MTH Myanmar Travels and Tours, No 61 (A) Yay Gyaw Street, Pazundaung Township, Yangon (2026)

13/05/2017

Asia Pacific | Bagan Journal
Myanmar Is Restoring Temples to Rebuild its Heritage

By MIKE IVESMAY 11, 2017
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Hot air balloons flying over the temples of Bagan, Myanmar, in March. Credit Minzayar Oo for The New York Times

BAGAN, Myanmar — The vendor watched as members of an increasingly rare species — tourists — walked through a dirt parking lot toward Pyathat Gyi Temple, one of more than 2,000 religious monuments here on a riverside plain in central Myanmar.

They did not stop to buy her palm-sugar candies, which she covers with a plastic tarp to keep flies away, or any of the hats or T-shirts for sale at some nearby carts and stalls. It was nearly dusk and she had yet to make the day’s first sale.

“It used to be crowded here, before the earthquake,” the vendor, Daw Soe Moe Thue, said, referring to a 6.8-magnitude quake last year. It damaged 389 of Bagan’s monuments, and broke Pyathat Gyi’s spire as if it were one of her candies.

“Now, no one.”

Many of Bagan’s monuments were restored by Myanmar’s former military government in the 1990s, after a previous earthquake, in a way that international experts criticized as heavy-handed. The government abandoned an effort at the time to seek United Nations World Heritage status for the complex.
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Restoration at Pyathat Gyi Temple, which was damaged by an earthquake last year. Credit Minzayar Oo for The New York Times

Now Myanmar’s new civilian government is planning a fresh World Heritage bid for Bagan, and experts say that because the 2016 earthquake destroyed some of the military’s clumsiest restoration work, the new bid stands a better chance of succeeding.

But people in Bagan say they worry that officials with ties to wealthy developers, using the United Nations as a cover, could interfere with religious life or push zoning changes that would further impoverish people who were once evicted by the military to make way for luxury hotels.
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Not rebuilding the temple spires, they say, would also make the monuments less attractive and depress domestic tourism.

“World Heritage? No one cares about that,” Ms. Soe Moe Thue said as she stood under an umbrella in a light drizzle recently. “We just need to survive.”

Bagan’s monument complex is a crown jewel in a tourism sector that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and has grown rapidly since Myanmar, a majority Buddhist country, began a rocky transition toward democracy in 2011.

But even though some of the monuments here were built in the 11th century, tourists often regard the complex as flawed because the military’s 1990s-era renovations — marked in cherry red bricks — are seen as detracting from its authenticity

In the 1990s, the military government abandoned its World Heritage bid because it feared its “really horrible” restoration work would face harsh scrutiny from international experts, said Pierre Pichard, a longtime consultant for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization who first visited Bagan in 1975.

But the 2016 earthquake, he said, could offer Myanmar’s new government a fresh start with Unesco because it destroyed much of the military’s worst construction work, particularly the temple spires that it built in the 1990s.

“It came at the right moment,” he said of the earthquake during a recent trip to Bagan.

Daw Ohnmar Myo, Unesco’s Myanmar project officer, said that the government planned to submit a World Heritage bid for the site by next February and that the complex could be officially

Unesco consultants are now developing a detailed conservation plan for Ananda Ok Kyaung, an 18th-century monastery in Bagan that experts say was severely damaged in the earthquake. A careful restoration there could become a blueprint, they say, for a wider conservation program if the World Heritage bid is approved.

“The good thing about a Unesco tag is that people are always forced to think, ‘Would this be acceptable or not’” from an international conservation perspective, said Gurmeet S. Rai, a conservation architect based in New Delhi who is advising the monastery project.

Otherwise, she said, people working on conservation sites might be tempted to “start cutting corners.”

