36 Hours in Yangon, Myanmar
By CEIL MILLER BOUCHET FEB. 7, two thousand fourteen
It’s Myanmar’s moment, and the country’s major city, Yangon (formerly Rangoon), is hoping to become Southeast Asia’s next boomtown. Diplomatic missions, business delegations and tourists have packed Yangon’s hotels since the country’s military government began transferring power to civilian leaders in 2011. The spotlight resumes this year as Myanmar, also known as Burma, takes on the chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. For now, however, as the road map for laws and reforms is being drawn, the city remains in a kind of urban time warp, still awaiting a much-needed capital infusion to fuel what it hopes to be its renaissance. Golden pagodas, colonial-era buildings, traditional shop houses and moldering jazz-age mansions form a low-rise fabric unique to Asia, the entire stitched together by tree-lined avenues swarming with buses and cars. While ethnic and religious tensions simmer along Myanmar’s borderlands, including in remote Rakhine State, where there have been latest outbreaks of religious violence, Yangon is far from these areas. Still, time will tell whether the city will reclaim its former status as a cosmopolitan capital.
On Yangon’s chaotic riverfront boulevard, Strand Road, stately buildings like the Custom-made House, the Central Post Office and the British Embassy bear stucco and stone witness to the city’s turn-of-the-century status as one of the British Empire’s key commercial and trading hubs. A haven of tranquillity, the Strand Hotel, among Yangon’s best-preserved colonial-era mansions, has cosseted globe-trotters almost continuously since the Armenian Sarkies Brothers, owners of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, opened it in 1901. It’s also home to Sea Gallery I, opened by a Kiwi expatriate, Gill Pattison, in two thousand five and the ideal place to explore Yangon’s zizzing contemporary art scene. Last year Ms. Pattison expanded, with Sea Gallery II, just up the street in a lofty-ceilinged former law office.
A slightly stodgy medley of teakwood, black leather and whirring ceiling fans, the Strand Bar comes to life during Friday evening blessed hour, when drinks are half price and a worldly mélange of hotel guests, expatriates and locals gather to throw back a Dagon Beer (on tap, Trio,000 kyat, or about $Three at nine hundred forty kyat to the dollar) or sip a Strand Sour made with Mandalay rum (about 8,000 kyat). Local intelligence flows loosely, as in the days when the likes of George Orwell or Rudyard Kipling came here. A few blocks further on Strand Road, in the majestic Myanmar Crimson Cross Building, is the fresh Union Bar & Grill, opened last March, where you’ll find seasonal food, free Wi-Fi and cocktails like the Mango Sunset, with house-infused Kaffir lime rum (about 6,500 kyat).
When the tropical sun goes down, 19th Street, inbetween Maha Bandoola and Anawrahta Roads, still sizzles. Mounds of grill-ready raw meat and fresh seafood, arrayed on outdoor tables along this upbeat pedestrian spread, lie ready to meet their flamy fate. A grilled fish runs about Five,000 kyat. Squeamish about street food? No worries, there’s enough cheap draft beer and cocktails at places like Ko San Bar for a 2nd glad hour. Other local dinner options featuring Burmese specialties from salads to curries, like Taing Yin Thar Myanmar National Restaurant or Khine Khine Kyaw, are a taxi hop away near Inya Lake, a more residential area of town where once-posh villas peek from behind mildew-streaked walls and lush foliage. Dinner at either place will cost Ten,000 to 15,000 kyat.