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Yangon City Rangoon Myanmar Shwedagon Pagoda
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Yangon airport, Yangon
city, Rangoon, Shwedagon,
Yangon pagoda,
Yangon hotels, Yangon Myanmar, Rangoon
Myanmar,
Yangon
river, Yangon pictures , Yangon photo, Myanmar.
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- Yangon City or Rangoon,
which faces the
ocean and is
enclosed by the
Irrawaddy
or Ayeyarwady delta could be a great city but
actually there are many problems in Yangon
City, which are similar at
Mandalay,
Bagan and
elsewhere in the country.
Today Yangon
airport is the first touch down spot in the
country, until around hundred years ago
Yangon harbor was the arrival point for the
traveler at that time the name of the city
was Rangoon.
The Shwedagon
pagoda at Yangon City is the dominant landmark in the city,
placed on a hill and seen from almost
everywhere, a golden sign of Myanmar
Buddhism. But this is not the only pagoda
around, there are more than a dozen more,
small and big. The next famous pagoda in the
city is Sule Pagoda right in the center.
Five minutes walk from the Sule pagoda is
the Bogyoke Market, ver close to the Trader
Hotel Yangon, that's the premier shopping
bazaar in the country, no travel to Myanmar
is completed without visiting Bogyoke Aung
San Market.
A traveler
can choose between many of Yangon hotels,
big and small, cheap and expensive. E.g.
Queens Park Hotel and Asia Plaza Hotel in
the center for around $ 25,- per night and
Strand Hotel for around $ 300,- in between
are dozens of other hotel and resorts.
Probably the most beautiful hotel is the
Kandawgyi Palace Hotel at the lake.
Yangon
Myanmar is not the capital anymore as it
was a few hundred years, now that's
Naypyidaw a few hundred kilometers to the
north, but it's Yangon where the "music
play" and Myanmar has plenty of great music,
Myanmar classic music, folklore, pop etc.
which can be listened at many Yangon bars
and nightclubs in the evening.
The Yangon
river is part of the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady
river and runs straight through |
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the city
creating beautiful sight s and panoramas as
you can see at the Yangon pictures below.
One of the
worst in Yangon or Rangoon are the daily
electricity power cuts.
There was a
time when the sea ran into the coast of
Burma or today
Myanmar much farther than it
does today ; when ships cast anchor at
Thaton, the earliest capital of the south ;
when Pegu, today Bago, in later days a
gorgeous and magnificent city was almost
itself a seaport. The ships went up the
river without problems. After the English
left the river was is only little maintained
which means continuous shifting sandbanks
not allowing a serious river traffic on the
water out of Yangon Myanmar northwards.
There was a time
also when the ocean brought more to the gates of
Yangon Myanmar Burma and took less away
than it does today ; Moreover, there was already
across the water a city which is now forgotten,
whose golden Myanmar is the true golden Myanmar
of the beginnings. During colonial times
there was a continuous traffic between Yangon
Rangoon and
Penang Georgetown.
It was at Syriam
that Yangon
Myanmar ,
the city facing the sea and served by a lordly
river, the main artery of a nation, first came
into being. It' was the fame of Syriam which
brought men trafficking to the mouth of the
river on which Yangon City is built. Yangon
City has been growing
for many generations since and today is a Asian
metropolis with around 4 million inhabitants.
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Some Yangon City and Myanmar History
Syriam Portuguese Church in 17
th Century |
Syriam Portuguese Grave at 17 th
Century |
Syriam
near Yangon City , according to
the Myanmar - Burmese tale, began its career as
a king's city five 8 hundred and
eighty-seven years before the birth of Christ.
But cities which depend on kings are prone to
lapse into insignificance, and there is
practically nothing known of Syriam - a few km
south of Yangon City around the area
of the present day Yangon
refinery, till the
discoveries of Vasco da Gama, that great
pioneer, opened the gates of the East to
Western adventurers. After half the galleons of
Europe trimmed
their sails
for the new El Dorado. |
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Yet the Portuguese settled near Yangon City
and made a
great bid for sovereignty in
Myanmar Burma ;
and it was at Syriam -near Yangon or Rangoon- that the drama was played
out. The tale is connected with Philip de Brito y Nicote, who began as a
cabin boy, grew as a palace menial in Arakan,
rose to be King of Pegu or
Bago, and ended writhing on a
stake in the sun, where he lingered for three
days in mortal agony, overlooking the city which
for the space of thirteen years had been the
centre of his power. But the story of De Brito
is not for these pages.
