NAYPYIDAW

Junction and Capital, each of which have reasonable supermarkets and restaurants. Junction also has a cinema. There's another shopping mall complex further north with a much larger supermarket and an exchange bureau. Phone charge scratchcards are available in the Junction Centre. Foreign credit or debit cards are sometimes accepted in shops, however there are plenty of ATMs. Myanmar beer is very drinkable and there are several different types.

Locally produced whisky is very cheap, 5, Kyat a litre, even for the best local brands. Wine is also available including local red and white wine.

International wines are available, usually around 8, - 15, kyat. The Junction and Capital supermarkets have sections selling wine, beer and whisky. The hotel zone has a handful of villa-style hotels that dot the hills on the outskirts of the city. There are currently twelve hotels in or near Naypyidaw. Eight of these are within the Naypyidaw Hotel Zone. There are also some very large hotels in Naypyidaw. The distances are quite far between anywhere you want to go and the hotels.

Understand [ edit ] Naypyidaw is unique and a little bizarre. This city travel guide to Naypyidaw is a usable article. It has information on how to get there and on restaurants and hotels. An adventurous person could use this article, but please feel free to improve it by editing the page. Retrieved from " https: Has custom banner Has mapframe Has map markers Articles with dead external links Airport code pages missing Has see listing See listing with no coordinates Has do listing Has eat listing Has sleep listing Has Geo parameter Central Myanmar All destination articles Usable cities Usable articles City articles Pages with maps.

Views Read Edit View history. Tourist office Random page. In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikipedia. This travel guide page was last edited at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. I slept like a baby. In the morning I switched on the television. Al Jazeera was playing archive footage of the Yangon riots: Others escaped in the confusion. I opened the curtains and looked out at the resort, its ornamental ponds and golf courses, green and purple leaves beneath the tropical sun. The scene was as peaceful as it was alien. Someone rang the door buzzer, and I opened it to find a young hotel employee grinning in the corridor.

The rest of the staff were just as cheery, a veritable legion of cleaners and bellboys who swarmed through the halls of the hotel. The doors to the breakfast room were decorated with stained-glass gods and demons. Between the door and the breakfast bar, I was approached by no fewer than four staff.

The room was arranged with a vast buffet spread, divided neatly into sections according to cuisine. I was looking for coffee and curry but my hosts kept trying to direct me back to the European selection, kindly, as though rescuing a lost child. Instead a waiter gestured me to sit, and followed behind with my plate. Coffee was delivered, and refilled automatically whenever I got down past the halfway mark.

Sat at my corner table, I counted the staff I had seen so far this morning. Naypyidaw is, effectively, a new suburb tacked onto the western outskirts of Pyinmana: The twenty-lane highway leading towards parliament in Naypyidaw, Myanmar.

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In short, this was a very good place to put a capital. The roundabouts in Naypyidaw feature large sculptures that showcase different flowers of the region. There are other theories too, explaining why former military dictator Than Shwe decided to build a new capital a vanity project, some say, or out of fear of possible Western attacks from the sea , but the official reason alone is sufficient: Naypyidaw has infrastructure to spare. It is a capital built for the future, in a country preparing to grow at incredible speed.

Locals relax in the Fountain Park after dark. There were problems early on: But over the years Naypyidaw grew to include all the makings of a real city. The Naypyidaw General Hospital opened later in There were even talks about building a metro. A Russian firm announced its plan, in August , to construct a 50km line beneath Naypyidaw; but the project was eventually cancelled for lack of funds and low demand.

This is the riddle of Naypyidaw in a nutshell: Various government-run bus services connect the residential zones to the offices of state. There are public buses too, between different neighbourhoods.

Fortunately, the Aureum Palace Hotel seemed to have dealt with this scenario before. He was young, barely 18 I guessed, and his name was Htat. He shrugged, so I said it again. Htat listed various points of interest around Naypyidaw, and I gave him the thumbs up. The entrance to the National Landmark Garden in Naypyidaw. The city has a zoo, a safari park and four golf courses; a gem museum and a fountain garden. The National Museum includes a room full of gifts the former dictator received from foreign leaders, while the military museum is said to take some five hours to fully explore: These are the pre-packed tourist destinations, but there are plenty other places worth exploring.

The city has dozens of temples and pagodas: A monument watches over the road out of Naypyidaw, from the territory of the Defence Services Museum. For all its offerings though, the unusual geography of Naypyidaw makes it a very strange place to explore.

