Yangon is Myanmar’s largest city with a population of over 5 million people, being the economic and cultural center of the country. You can see that this is practically the only prosperous and ” civilized ” city in this country, focused on business development and having a vibrant life. It is also the most diverse city with a mixture of cultures and religions.
A lunch break in a local bar 🙂
Walking down the streets in the city center within a walking distance you will easily encounter Christian churches, Hindu and Budda temples, and mosques. In one street you can find yourselves in front of a Hindu temple, where you can hear prayers and rituals going on, and literally on the other side of the street you will notice Muslims hanging out close to the mosque. Moreover, it’s visible that citizens live better here, as in Yangon you will not see such an abject poverty as in Mandalay, moreover, you will find shopping centers quite easily, we saw even some foreign companies and an institute for studying English, there is not so much chaos on the roads and although traffic jams here are a complete disaster, you don’t hear drivers using horns so often. Arriving there for one day only and choosing this city as the last point of our Burmese journey, we could experience a big jump from the reality we got to know to that a bit more civilized one.
Being such a short period of time in Yangon we were able to find our 3 personal highlights of this city. Here they are:
- Kandawgyi Park – the largest park in Yangon being an ideal place for meeting people, relaxation and meditation. At its center you will see a pond where you can see a beautiful golden temple in the shape of a boatsituated on water. You can visit the park by walking a quite long wooden bridge:
- Shwedagon Pagoda is considered the most important temple in Yangon, protruding proudly above the city and glittering with gold. The admission fee to the temple is 8.000MMK / 6USD. The complex is huge, every tourist gets a map at the beginning as it is easy to get lost there, and the tour starts after the elevator takes you to the top. The area with Shwedagon Pagoda is filled with musuems and other temples.
- Maha Wizaya Pagoda is a pagoda that stroke us with its uniqueness. Its interior gives you an impression that you are in a forest, where in the center there is a shrine with the Buddha, and its incredible ambience is thanks to the walls painted with trees.
Many local people recommend visiting Sule Pagoda (in the photo below). To be honest, this temple was nothing special compared to what we saw before (there were much nicer temples in and around Mandalay, to which we did not even have to pay an entrance fee ..). Sule Pagoda can look charming from the outside but in our opinion there is nothing interesting or unique in its interior and it’s not worth the price we paid (admission fee is 3.000MMK / 2.25USD only – not much but should be for free as most of the temples near Mandalay).