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s governing National League for Democracy, has said that any postearthquake conservation work in Bagan should have support from local people and avoid altering monuments, according to reports in the Myanmar news media.
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Tourists on e-bikes encountered some cows and sheep. Credit Minzayar Oo for The New York Times

To help rally support for its Unesco bid, the government plans to abolish military-era laws that prevented Bagan residents from opening small guesthouses, said U Aung Aung Kyaw, the director of Bagan’s archaeology department. And to comply with Unesco recommendations, he said, the government will allow rebuilding work at only five of the 89 sites in the monument complex that were either moderately or heavily damaged by the earthquake.

“If we don’t protect our cultural heritage, we can’t pass it on to the next generation,” he said.

Some community groups in Bagan, however, fear that a World Heritage designation would exacerbate existing restrictions on where and how they can build homes or operate businesses in New Bagan, a district on the city’s dusty outskirts where people were forced to resettle in 1990 after the military government evicted them from a monument zone downtown.

Instead of leaving the monument zone free of development, the military government allowed for the construction there of several high-end hotels, including one on the site of a former school, said U Aung Shwe, the second secretary at the Bagan Development Committee, a nongovernmental organization that provides free ambulance, funeral and firefighting services for many of the city’s poorest residents.

Thatbyinnyu Temple is among the monuments undergoing restoration. Credit Minzayar Oo for The New York Times

Hotels are still being built in the monument zone, and local elites see a potential World Heritage designation as a source of high-end tourism revenue, not a tool for curbing the city’s glaring social inequality, said U Khin Maung, the chairman of the Bagan Development Committee and a tour guide in the monument zone.

“The new government should take care of its people, not squeeze our necks,” he said.

There is also deep concern here about the archaeology department’s decision not to rebuild many damaged temple spires.

“In our Buddhist tradition, not having a top on a temple is like having a person without a head,” said U Thay Zaniya, a monk who lives in a monastery beside the Sulamani Temple, a popular monument where the archaeology department says a spire that fell in the earthquake will not be replaced. “It’s a disgraceful sight.”

Mr. Thay Zaniya said he had reluctantly accepted the department’s decision because Unesco had warned that rebuilding the spire could expose the temple to damage during Bagan’s next earthquake.

But U Kyaing, the caretaker of Dhammayazika pagoda, another popular monument in Bagan, said the price of accepting Unesco’s advice would be shirking his religious duty.

Such a trade, he said, was unacceptable.

“We need to rebuild our pagoda so that the next generation will know what it looks like,” he said on a balmy evening outside the pagoda, as birds swooped overhead in gentle parabolas. “If we don’t, we would lose our heritage.”
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A worker making his way up to the roof of Pyathet Gyi Temple, which is being restored. Credit Minzayar Oo for The New York Times

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07/12/2014

MARK RICHARDS' TRAVEL BLACK BOOK; Insights at Inle

7 December 2014
Straits Times
STIMES
English
(c) 2014 Singapore Press Holdings Limited

Visitors to Inle Lake in Myanmar can observe village life on stilt houses and birds on migration

Who: Singaporean Mark Richards, 39, is group executive chef of the Caerus Holding restaurants, which include Nuvo, Procacci, Lady M Confections and Ujong @ Raffles.

Favourite destination: Shan state, Myanmar

Why: I like it because of the clean, crisp and cool air. The people there are friendly, caring and honest. I have been there once a year for the past two years as it is my wife's home state.

Favourite hotel

ViewPoint Lodge & Fine Cuisines (www.inleviewpoint.com; tel: +95(0)8120-9062) in Nyaungshwe, Myanmar, where my wife, Nang Hsaddan Phyu, and I spent our honeymoon. The hotel has clean facilities and its decor is traditional yet has a modern feel.

Its 20 stilt cottages are located on a canal near the tranquil Inle Lake, a must-visit for any tourist to Shan.

Favourite restaurant

The Golden Kite Restaurant in Taunggyi (Yone Gyi and Myawaddy Road, Taunggyi). It serves Burmese and Italian food and this is the only local restaurant in the area that has European-influenced dishes on the menu, which is good because it gives you some variety.

