Picture Post 72 - Beautiful Watercolours From Myanmar

Sai Pyae Sone Aye is one of Myanmar's leading watercolourists. Born in Hkamti in the country's Sagaing region, he began painting at a very young age, receiving many prizes for his work. His original ambition was to be a cartoonist but over time he became interested in watercolours and began studying the format in 2014. 

His work includes both rural and urban landscapes of his stunningly beautiful but troubled country, with a number of recurring themes. These include the river Ayeyarwady, the iconic Shwedagon and Sule pagodas in Yangon and street scenes featuring the crumbling red brick buildings of the colonial period. More recently he has begun to produce portraits. Regular readers will know that I have a special affection for Myanmar and Sai's paintings perfectly capture many of the things I love about the place and I must admit to being the proud owner of two of his works. Sai identifies Khin Maung Than and Myint Naing as sources of inspiration for his work. 

Than is a particularly interesting character. He was born in Wetlet, Shwebo in 1942 into a family with artistic talents - his father was a goldsmith. He studied at Myoma School until grade seven before going on to the Mandalay Fine Arts School in the 1950's. He initially worked in commercial arts, producing film posters and graphic items and illustrating a number of novels and other books for high profile authors. He moved to a more fine arts approach in the 1990's and his work has been exhibited overseas a number of times.

Sai has had significant success both in Myanmar and internationally. His works have been exhibited in prestigious hotels in Yangon as well as in private galleries in the city. In 2019 he was selected to represent Myanmar at the International Triennial Watercolour and Spirit exhibition in Varna, Bulgaria. His works are available for sale. Enquiries should be directed to him through his website. 

All of the  pictures featured in this post are Sai's work and are currently available for sale at time of writing.

You might also like The Ahuja Family And Early Burmese Photography

The Ahuja Family And Early Burmese Photography.

From 1824 to 1937, Burma (today's Myanmar) was ruled as part of British India. It was then governed as a separate entity until independence in 1948. During the colonial period, many Indians came to live, work and establish businesses in the country. It is estimated that there are over 900,000 people of Indian ethnicity living in Myanmar today, many of them the descendants of those who came in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Ahuja family arrived in Rangoon (now Yangon) in 1885 when D.A. Ahuja acquired the Kundandass and Co. photographic studio. There is a division of opinion about where the family came from. In his excellent book, Burmese Photographers, Lukas Birk suggests they came from Shikapur, Sindh in what is now Pakistan but at least one other source refers to them as Punjabis. 

1901 was an important year for the business. In addition to changing its name to the D.A. Ahuja Studio, our man published a guide to "Photography in Burmese for Amateur Photographers" and his nephew Tickamdas Naraindas Ahuja (T.N.) joined him from India. The studio thrived, attracting customers from the British community as well as from local families who came to be photographed or to buy cameras and photographic paper imported from India. The success of the business is demonstrated through the studio being located on the first floor of a building at 47 Sule Pagoda Road, in the heart of downtown Yangon. There is anecdotal evidence of the business surviving there until the 1960's.

Around 1906, D.A. acquired a number of pictures taken by German photographer Philip Adolphe Klier. The collection included architectural and highly stylised ethnographic pictures taken in different parts of Burma. Ahuja began publishing the pictures as postcards but there seems to have been some problem about how he acquired these works and in 1907, Klier took successful legal action against him. Losing the legal battle was only a temporary setback as in 1909 Ahuja purchased the archive of Italian photographer Felice Beato and also became the legal owner of Watts and Skeen, a studio established by Frederick Skeen in 1887. The Skeen family also had a photographic business in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Beato's archive included landscape works, stylised portraits and also war photography from Japan, China and the Middle East. Klier died in 1911 and from 1914, Ahuja resumed producing some of his pictures as postcards. He was to publish 600 cards over the next 20 years, some of which can be found at card sales or occasionally on eBay. The cards were sent to Germany to be chromo-lithographed, ensuring the best quality finishes.

The postcards cover a wide range of subjects. There are several studio shots of elegant women, slightly stiff looking family groups, important monuments, snake charmers and dancers. There is also at least one card showing prisoners in Rangoon jail queueing to collect their food which whilst fascinating is an unusual image to send to the family back home.

