One day in Yangon: Best ways to get a taste of Myanmar

Catch the moment where past and modern Myanmar meet.

5 min read

November 17, 2016 - 12:00AM

A woman works at an old sewing machine in Yangon. Picture: iStock

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Now is the moment, Myanmar’s moment. Because while the country is opening up, with sporadic mobile phone coverage and internet access, there is still a sense of isolation and mystery.

Nod to Rudyard Kipling, it is quite unlike any place you know about.

Anyone who insists on grouping Vietnam-Cambodia-Laos-Thailand-Myanmar together as a single continuous country is in danger of not noticing the subtle differences of an extraordinary land. It’s a land scattered with glimmering pagodas and people who are just as curious about you as you are of them.

See more: Temple taboos you didn’t know existed

See more: Yangon: Top things to see

At the heart of Myanmar’s courtship with the outside world is Yangon, formerly Rangoon. Though no longer the official capital, Yangon remains Myanmar’s largest and most commercially important city. It’s where you’ll see diplomatic missions unfolding alongside profit-seeking dancing girls. Yangon is desperate to be South-East Asia’s next boomtown.

And there’s enough for the city to live up to the hype, but go now before Yangon’s moment is lost. Fourteen hours was just a taste ...

ESCAPE: Temples of South East Asia by Sara Nicholson. Monks at Shwedagon Pagoda, Yangon, Myanmar (Burma). Picture: Alamy

FRIDAY 1PM: Bogyoke Aung San Market

A whole afternoon could be spent wandering around this sprawling covered market, formerly known by its English name, Scott Market.

Built in 1926, it has more than 2000 shops where you can buy anything from ethnic textiles to the sarong-like longyi. Other items include jade jewellery, lacquer ware and thanaka. The markets solve the mystery of thanaka, the yellowish-white paste made from ground bark usually worn by the women and girls on their face and arms. At the markets it is sold in small logs individually or in bundles, in paste and powder form.

It’s been used by the Burmese for more than 2000 years and it smells like sandalwood. While cosmetic, it also provides a cooling sensation and provides protection from sunburn.

A local lady applies it to my arms and face, but my favourite activity at these markets is mailing a postcard. Red for international, yellow for local. Myanmar has a deal with Japan Post – and their postal system is efficient, cheap and gets to its intended destination in Australia quicker than my money order posted from the Gold Coast to Brisbane, to pay car insurance. I incurred a late fee.

The Blind Tiger, Yangon, Myanmar. Picture: Facebook Sunday Escape Selina Steele story

FRIDAY 3.30PM: The Strand

Think Raffles in Singapore. Built in 1901 by the Sarkies brothers, who also owned Raffles, The Strand is a haven of tranquillity. It is also one of Yangon’s best preserved colonial-era mansions, with teakwood, black leather and whirring ceiling fans.

Primarily an expat bar, which has hosted the likes of Kipling and George Orwell, the place starts to fill. It seems TGIF is an international movement.

FRIDAY 5.30PM: Shwedagon Pagoda

On this Friday, sunset is at 6.24pm and the race is on to catch the golden glow. The pagoda stands almost 100m high, and mystique of the gilded masterpiece – 27 metric tonnes of gold leaf – questions even the most belligerent of inner atheists.

The pagoda used to have Wi-Fi, but it was disabled after Gen-Y used the location for too much snapchat and not enough personal reflection.

Robert, our guide from Diethelm Travel, tells me locals pray according to the day they were born.

As I was born on a Friday, under the Myanmar-Burmese zodiac, I apparently have fabulous ideas, but have a hard time seeing them through to completion. But it does mean I can work for Chang brewery. The boss of Chang apparently doesn’t like Tuesday people (or was it Thursday?).

FRIDAY 7.30PM: Le Planteur, University Rd

Dining at Le Planteur is like dining on the set of The Great Gatsby. The house, built in 1901 and just a couple of doors up from where Aung San Suu Kyi, aka The Lady lives, features fine dining, a bistro and an excellent wine cellar. Dinner guests can also arrange free transfers in one of its vintage cars. Michelin-starred chef Felix Eppisser and his wife, Lucia, took over the place in 2011. Their company and food are considered a must for expatriates and Yangon’s well-heeled. Try the scallops, limed carpaccio, snow fish fillet in green crust and a black chocolate dome with passionfruit heart and tonka bean biscuit.

The Strand hotel, Yangon, Myanmar. Picture: supplied by hotel

FRIDAY 10PM: Blind Tiger bar

The Blind Tiger is full of journalists, political commentators, expats and NGOs. This is a local watering hole for locals, for the people who covered and lived through an election that changed a country. Their advice is read up: the people of Myanmar have come smiling through a series of societal and personal horrors and trauma – some still ongoing. And the impacts of which are still widely felt.

FRIDAY 11.30PM: Pioneer, Yangon International Hotel Complex

It’s a human disco that ticks all the boxes. Upper-class locals, dancing girls, Westerners, diplomats – there are sandals, stilettos, evening dresses, Lycra ... and water pipes also known as hookahs.

The shisha has a hose where the tobacco, usually fruit-flavoured, is smoked through a bendable hose that is filtered through a water chamber.

And at Pioneer, the hose is particularly popular with young ladies. It costs 6000 kyat (pronounced chat, about $6) to enter and this includes a voucher for a Myanmar beer.

The dance floor is packed, after all it’s a Friday night, but the one song that brings the house down is Queen’s We Will Rock You.

Sarkies Bar, The Strand hotel, Yangon, Myanmar. Picture: supplied by hotel

SATURDAY 2AM: The Roof, Yangon

Not a kebab shop in sight; where can I find some Mohinga noodles? This national dish of thin rice noodles and fish broth soup is available just about anywhere ... except at The Roof.

But The Roof is just how a beer garden should be – satellite broadcast of the latest EPL game playing in the corner, the beer cold – and the constant chink-chink of an overhead fan that is still trying to cool down a day that hit 42C.

The decor is green ... and a local worker in the corner happily chats in between spitting betel nut juice over the balcony railing. His teeth are stained red from years of chewing the areca nut and tobacco, which is then wrapped in a lime-coated betel leaf.

Chewing betel nut is a national pastime. It is said to give users a high – unlike the smoking water pipe, the shisha, which a lady of the night working the floor at Pioneer insists is a status symbol.

SATURDAY 2.30AM: Novotel Yangon

The Shwedagon Pagoda is winking at me from the five-star luxury of the Novotel Yangon.

The Novotel Yangon was the first hotel built in the previously off-limits country for 17 years.

It’s the type of hotel that Redfoo stays at when he’s rocking out at downtown Yangon.

Surely even Redfoo, from the presidential suite, was impressed by the sheer size and aura of the Pagoda?I don’t think there is a more stunning monument to religion in Asia.

The writer was a guest of Scoot, Accor Hotels and Novotel Yangon Max.