My favourite dishes there are the stuffed lake butterfish and pizza. A meal would cost about $15 for three people.

Favourite tourist site

Inle Lake. It is serene, beautiful and picturesque. The journey through the lake is breathtaking and the view, magnificent.

Must-try dishes

To fully immerse yourself and understand the country's culture, one must explore the local streets and shop at the wet markets to taste the best and authentic Myanmar flavours.

Try the tea leaf salad called lahpet thoke. It is made of tea leaves that are marinated in garlic and chilli oil and tossed with tomato, fried beans and cabbage.

Shan-style tofu noodles is a savoury dish that doesn't actually include tofu. It is a thick porridge made from chickpea flour that is served over thin rice noodles with chunks of marinated chicken or pork. The dish is topped with a drizzle of chilli oil and served with sides of pickled veggies and broth.

My favourite dish is mohinga. It is a robust, savoury and hearty rice noodle and catfish soup. It is available throughout the day, but it's usually eaten for breakfast. I prefer the homemade versions, but you can easily find all these dishes in local coffee shops and wet markets.

Best view

Visit the Shwe Phone Pwint Pagoda, which is at the top of Taunggyi mountain. It offers a fantastic view of the sunset.

Event to bookmark

Tazaungdaing Lighting Festival which is held around October and November. In Shan state, particularly in Taunggyi, hot air balloons are lit with candles and released to celebrate the full moon.

Best hidden find

Yepusan hot springs about 5km south of Kengtung on the road to Tachileik in southern Shan state. There are regular flights from Yangon to Kengtung (also known as Kyaingtong).

Visitors coming from Thailand are allowed to cross into this border town with border passes. Tachileik is also a border crossing point through which visitors from Thailand come to Myanmar. Regular air services are available between Heho, Mandalay, Tachileik and Yangon. From these domestic airports, there are private buses and vehicles that can take you to the hot spring area.

You can also rent a bike in Kengtung and cycle the bumpy road for 45 minutes towards the mountains, then spend a relaxing afternoon at the hot springs. The hot springs are actually four swimming pools in a big concrete spa centre, so you do not go there for the natural surroundings. The bike ride to the spa, however, is very scenic, though the dirt road is a bit rough.

It costs $5 a person to enter a common pool and $8 for access to the three private pools. The prices include a towel and there is a full bar available.

Necessary day trips

Visit the Kakku Pagoda, about 40km from Taunggyi. It is one of Asia's largest and most spectacular ancient monuments, with over 2,000 stupas dating back many hundreds of years.

All the stupas are packed closely together and centred around a main one that is about 40m tall. While the stupas surround it uniformly, each one is an individual masterpiece and was originally topped by a gilded metal hti, a multi-tiered umbrella-like feature typical of Myanmar pagodas.

Many of these hti have fallen, as have some of the external mortar and stucco sculptures on the stupas. Trees have even established themselves inside a few.

Still, so many of the original stupas exist and the whole site is remarkably well-preserved.

It is not only an outstanding example of traditional art and architecture, but also a testament to the religious devotion of the Pa-O, one of Myanmar's many ethnic minorities who for many centuries have lived in peace, cultivating their land and devoting much of their energy and limited wealth to creating monasteries and pagodas.

Favourite memory

The boat ride on Inle Lake, which is 22km long and densely inhabited by many tribes.

A boat trip on the lake is a must. Tours cost anywhere from 10,000 kyat (S$12) for a half-day tour to 18,000 kyat for a tour around the whole lake, which I recommend. We travelled from Nyaungshwe to Inle Lake, where we went to the wet market and bought some bread and crackers to feed the seagulls. They fly right next to the boat and catch the tidbits you throw in mid-air.

While on the lake, you will also pass the villagers who live on stilt houses and you get to see how they cook, clean and live their daily lives.

