Downtown Yangon

Yangon holds one of the largest surviving concentrations of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century commercial architecture in Southeast Asia, laid out on a grid between the Shwedagon and the river. The Secretariat, the High Court, the Strand Hotel, the customs house and dozens of bank buildings are all still standing, most of them in use, many of them subdivided into flats with laundry hanging from the balconies. The trees are enormous, the pavements are broken, and the effect is of a city that never had the money to demolish anything.

History

The east-west grid of downtown was laid out in 1852 by the British engineers Alexander Fraser and Montgomerie and later developed by the Public Works Department, and most of the sites on the Yangon City Heritage List lie within it (Wikipedia, Downtown Yangon).

What's there

• The Secretariat - a vast red-brick administrative complex on Thein Byu Road, partly restored.
• The bank blocks - Pansodan Street's row of early twentieth-century banking halls and offices.
• Strand Road - the river frontage with the customs house, port buildings and the Strand Hotel.
• The street life - tea shops on the pavement, book stalls on Pansodan, and betel sellers on every corner.

When to go

November to February is the cool dry season and the only comfortable time to walk the grid all day. March to May is severely hot, and the monsoon from June floods the streets in the afternoons. Early morning is when the tea shops and markets are at their best.

Before you go

Most buildings cannot be entered and are seen only from the pavement. The state of repair is genuinely poor in places and scaffolding and hoardings move around. Pavements are uneven, drains are open, and the heat makes a walking day harder than the distances suggest.

Nearby

The Sule Pagoda stands in the middle of the grid, and Bogyoke Aung San Market is a few blocks north.

Key facts