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Downtown Yangon is a dilapidated mixture of broken sidewalks, crumbling colonial era buildings and food vendors. Merchant Street is particularly crowded with vendors selling anything from spicy cherries to savory crepe-like pancakes filled with goodness. Burmese food is neither Indian nor Thai, but a delicious flavor palate of its own. The city is an amalgamation of British, Burmese, Chinese and Indian influences, known for its colonial architecture, which although decaying and beyond appreciation, remains an almost unique example of a 19th century British colonial capital.

Mango trees

All Myanmar traffic goes on the right-hand side of the road. This wasn’t always so. In an effort to distance itself from the British colonial period, the military government instigated an overnight-switch from the left to the right in 1970. By far, most cars either date from before 1970, or are low-cost Japanese models, so steering wheels are perilously found on the right-hand side – this becomes particularly dicey when a driver blindly zooms to the left to pass a car!

Central Business District (Downtown)

Foreigners are permitted to buy bus tickets of any class, using kyat, to any destination within or near the main Yangon–Bagan–Mandalay–Taunggyi quadrangle. Some sites require government fees, but the following areas are only accessible via previously arranged government permits from the MTT office in Yangon or a government-run trip.

New high-rise buildings were constructed from the 1990s (and some are eerily unoccupied and left as ghost skyscrapers as seen along Upper Pansodan Rd) as the government began to allow private investment. Meanwhile, former government buildings such as the massive Secretariat Building, have been left to rot as the capital is shifted to Naypyidaw.

From Hotel window

Yangon Panorama hotel

Yangon Panorama hotel

Yangon Panorama hotel

Yangon Panorama hotel

Yangon Panorama hotel

City Hall

Centrally located in downtown Yangon, Yangon City Hall is next to several important landmarks such as Sule Pagoda, Maha Bandula Park, High Court, and the Main Post Office. The building is considered a fine example of syncretic Burmese architecture, featuring traditional tiered roofs called pyatthat, and was designed by Burmese architect U Tin, who also designed Central Railway Station

The city hall has been the focal point of several major political demonstrations

The city hall has been the focal point of several major political demonstrations, including a 1964 People's Peace Committee rally supported by Thakin Kodaw Hmaing, which attracted 200,000 people and was subsequently clamped down by the Socialist regime and the site of several bombings, including one in 2000, 2008, and 2009

Immanuel Baptist Church is located in the center of Yagon just next to the Mahabandoola Garden near city hall. Founded in 1885 but destroyed during the World War II; the present Church was rebuilt in 1952

Sule Pagoda

Sule Pagoda

Mango tree

Supreme Court Justice of Myanmar

The Yangon Region Court building on Strand Road

The Yangon Sakura Tower

Strand Hotel

Declared “the finest hostelry East of Suez” by John Murray in his Handbook for Travellers written in the early 20th century, Strand Hotel, the 1901-built three storey building remains one of Southeast Asia’s grand colonial hotel and one of its most awe inspiring as it was in the early 20th Century

The Strand (also known as Strand Hotel) is a Victorian-style hotel built in 1896 by Aviet and Tigran Sarkie, two of the Sarkies Brothers. The hotel, which opened in 1901, which faces the Hlaing — or Yangon — River to its south, is one of the most famous hotels in Yangon and Southeast Asia, and is managed by the General Hotel Management. The hotel is named after its address, at 92 Strand Road.

on the way to the airport

Text: InternetPictures: Sanda Foişoreanu & InternetCopyright: All the images belong to their authors

Presentation: Sanda Foişoreanu www.slideshare.net/michaelasanda

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