Inle Lake is also a great place for birdwatching as it is used by thousands of water-birds on migration. The lake is a wildlife sanctuary and a warden can introduce a guide who knows the names of the birds.

Ideal length of stay

Five days. It is a romantic area and a great place to go with your partner to experience the beautiful sights and delicious food together.

Best advice

Bring warm clothing because the air can be chilly, especially at night.

[email protected]

Chef Mark Richards and his wife Nang Hsaddan Phyu in an ornament shop in Taunggyi, Myanmar. -- PHOTO: COURTESY OF MARK RICHARDS

Singapore Press Holdings Limited

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26/07/2014

Myanmar: Enter As Tourist, Exit As Devotee
(Rajendra K Aneja’s article direct from the BUSINESS STANDARD on 24 July 2014.)

Myanmar, land of pagodas that shares many similarities with India, is putting its past behind to catch up with modern world.

“Try to be happy. Happiness is important. Even birds and trees should be happy. Do not rush to do many things in the time that you are here for this conference. Then you will enjoy your visit,” advises Michael Chin, chairman of Chin Corp of Myanmar.

I am stunned. Most business leaders focus on enhancing productivity and multi-tasking in short bursts of time to boost sales and profits.

Here is an executive who is counseling his employees and the delegates at an international management conference to focus on being happy. I am flummoxed. True, happy employees produce great results. Yet, no business school or management expert teaches the importance of the happiness of employees or how to measure it.

Myanmar is full of such rich peculiarities. The country laments the wastage of the last 50 years of military rule that left it trailing dynamic South-east cousins like Thailand, Malaysia and Taiwan. Now, under a more liberal government that is dismembering age-old shackles to boost the economy, the Myanmarese are raring to catch up with the modern world.

“We are Buddhists, we are not bitter about the past. We move on,” says Yan Yan, a young shopkeeper selling jade Buddhas in the Bogyoke Aung San Market in Rangoon, now called Yangon. This traditional market has hundreds of shops selling textiles, silverware, lacquer, and handicrafts.

“Industry came late to our country, so we Myanmarese became good with our fingers and hands,” says Mama Piy who owns a shop selling lions carved from the famed Burmese teak wood. Mama Piy, like many Myanmarese, is a gentle, self-effacing and shy person, though she is an astute businesswoman.

Myanmarese girls pour tumblers of water on the statues of Buddha in various corners of the famed Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon. In the last few years, US President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also visited the pagoda and poured water over the shoulders of Buddha to seek his blessings.

This golden domed Buddhist pagoda is 2,600 years old and is an exclusive gem of Myanmar. There are innumerable Buddhist temples and shrines within this vast pagoda. Visitors are humbled by the faith of the devotees and the fervency of their prayers. You enter as a tourist, you exit as a devotee.

Great Shwe Dagon Pagoda 1862.
It is the Buddhist spirit of tolerance and forgiveness that has over the decades enabled the Myanmarese to assimilate several nationalities and races into their fold, even when their economy was struggling. Over the centuries, Indians, Chinese, Bangladeshis, Hindus, Muslims and Christians have made Myanmar their home. Buddhist pagodas, Muslim mosques, Hindu temples, Christian churches co-exist in the vicinity of one another.

The pride of every Myanmarese is the new, shining capital — Nay Pyi Taw. Built on raw forest land in a record 14 years, this is a vast, stunning, modern town. It is a testimony to what the Myanmarese can achieve, given the will and desire. It is a meticulously planned town, with spaces earmarked for government buildings, residential areas, shopping locations and world-class hotels.

Grand hotels and buildings built from steel, glass and chrome dot the skyline. The roads are wide with eight to 10 lanes, so traffic runs seamlessly. “We are building the infrastructure for the next 100 years here,” says a university professor. Colourful fountains light up the roads every night. A 320-km concrete highway connects Yangon with the capital. Green paddy fields cover the long highway on either side.