Breakfast in Naypyidaw

Out the window however, I was looking at nothing but fields. The territory of Naypyidaw has been cut into a messy grid of square blocks, and it looks as though developers pick just one at a time, at random, to build on. Some squares are finished, but most remain empty. Some still grow crops while others are grazed by cattle. Our young chauffeur, Htat, takes us for a drive around the unfinished capital.

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I can see why people have likened it to a ghost town. We drove down lane highways broadening to 20 lanes, on the roads in the Ministry Zone yet we might only pass a handful of other vehicles; service trucks, commuters on mopeds. There is an overwhelming sense of emptiness in these wide-open concrete spaces. A few years ago, I travelled to Ordos in China.

In Ordos, sprawling residential zones sat dusty and deserted. Unlocked doors led to unfurnished, box-like apartments whose residents had simply never arrived. Homes were decaying before they had ever been used. It was built in , modelled on a famous pagoda in India.

The residential zones of Naypyidaw, however, are actually quite homely and pleasant. Many people live in brick and wooden houses in the older townships, traditional styles that predate the arrival of the capital. Thousands of new residents, government employees, live in modern residential districts: The problem Naypyidaw seems to have, is simply that the plan was too ambitious.

Give it 60 years, as the global population continues to balloon, and these people might yet have the last laugh. My other big discovery, after a few hours exploring the city, was that Naypyidaw is unbearably hot in the daytime. Security guards slept beneath the bushes outside museums, market vendors hid under canvas awnings, and nobody — unless they absolutely had to — ventured out onto the streets.

Driving into the Ministry Zone on that massive, lane highway. The hotel looked almost deserted when we returned. Gardening tools lay abandoned in the grass, the forecourt empty. Inside, however, the lobby was busy with uniformed staff. A canvas-covered golf buggy pulled up shortly at the glass doors of the hotel, its driver another smart young man in a dress shirt, bowtie and longyi.

The restaurant, as it turned out, was a short walk away across the resort; in a wood-panelled pagoda beside the outdoor swimming pool. The interior was immaculate, all polished tiles, lace tablecloths and gold detailing. Two staff waited on us, while a third laid the table for a larger party. Some parts of Naypyidaw for example its hotels, highways and ministry district feel out of place in Myanmar; a country ranked as one of the poorest in the world, and where a quarter of the population lives below the national poverty line.

Myanmar, arguably, was ready for a new capital; but Naypyidaw is an extravagant response, and the very layout of this city can feel somewhat totalitarian. A Naypyidaw resident waters his lawn. There is a large army compound on the edge of Naypyidaw, while according to rumours, an underground complex beneath the capital is reserved for high-ranking government officials. Those wide highways, allegedly, were designed to double as aircraft runways: However to end the conversation there, to write off Naypyidaw as no more than a grotesque gesture of totalitarian city planning, would be to overlook the plight of the people who live here… the people who call Naypyidaw home , and the people who called this region home before Naypyidaw ever existed.

The road out of Naypyidaw, and beyond, the mountains of central Myanmar. Later that evening we hired another chauffeur, for a drive out to the markets at Myoma. We arrived at the market late, as the stalls were packing up. Men filled huge canvas sacks with litter; women washed blood and fish guts off the tarmac with bowls of soapy water. Rats shifted in the shadows behind mounds of plastic bags, while the food carts carried on serving beer, noodles, cold coffee and stewed mutton, to a handful of late night customers who perched on plastic garden furniture.

Scenes from the market at Myoma in Naypyidaw. This golden temple stands on an artificial platform. From street level, lifts carry visitors up to a raised walkway approaching the 99m structure. Beneath the platform busy markets spill out from the backstreets. Vendors sell food, clothes and souvenirs, taxi drivers honk and haggle, while in amongst the chaos, Buddhist monks drift gracefully through the crowds. The Uppatasanti Pagoda is one of the most important landmarks in Naypyidaw. It stands 99m tall, and has a reliquary said to contain a tooth of the Buddha. Tonight though, it was busy with visitors.

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People drifted about the enormous plaza — talking, praying, posing for photos. Spotlights lit the structure so bright that it seemed to glow from within. I found the pagoda quite beautiful; and though it was only a few years old, I liked the feel of this place better than any other temple I saw in Myanmar. Later, returning for our shoes, the cloakroom attendant wanted to know what us foreigners thought of their temple.

I told her it was incredible, and she blushed. It was at the Fountain Park, however, that we discovered the real soul of Naypyidaw. The illuminated entrance to the Fountain Park in Naypyidaw, Myanmar.