The golden city — Shwedagon Pagoda, British colonial architecture, and Burmese food the world is only starting to discover
Myanmar's commercial capital (the administrative capital moved to Naypyidaw in 2006) sits in the Rangoon River delta with one of the largest intact collections of British colonial architecture in Asia — a downtown grid of late-Victorian public buildings on a formal city plan, now on the UNESCO Tentative List. Within that grid stands the Shwedagon Pagoda, a 99-meter gold-plated stupa that has been a continuous pilgrimage site for over 2,500 years. Burmese food (mohinga fish-broth noodle soup at breakfast; laphet thohk pickled tea-leaf salad; shan noodles; ohn no khao swè coconut chicken noodle…
Yangon (Rangoon under British rule) served as capital of British Burma from 1885 to 1942, when Japan occupied it during WWII. British-era urban planning laid out a grid of avenues named after colonial officials, with grand public buildings — the High Court, the Secretariat, the Strand Hotel, City Hall — most of which survive in varying states of repair. Aung San, the nationalist leader who negotiated independence from Britain, was assassinated in the Secretariat in July 1947; his daughter Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and spent 15 years under house arrest before the democ…