Five hundred and
eighty-five years before Christ, they say, two
pious merchants who trafficked to Bengal with Bago or Peguan
rice came at a time of famine upon the
Buddha
meditating under the trees of Gaya.
The site of
Yangon City itself is immemorial, and the chronicles
of the people talk with customary liberality in
thousands of years. Asked
whether they sought the goods of this world or
the next, they replied with becoming piety that
they were in search of " heavenly treasure." They then made their obeisance's before the
Buddha, and received four hairs of his head and
were told to bury them in the Thein-Got-Tara
Hill, where his three predecessors had left
respectively a staff, a water-filter, and a
robe. They were to know the locality from a
takoon, a felled wood-oil tree lying
athwart, and touching the ground neither with
its root nor its branches.
On their return,
after a somewhat distracting search, they found
the place indicated, and they buried in it, in a
golden casket, the relics they had brought. Over
them was built the first nucleus of the
Shwedagon Pagoda. The town of Takoon or Dagon
-today Yangon- grew up around this sacred spot, and from time
to time there is mention in Myanmar - Burmese
golden Myanmar of visits to it from kings and princes,
and of the gradual growth of the pagoda. Stone
inscriptions in its courts date back to the year
1485, and it is well known that Shinsawbu, Queen
of Pegu or
Bago early in the sixteenth century, visited
the town and greatly enlarged the pagoda.
The first account of
it that we have from any European observer is
that in 1579 of Gasparo Balbi,
jeweler of
Venice. Balbi entered Burma at Neguis, and
having made " a very commodious and pleasant
voyage " across the Delta to Pegu -
Bago, came
to Dagon now Yangon
Myanmar.
" After we were
landed," -at Yangon City- he says, " we began to go on the right
hand in a large street about fifty paces broad,
in which we saw wooden houses gilded and adorned
with delicate gardens after their custom,
wherein their talapoins, which are their friers,
dwell and look to the
pagoda, or varella, of
Dagon now Yangon Myanmar. The left side is furnished with portals and
shops, and by this street they go to the varella for a good mile straight forward, either
under paint-houses or in the open street, which
is free to walk in."
Burma and Rangoon Yangon
history is deeply connected with
foreigners, Chinese, Indians and the British
during colonial times, all this contribute to a
very interesting Asian flair still retained
after several hundreds of years, Myanmar or
Burma is real old Asia,
more.
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At
the center east at
Yangon City is the
royal lake,
and beautiful parks. There is no
city in the East with a finer playground, and in
time, when the Victoria lakes which provide
Yangon - Rangoon
Myanmar with its drinking-water are added to the
total of finished
beauty, they will become
famous. Some of the turf is
as fine already as the turf of an
English park. Amongst the trees are many
of the sumptuous kind, which break into
one dazzling mass of bloom, such as the
pagoda- tree, the padouk, the pinma, and the
laburnum acacia. These trees are already a
feature of Yangon - Rangoon
Myanmar, but their wealth is too
widely scattered to make its full impression.
The trees
adorn the long
avenues of Yangon or Rangoon, several miles of each species—the
labor of a single generation—they would make
Yangon - Rangoon
Myanmar in the spring-time a spectacle of the
most striking beauty. The roads of the
Municipality run into a hundred and twenty
miles: I sometimes picture a hundred and twenty
miles of trees in the most dazzling, riotous,
bloom, each marshaled under its own kind. |
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Myanmar,
Yangon airport, Yangon
city, Rangoon, Shwedagon, Yangon pagoda,
hotels, Yangon Myanmar, Rangoon
Myanmar, Yangon river, Yangon
pictures , Yangon photo,
Myanmar,
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Yangon City Rangoon Myanmar Shwedagon Pagoda |
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