The Myanmarese are fanatical about cleanliness. The pagodas as well as most streets and highways are spotlessly clean. Herein, they differ from India, which is on the way to becoming one of the dirtiest countries in the world. Hence, the Myanmarese team leader of a syndicate on developing Yangon, in which I participated, opined, “We consider Dubai and Brasilia as models, but not Mumbai or Bangalore.” I agreed. India is letting its cities degenerate into slums.

Seated at a round-table at dinner, with a dozen delegates from Thailand and Korea, I remark they must be enjoying Myanmarese cuisine. In response, I get blank looks. Later a Myanmarese professor explains to me, “We use a lot of masalas in our food, like you Indians. The Thais and Koreans do not relish our strong masalas.”

It is not merely spices that bond India and Myanmar. Most Myanmarese greet strangers with the traditional Indian “namaste” with folded palms. I also find paan (betelnut) shops in many crowded markets in the cities and even in the villages.

The Myanmarese also wear the “lungi”, now transformed into a global icon by Shah Rukh Khan after his “lungi-dance” song. However, the Myanmarese wear colourful “longyis”, woven into a cylindrical form, held by a tight knot at the stomach. For formal occasions, it is woven from silk. “It does not fall off or slip down; the knot has to be tight,” demonstrates Chin.

A short distance from the thick green foliage and giant banyan trees of the Shwedagon Pagoda is the grave of the last Mughal emperor of India, Bahadur Shah Zafar, who was banished for his role in the 1857 mutiny. He was exiled to Burma (as it was called then) in 1858, where he died in 1862.

In his last days, he wrote a poem of heart-rending longing, which Indians, like my father, remember by heart: “Kitnâ hé bad-naseeb Zafar; dafn ke liye, do gaz zamîn bhî na milî kû-e-yâr méñ ( How unfortunate is Zafar! For his burial, not even two yards of land were to be had in the land of his beloved).”

Coincidentally, the last emperor of Burma was exiled by the British to India in 1885. Emperor Thibaw Min, his wife Supayalat and their children lived in Ratnagiri in Maharashtra, where he died in 1916.

Later, Indian freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak was imprisoned at Mandalay Fort for sedition by the British. Released in 1914, he had told the court, “There are higher powers that rule the destinies of men and nations and it may be the cause I represent may be benefited more by my suffering than my freedom”.

Myanmarese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the world’s most prominent political prisoner who spent 15 years under house arrest, is now a free citizen. She was the tormented face of Myanmar for the last two decades. Now, she may contest for the president’s job in 2015. It will be a tough match. The current president, Thein Sein, is delivering growth and jobs.

As my taxi speeds to the airport, I crane my neck for a long look at the golden dome of the Shwedagon Pagoda in the azure sky. And I think: here is a neighbour which is so close to India in culture, history, greetings, spices, handicrafts and even “lungis”, yet we know so little about the rapid strides this country is making to leap into the brave, new world.

(Rajendra K Aneja has worked for Unilever in Asia, Latin America and Africa. A Sir Dorabji Tata Scholar, he has authored the book Agenda for a New India.)

13/01/2014

Myanmar shows off its soft side Yangon residents provide a warm welcome and reveal they are surprisingly romantic Story and photos Published: 12 Jan 2014 at 00.00 Newspaper section: Brunch On...

20/12/2013

Myanmar's beaming welcome

By Tim Roxborogh
1:30 PM Friday Dec 20, 2013

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Asia
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Myanmar (Burma)

After decades of self-isolation, this secret country opens up, writes Tim Roxborogh.
Inle Lake's shoreline is hard to define, meaning everything is built in relation to the water.
Inle Lake's shoreline is hard to define, meaning everything is built in relation to the water.

Zipping around on a wooden long-tail boat on Inle Lake, one of Asia's prettiest lakes, it seemed a shame we were about to smash into some dear conical-hat-wearing ladies, undoubtedly sinking their boat.