D.A.'s nephew, T.N. opened his own studio in 1916 with a shop at 86 Phayre Street (now Pansodan Road) where he operated as an agent for Kodak products. There is some evidence that he also served as magistrate. Business was interrupted in 1942 when the family fled before the arrival of the Japanese but they quickly returned to reopen the studio at the end of the war. In 1948 T.N.'s son, R.A. Ahuja opened another studio at 386 Dalhousie Road (now Maha Bandoola Road). The store became the sole agent in Burma for the sale of Gevaert products and operated until 2007. R.A. the last remaining member of the Ahuja family in Burma died in 2014, bringing almost 130 years of their presence in the country to an end. The date of D.A.'s death is unknown.

The images included in this post are from reprints of the cards I purchased from the Yangon Heritage Trust at 22-24 Pansodan Road in 2017. The Trust is a great source of information on Yangon's built heritage. As well as selling books, maps and postcards, it stages occasional exhibitions and guided walks.  I have a habit of buying postcards on my travels and then putting them "somewhere safe" when I get home. During the lockdown I have been sorting through my collection and rediscovered my Ahuja cards. I also turned back to the already mentioned  excellent book by Lukas Birk which has a short section on the Ahujas.  Birk is an accomplished traveller and photographer whose projects have included research into the now almost disappeared box cameras of Kabul. 

D.N. Ahuja also produced postcards featuring images from India, some of which may have been his won work. You can see some of them on the Paper Jewels website.

It is not possible to confirm which of the images featured in this post are the work of the Ahuja family or are from other photographer's archives.

You might also like Faces Of Yangon or Exploring The Lanes Of Mawlamyine.

You can see more pictures from Myanmar here.

Meeting the Kayan Women of Myanmar

Myanmar, formerly Burma is a country about which relatively little is known in the west. The city of Mandalay is familiar to us due to Kipling's now problematic poem of the same name and also perhaps because it is mentioned in the children's song Nellie The Elephant familiar to those of us who grew up in the 1960's. There is also a widely held (although inaccurate) belief that Road To Mandalay was a title in the famous Bob Hope and Bing Crosby movie series. Initially there had been a plan for a film of this name but the final title replaced Mandalay with Singapore. Somerset Maugham and George Orwell also wrote about their experiences in the country but offer insights from a relatively narrow point of view. However, there is a particular image that many people associate with Myanmar, that of the Kayan women who wear brass coils around their necks and legs. I recall seeing pictures of these women in a set of encyclopaedias purchased by my grandparents from a traveling salesman in the 1960's. I never thought that I would get to meet them but during my recent time in Myanmar I was able to visit the village of Kasae Kum and meet some of the women who continue to wear the coils. 

Best friends, Bilot and Bilone

Muthan aged 71 welcomed me into her home with a glass of tea and invited me to sit down. Both she and her husband are artisans. Muthan spins cotton and makes and sells scarves whilst he is a woodcarver, producing small figures of Kayan women for sale to tourists. Together they had eight children, five of whom have already died, some in childhood. She explained that until fairly recently there was no access to modern medicine here and that it was difficult to reach the nearest town with no easy roads out of the village. This was a story I was to hear several times over the course of the morning. Despite this, they have 20 grandchildren, all of whom live within walking distance. One of them spent some time peeping at me from the upper level of the house before deciding that going outside was a more interesting option. 

I asked Muthan how long she has worn the coils. She told me that she first put them on at the age of five and that initially it was very painful as her muscles had not developed sufficiently to support their weight. Whilst explaining this, she lifted the coils slightly to show me a heavy dark bruise on her shoulder. They are rarely removed other than for renewing perhaps every five years or to undergo a medical examination. In recent years some women have stopped wearing them altogether. This is said to result in pain which subsides after a few days but which leaves permanent discolouration. 

Muthan

Muthan's grandson

Muthan's daughters and granddaughters do not wear the coils. She has mixed feelings about this and said that she respects their decision but is sad that the tradition is being lost. This was to be something common to the families of each of the women I met in Kasae Kum.  I asked her about the origin of the custom and how it began. There are various stories relating to this but she produced one that neither I nor my guide and interpreter had previously heard. She said that the Kayan women were told to wear them in case they should be scattered from their homeland, dispersed and unable to find each other. The coils were to be relied on as a means of identification. 

