Today, with a population of over 5 million people, it remains the largest city and the economic hub of Myanmar. Yangon was a big busy city with lots to see and take in. We stayed in Chinatown and were surrounded by Chinese new Year celebrations daily (Chinese New Year was the Feb 8, the day we arrived)...It's now the year of the Monkey!
Yangon is a place where new skyscrapers housing the city’s booming industries dot the skies yet colonial mansions still stand on historic Strand Road, vestiges of Burma’s history when writers like George Orwell and Rudyard Kipling lived there.
The tip of the stupa (far too high for the human eye to even discern in any detail!) is set with 5448 diamonds, 2317 rubies, sapphires, and other gems, 1065 golden bells and, at the very top, a single 76-carat diamond.
Surrounding the pagoda are a lot of smaller shrines housing pre-Buddhist spirits called Nats, miracle working images, and even a wish granting stone.
Underneath the Pagoda is the 70.3-acre People's Square. A flower- and tree-lined marble walkway and park . Many National Events such as ceremonies of Independence Day, Union Day, National Day are held in this place.
There are lots of pleasant features such as flower gardens and ponds; fountains, including one made up of concentric rings of white elephants; and tree-top observation platforms linked by fun swinging bridges.
This park really annoyed us when we tried enter. There's a huge gate to walk right in....for locals.
Anyone white or an obvious tourist was stopped by guards and forced to walk 100meters down the road...THROUGH A MALL!!!!!!!...and into the park by a back door after walking through the entire shopping center. It was outrageous....they literally wouldn't allow us in the same gate a ton of locals were going right though. We told them we didn't want to shop but they didn't care...all tourists turned away and forced through the stupid mall to enjoy a public free park.
We are heading to the Chatuchak weekend market today to do some last minute shopping. Its sheer size and diverse collections of merchandise will bring any seasoned shoppers to their knees!!...this is where you can literally shop ‘till you drop’.
The 35-acre area of Chatuchak is home to more than 8,000 market stalls. On a typical weekend, more than 200,000 visitors come here to sift through the goods on offer.
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| Busy Chinatown streets |
Yangon is an important seaport for the country, and the several lakes and parks throughout Yangon are popular tourist destinations. Their biggest attraction, the huge Shwedagon Pagoda complex, also draws many visitors as well as thousands of Buddhist pilgrims each year.
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| Kandawgi park. The lake was created by digging out stone to build the Schwedagon Pagoda and has a long boardwalk around it for a nice stoll. |
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| Lot's of dragons dancing in the streets in Chinatown each night. |
Three years ago, there were virtually no cars, so everyone relied on buses....today it was the city of the endless traffic jam. The infrastructure can not keep up with the car volume. It took up upwards of an hour to drive to and from the airport...something that should have taken 10 minutes. Yangon is now a car-congested metropolis...we walked places that would have taken way longer stuck in traffic.
The most notable building in Yangon is the Shwedagon Pagoda, a great Buddhist temple complex that crowns a hill about one mile north of the Cantonment. You can basically see it from anywhere in the city.
The pagoda itself is a solid brick stupa that is completely covered with gold. It rises 326 feet on a hill 168 feet above the city.
The pagoda itself is a solid brick stupa that is completely covered with gold. It rises 326 feet on a hill 168 feet above the city.
Long before the pagoda was built, its location on Singuttara hill was already an ancient sacred site because of the buried relics of the three previous Buddhas. According to legend, eight hairs of the historical Buddha were brought to the hill. To enshrine the relics, multiple pagodas of silver, tin, copper, lead, marble, iron and gold where built one on top of the other to a height of twenty meters.
During the following centuries, passing from myth to historical fact, the pagoda grew to its present height of ninety-eight meters. Much of the continued construction of Shwedagon was actually reconstruction following disastrous earthquakes. During the 17th century the pagoda suffered earthquake damage on at least eight occasions. A particularly bad quake in 1786 brought the entire top half of the pagoda to the ground and its current shape and height date from the reconstruction of that time.
While much of the pagoda's beauty derives from the complex geometry of its shape and surrounding structures, equally mesmerizing is its golden glow. The lower stupa is plated with 8,688 solid gold bars, an upper part with another 13,153.During the following centuries, passing from myth to historical fact, the pagoda grew to its present height of ninety-eight meters. Much of the continued construction of Shwedagon was actually reconstruction following disastrous earthquakes. During the 17th century the pagoda suffered earthquake damage on at least eight occasions. A particularly bad quake in 1786 brought the entire top half of the pagoda to the ground and its current shape and height date from the reconstruction of that time.
The tip of the stupa (far too high for the human eye to even discern in any detail!) is set with 5448 diamonds, 2317 rubies, sapphires, and other gems, 1065 golden bells and, at the very top, a single 76-carat diamond.
Surrounding the pagoda are a lot of smaller shrines housing pre-Buddhist spirits called Nats, miracle working images, and even a wish granting stone.
Underneath the Pagoda is the 70.3-acre People's Square. A flower- and tree-lined marble walkway and park . Many National Events such as ceremonies of Independence Day, Union Day, National Day are held in this place.
There are lots of pleasant features such as flower gardens and ponds; fountains, including one made up of concentric rings of white elephants; and tree-top observation platforms linked by fun swinging bridges.
This park really annoyed us when we tried enter. There's a huge gate to walk right in....for locals.
Anyone white or an obvious tourist was stopped by guards and forced to walk 100meters down the road...THROUGH A MALL!!!!!!!...and into the park by a back door after walking through the entire shopping center. It was outrageous....they literally wouldn't allow us in the same gate a ton of locals were going right though. We told them we didn't want to shop but they didn't care...all tourists turned away and forced through the stupid mall to enjoy a public free park.
After 2 days in Yangon we spent the last of our Myanmar Kyat...we had so little money left at the end we had to budget and carefully count the total as we placed our dinner order... we had just enough to pay and get to the airport! The ATM fees are high here so we didn't want to take out any more money.
We flew back to Bangkok, were we are spending the last 3 days. Bangkok is one of my favorite cities. There's amazing food, good shopping, cheap massages, lots of delicious street food for when you need a snack! I've been eating my body weight in fruit.
Myanmar was amazing but very underdeveloped, unlike the rest of southeast Asia...it's nice to be able to get good coffee again, and eat the street food, and have more options and variety for dinner. Myanmar food was very similar to Chinese...good, but you get sick of the same thing...I prefer Thai food and there is lots of great Japanese, Vietnamese here too to mix it up.
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| LOVE the fruit stands...about 15baht for a bag of the fruit of your choice. |
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| Khao San Road craziness....backpacker central with pumping music, live bands, bars, restaurants, shopping...you name it. |
The 35-acre area of Chatuchak is home to more than 8,000 market stalls. On a typical weekend, more than 200,000 visitors come here to sift through the goods on offer.
Then we plan to spend a last few hours on our rooftop pool before I go for one more massage before dinner. We fly home tonight at 23:55....complete with an 8 hour Tokyo layover (we are just going to pay to use a lounge for the day). We are going to miss the heat and the sun so much....neither of us are too keen on going home to winter.
See you S.E Asia!!! Until next time!
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| Roof top pool.That tan will be gone in 2 weeks... ;( |
