WE Smile Magazine June 2015

TRAVEL
It was a sweltering day on the dusty road
to Sule Pagoda, and I was sitting in the
back of a twenty year old taxi. There are
no metered taxis in Yangon, and prices
are negotiated before your ride, as is the
option for air conditioning.
“It’s worse every day!” remarked the
driver, “Long traffic jams, more new cars
but the same old roads!”
This mentality would sum up much of
the pains that modern day citizens face.
For all the recent surges in economic
funds and tourism, the city was gridlocked
with what is best described as colonial-era
infrastructure. There is no doubt that with
modernisation, big changes are about to
happen. Yangon International Airport is on
the brink of completing its new terminal,
large foreign investments are improving
the health care sector, and shiny new
buildings with western style fast food outlets
are now popular with Myanmar’s youth.
But for the moment, I didn’t want to think
about the new. I was searching for the
old. In Yangon, you don’t get much more
ancient than Sule Pagoda. It’s considered
the centre of the city and is rumoured to
be older than the famous Shwedagon
Pagoda. The golden spire is flanked by
important sites like the 1920’s style Yangon
City Hall, Independence Monument, and
nearby Supreme Court of Myanmar which
was completed in 1911 and is still in use
today. From here, one could walk south
towards the river, passing secondhand
book dealers and some of the most beautiful
colonial architecture in the country. There
are buildings that have been lovingly
restored while others show the wear and
tear of years, looking abandoned to the ages.
On Strand Road, these flaking structures
still buzz to life on weekdays when it’s
business as usual. With the accompanying
markets and petite women balancing trays
of fruits on their heads, it does not take
much imagination to picture how Yangon