Only the high-speed collision wasn't accidental and it turns out these narrow boats (which can carry half a dozen westerners single file, probably 40-plus locals) are pretty adept at stopping quickly and sidling up to each other without capsizing.

This is particularly true when the boat you're colliding with is decked out with trinkets for you to buy and the ladies on board just happen to be relatives of the captain of your boat.

So the high-speed long-tail-boat collision turned into the fun chatter of bartering for goods you don't really want as you wait for your boat to slide its way through the dozens of others crammed against the shoreline of a fully-fledged, floating market.

To get to this final phase of my 15-day Myanmar Intrepid adventure I'd seen the leafy pandemonium of the fast-developing (and very likeable) Yangon (formerly Rangoon), caught an overnight boat on the Ayerwaddy (Irrawaddy) River upcountry to the historic sites of Mandalay (such as the world's longest teak bridge, the U Bein Bridge), trekked through highland villages near Kalaw transformed by the UN Development Programme and let a horse and cart do the hard work in the famous Bagan.

But it was this last stop that took me to a place where the balance between adventure, natural beauty and shameless fun reached its peak.

Inle Lake may be more subtle in charms than the temple-dotted plain of Bagan - the undisputed jewel in the Myanmar tourist crown - though it's a close, close runner-up.

Lakes are hardly unique, so why spend your tourist dollars on getting to Inle Lake in Myanmar? For a start, no one really knows how big Inle Lake is because the shoreline is so hard to define. As a result, everything is built in relation to the water.

Aside from the floating markets, you can happily get lost amid floating villages, floating resorts (including world-class five-star resorts), floating gardens, floating temples and quite gorgeous floating silver, lacquer-ware, textile and to***co cottage industries.
Floating gardens and villages are dotted around Inle Lake. Floating gardens and villages are dotted around Inle Lake.

The postcard-perfect tourist photos of Inle Lake traditionally show fishermen working with their cage-nets in much the same fashion as they did 10 or 100 years ago. Indeed, separated from the claustrophobia of the floating markets, the serenity of a still lake that's framed by mountains with a hazy tropical sun silhouetting these countless fishing boats is very much a part of why you explore countries like this.

But so, too, is the discovery of something you feel is all your own.

I'd gone walking by myself away from Nyaung Shwe's (Inle Lake's main town with arguably Myanmar's best backpacker scene beside good riverside restaurants) frenetic central streets and found a neat family-run establishment called the Thanakha Garden.

Not "neat" as in a half-hearted 80s compliment, but in the true sense of the word. A shortish distance from what is currently Nyaung Shwe's commercial heart and what will probably soon be a fairly upmarket spot, Thanakha Garden found me thirsty and hungry after a major exploration of the lesser-known part of town.

It's run by two sisters who'd trained in hospitality in Thailand. They could've stayed there and made more money but decided to move back home and buy the property next to their parents' house and turn it into a restaurant.

If the food hadn't been incredible, I guess the decor's merits (beautiful in a careful, uncluttered way) wouldn't have mattered, but it's fair to say I didn't know fried rice could be that good. Add to that the free peanuts while I waited, the best watermelon ice-shake in Myanmar and the also-free post-meal papaya. There might've been a Coke in there too, and all for about $3. I think I tipped a further $3 and still felt cheap.

Such was the food (and the service) that later that night I returned with some of my travelling buddies for dessert and drinks and we all had the feeling of being humbled by the sisters' dedication and the sacrifice they'd made for their parents and wider family.

As they wait on their quiet side street for the tourists who are about to flood into their country for the first time in decades, theirs is a story echoed all over Myanmar.

In a country full of corruption, where money still tends to stay with the wealthiest people, I felt both sad and hopeful.

CHECKLIST

Getting there: Intrepid Travel's Best of Burma (Myanmar's former name) tour departs on selected dates throughout 2014.

Details: See Student Flights or phone 0800 255 995.

