Yangon Journal 9, July 2014 – City Tour

The rotunda is a pagoda, the Sule Pagoda. Isn’t that interesting? Surrounding the pagoda, however, are all sorts of shops – mobile phone stores, copy centers, fast food, flowers, etc. The sacred and the profane right there.


We parked across the City Hall. A bluish grey monster that is largely Colonnial, with Burmese touches at the top. In the façade, you see a couple of dragon statues on the left and right side. In the middle is a statue of a peacock, the national animal and their symbol for the sun. The kings of old believed they were descended from the sun, and were represented by the peacock. (The queens came from the moon, and their symbol is a rabbit.)


To our right are two other colonial-style structures, a Baptist church and the Supreme Court. The Court is eminently Victorian and has a clock tower. Sessions continue to held there. (During our visit, farmers had a rally. They were protesting an alleged unjust land distribution.) Behind us is a huge park, formerly named after Britain’s Queen Victoria. It is now called Freedom Park and has an obelisk that marked Myanmar’s independence from Britain in 1948.



Traffic was busy. Our guide, the affable Thu Rein, told us car license plates are color-coded – private vehicles have black plates, public ones have red, religious ones yellow, and tourist ones blue. Motorcycles, he said, are growing in number. Most motorcyclists did not wear helmets; they were also wearing sandals or flip flops.

We walked with Thu Rein at Bank Street, literally the street were all the major banks are located. Vendors were all over the pavement. Fruits – guavas, mangosteen, pineapple, rambutan, dragon fruit, mangoes – seemed to be in season. They peeled green mangoes the same way Filipino vendors did – like a flower with open petals. Vendors also served full meals – soup, fish, rice, curry, satay. They brought out stools; people huddled in corners eating. Vendors also sold longyis (the national costume), shawls, and other accessories. We passed a lottery booth. Thu Rein said lotteries are big in Yangon.

Our first stop was Strand Hotel, Yangon’s oldest hotel. Established by the British in 1901, the place has been well-preserved. It looks practically the same as the painting on its wall. There is a tea room, of course! We visited the shop and the gallery. A statue of the Buddha instantly caught my attention. Images of the Buddha were carved inside a piece of pole that was divided into three parts and hinged together. You can open the pole and see the images; close it and it looks like a carved piece of wood. Amazing!



From the Strand, we went to River Ayayawady Gallery. The Gallery has a fine collection of oil and watercolor paintings, landscapes mostly – Myanmar’s countryside and the pagodas, of course – and differently portraits of Aung San Suu Kyi. Two portraits are eye-catching. One is composed of English words like freedom, democracy, independence (ideals that Suu Kyi stands for) that form her face. The other is composed of words, too, except they were painted in Burmese alphabet, with its mostly-rounded and connected letters.

The Burmese seem to love food as much as we do and have fine restaurants. Lunch was at Acacia Restaurant, home of the best Italian cuisine here. It did not disappoint. Fancy that – Italian in Myanmar!

Read about love and death, and our last day in the city in my Yangon Journal 10.

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