Yangon travel guide

Shwedagon's main stupa at dusk

In Letters From the East (1889), Rudyard Kipling wrote: “Then, a golden mystery upheaved itself on the horizon – a beautiful, winking wonder that blazed in the sun, of a shape that was neither Muslim dome nor Hindu temple spire. It stood upon a green knoll… ‘There’s the old Shway Dagon,’ said my companion… The golden dome said, ‘This is Burma, and it will be quite unlike any land that one knows about’.”

It’s more than 100 years since Kipling sailed up the Rangoon River to the Burmese capital, but the glistening golden stupa of theShwedagon continues to dominate the city’s skyline. The massive pagoda, said to be around 2,500 years old, is not only a remarkable architectural achievement; it is also the perfect symbol of a country in which Buddhism pervades every aspect of life. 

The Shwedagon may be the undisputed show stealer, but this city holds plenty of less celebrated attractions. Spend a couple of days here and you’ll have time to wander the tree-lined avenues and narrow backstreets of the colonial district downtown, with its court house, city hall and famous Strand Hotel, and to take in a few more pagodas, including the majestic Botataung Paya near the riverside. Re-fuel in a traditional Burmese teahouse before sampling the priceless treasures on show at the National Museum, or mingle with the crowds milling around Bogyoke Aung San market. 

Yangon street life

The city’s vivid street life makes a lasting impression: the street-sidemohinga stalls, where diners dressed in traditional longyis andhtameins tuck into bowls of steaming noodles; the ancient, overloaded, green-, cream- and red-painted buses jostling for space at junctions with the streams of trishaws, cycles and taxis; and the open-air markets, whose traders squat beside piles of fresh produce, an outsize cheroot wedged in their mouth, and thanaka paste smeared over their cheeks. 

With the country poised on the brink of rapid economic change, modernity is making its presence felt these days, particularly around the striking Sule Pagoda, whose gilded profile is dwarfed by the nearby skyscrapers. Yet the overriding impression of Yangon remains one of a city that has altered little since the British slow-marched to their waiting steamers in 1948.

Top places to visit in Yangon

Shwedagon

Few religious monuments in the world cast as powerful a spell as Yangon’s Shwedagon Pagoda (open daily 4am–9pm; charge, tickets are not sold to foreigners before 6am), the gigantic golden stupa rising on the northern fringes of the city. The holiest of holies for Burmese Buddhists, it’s also a potent symbol of national identity, and in recent decades has become a rallying point for the pro-democracy movement.

Its unique sanctity derives from the belief that the stupa enshrines relics not merely of the historical Buddha, Gautama, but also those of three of his predecessors. No one, however, has been able to confirm whether or not the eight hairs of the Master actually lie sealed deep inside the stupa, as the structure would have to be partly destroyed to reach its solid core – something the shrine’s custodians will never permit. 

It’s tempting when you arrive in Yangon to head straight for the mesmerising gilded spire on the horizon, but resist the urge if you can until early evening, when the warm light of sunset has a transformative effect on the gold-encrusted pagoda and its myriad subsidiary shrines.

Botataung Pagoda

It is said that when eight Indian monks carried relics of the Buddha here more than 2,000 years ago, 1,000 military officers (botataung)formed a guard of honour at the place where the rebuilt pagoda stands today. The original structure was destroyed by an Allies’ bomb in November 1943.

During the clean-up work, a golden casket in the shape of a stupa was found to contain a hair and two other relics of the Buddha. In addition, about 700 gold, silver and bronze statues were uncovered, as well as a number of terracotta tablets, one of which is inscribed both in Pali and in the south Indian Brahmi script, from which the modern Burmese script developed. Part of the discovery is displayed in the pagoda, but the relics and more valuable objects are locked away. Among these is the tooth of the Buddha, which Alaungsithu, a king of Bagan, tried unsuccessfully to acquire from Nan-chao (now China’s Yunnan province) in 1115. China eventually gave it to Burma in 1960. The 40-metre (130ft) bell-shaped stupa is hollow, and visitors can walk around the interior. Look out for the glass mosaic, and the many small alcoves for private meditation. The small lake outside is home to thousands of terrapin turtles; you can feed them with food sold at nearby stalls, thereby acquiring merit for a future existence.

National Museum

The National Museum (open daily 10am–4pm; charge) stands in a neighbourhood lined with foreign missions. The museum’s undisputed showpiece is King Thibaw’s Lion Throne, originally from Mandalay Palace – one of many valuables carried off by the British in 1886 after the Third Anglo-Burmese War. Some items on show here were shipped to the Indian Museum in Calcutta; others were kept in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The artefacts were, however, returned to Burma as a gesture of goodwill in 1964 after Ne Win’s state visit to Britain. The wooden throne, 8 metres (27ft) tall and inlaid with gold and lacquerwork, is a particularly striking example of the Burmese art of woodcarving. Among the Mandalay Regalia are gem-studded arms, swords, jewellery and serving dishes. Artefacts from Burma’s early history in Beikthano, Thayekhittaya and Bagan in the museum’s archaeological section include an 18^th-century bronze cannon and a crocodile-shaped harp.

Sule Pagoda

The Sule Pagoda (open daily; charge) is the shining stupa at the city’s heart which the British used as the centrepiece of their Victorian grid-plan system in the mid-19^th century. For centuries a focus of social and religious activity, the richly gilded monument rises from the middle of a busy intersection, surrounded on all sides by shops, swirling traffic and a proliferating number of high-rise hotels and office blocks – a location that belies the stupa’s great antiquity.

Its origins are believed to date back to 230 BC, when a pair of monks, Sona and Uttara, were sent from India as missionaries to Thaton after the Third Buddhist Synod. The King of Thaton gave them permission to build a shrine at the foot of Singuttara Hill in which the monks preserved a hair of the Buddha. The name “Sule Pagoda” itself, however, comes from a later period and is linked to the Sule Nat, or guardian spirit, of Singuttara Hill, who local legend claims showed the monks the site where the relics of three previous Buddhas had been buried. Inside, the pagoda’s shrines and images include four colourful Buddhas with neon halos behind their heads. As with all stupas, visitors should walk around it in a clockwise direction.

As well as its religious significance, the Sule Pagoda is iconic among the Burmese as the venue for several famous political demonstrations over the past three decades, most notably the rally of 1988 when the military opened fire on unarmed protesters, killing and injuring dozens. The monument also formed the focal point of mass gatherings during the Saffron Revolution of 2007.

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