Tim Roxborogh travelled through Myanmar courtesy of Intrepid Travel and Flight Centre.

17/12/2013

Hot Destination: Myanmar (Burma)

Sunset views in Myanmar (Forbes Image)

Our hot destination at the moment is Myanmar. After a long period of inaccessibility, this once isolated nation at the cross roads to India and China has finally opened its doors to new frontier type travellers.

Myanmar is now easily reachable from London by flying via Bangkok with Thai Airways or from New York via Seoul with Korean Air . Alongside this, two modern internal airlines have upgraded and expanded their networks meaning that new destinations off the beaten track can now be reached; From mountain trekking and rafting in the far north, to world class diving and sailing amongst the 800 islands of the Mergui Archipelago in the south.

The hidden world of Myanmar is virtually untouched by mass tourism, with pristine white beaches, sparkling blue lakes, serene Buddhist architecture and vibrant cities. Spanning a rich and glorious heritage of over two thousand years, the ancient cities attest to a culture which is home to 125 different ethnic groups.

PARNASSUS TIPS ON WHAT TO SEE AND DO

SHOPPING
Start your trip in the bustling former capital of Yangon by exploring the Bogyoke Aung San Market to pick up textiles, antiques and precious stones, in particular Burmese rubies.

HOT AIR BALLOON OVER BAGAN
Take a hot air balloon at dawn over Bagan, and watch the gold robed monks starting their morning prayer sessions and look out over the dramatic landscapes of thousands of temples and pagodas. It is also worth spending time exploring the exquisite Stupas (Buddhist monuments) by horse and cart.

SHWEDAGON PAGODA
Take a trip to Shwedagon Pagoda at sunset as this golden Stupa is Myanmar’s most iconic structure. Take a guide and learn about the history of the unique architecture and incredibly rich heritage.

MANDALAY
Visit the U Bein Bridge, a long and rickety bridge crossing the Taugthaman Lake. Here you can observe thousands of monks at the Mahagandayon Monastery. It is one of the most tranquil places on earth.

LOIKAW
Visit the fascinating Loikaw Market to mingle amongst the hill tribes.

KALAW
Take a trip to Kalaw, and hike through the lush jungle clad hills and pine forests stopping off in Shan State villages.

RIVER CRUISE
Take a journey from Mandalay to Bagan by boat, and you will see some of the most stunning scenery in the world.

ANDAMAN COAST
Take your pick from one of the stunning beaches on the idyllic palm fringed stretch of coast, situated amongst the tiny fishing villages of the Andaman coast.

INGLE LAKE
Take a visit to the floating villages and bustling local markets, and take in the beauty of Myanmar’s eastern Shan region.

COOKING LESSON
Take a cooking lesson for a taster into typical Shan-style food.

ACCOMMODATION:

The Governor’s Residence
The Governor’s Residence is an imposing Burmese mansion restored to its former imperial glory. Surrounded by a lush lotus garden, this hotel resumes the same style as when it was an official residence.

The Strand Yangon
Located on the banks of the Yangon River, The Strand is housed in a restored Victorian mansion that exudes history and grandeur.
Shangri-La Traders Yangon
This Shangri- La property dominates the skyline, offering fabulous views over Yangon.

Bagan Thiripyitsaya Sanctuary Resort
Bagan Thiripyistaya Sanctuary Resort is situated on the banks of the Irrawaddy, perfectly located for panoramic river views and glorious sunsets.

Inle Lake View Resort Hotel
The Inle Lake View Resort is a beautifully designed, boutique hotel on the shores of Inle Lake, built on 24 acres of gardens encompassed by trees and flowers.

What to Read Before You Go
Finding George Orwell in Burma, by Emma Larkin (2004), documents the year the American writer spent tracing the steps of Orwell, who lived in British-ruled Burma (Myanmar) in the 1920s.

MTH Myanmar Travels and Tours

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