbed to the heat and took a cab back up to the Bogyoke (General) Aung San Market - which, based on the dates on the plaque, 1926-2001, appears to be a little confused about how long constitutes a diamond jubilee.

It is however, a good market, albeit a bit touristy, especially around the numerous jewellery stalls. We found a great fabric shop that had some lovely woven materials from the different tribal areas, and I bought a piece that I am hoping to turn into a nice handbag at some point.


For lunch, we stopped in a nearby, well air conditioned, Dutch cafe, so I guess it was to be expected that one of our fellow passengers from the Netherlands also turned up there. That was a good way to spend the time we had before setting off on our afternoon sightseeing.

Yangon at a standstill

As we drove into Yangon, I suddenly saw why the government might have wanted to move to a new city. The traffic here is truly terrible. There is nothing wrong with the roads themselves, they are in pretty good shape, but the volume of cars means that nothing goes anywhere. And this isn't due to an accident or any ad hoc problem, it is just the norm.

One thing that we quickly noticed was the lack of any two wheeled modes of transport. Unlike everywhere else, where mopeds and small motorbikes are the norm, with a good number of regular bikes still thrown in, none of those are to be found here. We did see the occasional bicycle sneak around, but that was it. Apparently, a government official had his car hit by a bike of some form, so promptly banned all two wheel vehicles. I can't vouch for the truth of that, but that is the story.

But there is no shortage of cars and they all seem to be in front of you and going the same way! It took us forever to get around the city, which made the further afield sites a little frustrating to get to.

Anyway, we did finally reach our hotel, and had a bit of time to relax before a few of us headed out to see if we could pick up a bit of street food. We would have been fine if we wanted just anything, but we had agreed to go for some dhosa that had been spotted earlierin the day, so the search was on for them.

Unfortunately, all the dhosa vendors seemed to have packed up early for the night. On the brink of disappointment, someone directed us towards a little restaurant, and sure enough, there were dhosa there. It was my first taste of them, and I was a bit dubious as spicy floors and I don't mix well, but as they are basically a pancake with stuff to dip them in, I just stuck to the one dip I liked and all was fine.

Yangon is noticeably different from the rest of Myanmar, not only because of the traffic. Whereas Mandalay and some other big towns do have some big 'western style' buildings, much of it is still very low level and in parts quite ramshackle. Yangon has a much higher proportion of taller and larger buildings, albeit that many are now quite old and a bit run down.

Also the people dress differently. In most of Myanmar, the majority of women and many men still wear the traditional longhi. Here, some still do, but the majority are in western style clothing. Quite a lot of the women are still using the thanaka though.

The ghost town of Nay Pyi Taw

Ask most people what the capital of Myanmar is, and they will probably say Yangon, or maybe its old name of Rangoon. That would have been true up until 2005, but since then there is a new capital, and its name is Nay Pyi Taw.

Not only is this the new capital, it is a brand new city. For reasons best known to themselves, the government decided to spend a large chunk of the country's money, not on schools, health or helpful things like that, but on building a completely new capital city.

It has a huge, beautifully landscaped swathe of land, with fancy buildings for all of the various ministries, and an enormous government building. Not that you can get anywhere close to the main building with all of its security; it has its own extensive grounds and there are well guarded roadblocks closing off the roads around it.

And talking of the roads. In this country where even the main roads between cities are terrible, Nay Pyi Taw has been given eight lane superhighways, with perfectly smooth surfaces. And there is absolutely no traffic! Why no traffic? Because there's no one here.

The foreign embassies have steadfastly refused to move from Yangon, and so has pretty much īanyone else who has the choice. They built homes for the government officers, but apparently even most of them only live here during the week and go back to Yangon at the weekends. There are people on the outskirts of town, who used to live in the villages that were absorbed when the city was built, but other than that, few people actually live here, and hardly anyone visits except for business reasons.

Foreigners like us have to stay in one of the big business hotels that have been built along one road. They are decent enough hotels, but they are definitely intended for business and conference use, rather than tourists. Not surprisingly really, as there is not really anything much here to see.

They have put in a water park, presumably to give the businessmen something to do in the evening, but it is fairly unimpressive.

The main sight here is Uppatasanti Paya, a somewhat unimaginative copy of the famous Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon. Why they would choose to make a poor imitation of an already popular place, rather than build something new and unique, I really don't understand.


And while we are on the subject of things I find strange, there is a real obsession with neon lighting here. Not just this temple, all over Myanmar, Buddha images are dressed up like Christmas trees in twinkling neon lights.

They do have elephants here though. And not just any elephants, but white elephants. I say white, but like white people, they are really a kind of pinky-beige colour. We use the phrase 'white elephant' to mean something useless and frivolous, and that comes from the way these creatures are treated in much of South East Asia.

But whereas we use the phrase in a negative way, a white elephant is in fact a revered animal, because Buddha's mother dreamed of one when she became pregnant with him. So they are costly, frivolous and fairly useless, because they have to be looked after without being put to work, but they are also a cherished symbol of status.

As to Nay Pyi Taw itself, it was interesting to come here to see this new ghost of a city, and how it contrasts with everything else we have seen in Myanmar, but to be honest, unless you have time to kill, I wouldn't bother.

On a separate note, today we said goodbye to our government friend Mr T, as he was heading home. We were sad to see him go, as he always had such a cheerful smile!