Rangoon, End of Strife

Accomplishing a long time dream we finally managed to come to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma which is still a widely used name; right before the country transforms itself and loses character and uniqueness since the lifting of majority of the sanctions imposed by the Western World and overall opening to the world after many years of strict closeness for its long lasting military rule. Unfortunately from now on it is matter of time until the first Western establishments start to pop all over the country, as the likes of McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut and so on.

Myanmar is a big country within Southeast Asia when compared to the other countries neighboring countries. It is quite long too, and it is packed with history on every corner. Even though the country suffered from a long war, with the British colonizing it in three different stages; then again suffering WWII, not much was lost architecturally speaking through the country, although Yangon was the most affected. However, it is the city with the largest amount of colonial structures in the country. The British, upon colonization, developed and grew the key cities following an orthogonal grid pattern urbanism, with parks and lakes, and transformed Yangon into the commercial and political hub of the British Burma, it’s capital. While no longer the capital of the country, it is still the largest and most important in the country.

There’s a lot to do and visit in Yangon. We planned 3 days, which unfortunately changed to just 2 since our outbound flight was cancelled and lost an entire day trying to get there. We managed in any case to see the majority of the city and really enjoyed our first contact with Myanmar, before continuing the rest of the planned tour in the country. (more…)