One explanation given is that they were meant to protect the women from enslavement by other ethnic groups, making them less attractive to other tribes. At the same time there is also a widespread belief that the coils enhance the beauty of the wearer, emphasising their slender necks, whilst a third explanation compares the appearance of the wearers to a dragon, a key figure in Kayan folklore as well as that of other tribes.

She also had questions for me, questions that were asked by each of the women I was to meet. They were focused mainly on my family, marital status and how many children I have. All of them were surprised that I travel alone and told me I should come again and bring my family next time. She offered me home made rice wine, the drink of choice amongst the Kayan and other communities and was a little surprised when I declined, explaining that I don't drink alcohol. She poured more tea instead and told me that she also likes beer but that it is bloating and can make you very fat! Before leaving I bought one of the scarves she makes. She placed the money inside the coils before thanking me for visiting.

Mutayant

Mutayant's busy granddaughter!

Mutayant lives a short distance from Muthan's home. She is 78 years old and a widow, She was not born in Kasae Kum but came there from her mountain village when she married a local man. The marriage produced ten children, six of whom have already died for reasons similar to those of Nuthan's. Like her neighbour she has 20 grandchildren and four great grandchildren some of whom were playing in her compound. Both Mutayant and Muthan are Animists as are many Kayans. There are also significant numbers of Christians amongst the community as well as Buddhists and people who mix Animism with another faith. Choice of religion appears to have no impact on maintaining Kayan traditions.

Mutayant put on the coils at the age of 10. She said that her daughters and granddaughters do not wear them as they "don't want to face discrimination when going out of the village to study or work". She said that she would never try to force the younger generation to wear them but had been angry with one of her daughters who had worn hers at a conference and sold them to a Chinese delegate. One of her granddaughters, two years old, was very busy playing outside the house, pulling faces, saying a few words of English, pretending to be working and generally entertaining us. It seems that her life will be very different to that of her grandmother. 

Bilot aged 73 and Bilone, 82 are best friends. Both of them widows, they spend most of their day together, talking, helping each other and enjoying the taste of rice wine. Bilot said "ask anyone in the village, everyone knows us, Bilot and Bilone". Both women had ten children. Bilot says that this is not considered excessive within the community and adds with a mischievous laugh "fortunately my husband died 32 years ago or I am sure I would be nursing another baby even today". Bilone joins her in laughing as do I, perhaps surprised at her candour. Both women put on the coils in their early teens and both wanted to wear them. Bilot said that the coils should be worn because "girls are more naughty than boys. They run around more so their parents say they need to wear them to prevent them from doing this. I used to climb trees and misbehave". Bilot is the only one of the women to give this explanation.

Bilot

Bilone

As with the other women none of their daughters or granddaughters wear the coils. I asked them how they feel about this and in response they said that if young women don't wish to wear them it is their choice. Earlier I had seen a group of eight young girls in the centre of the village, all of them wearing coils but later learned that these are not the same as those worn by the older women and are easily removed. It may be that they are being worn for the tourists. I asked the two friends what they think about people coming to see them. They said that they enjoy it. "We can't travel so people come to us. We like to hear about the outside world". They wanted to know how far I had traveled to meet them but had no concept of where I might be from. The interpreter told me that they have little knowledge of the world outside the village and would not really know where Yangon is or what it might be like.

Kayan girl, Kasae Kum village

Kayan girl, Kasae Kum village

Bilot and Bilone had several questions for me, most of them the same as those asked by their neighbours - why do you travel alone? how many children do you have? how old are you? They enjoy rice wine and drank it from a special bowl throughout the time I spent with them. They wanted to know if people drink rice wine in the UK and if I would like to try it myself. Bilot also enjoys chewing the betel nut, known as paan in India and this too was offered to me. Unfortunately I had to decline both as I don't drink and don't chew betel. She told me she chews it in order to keep her mouth fresh and laughed when I asked her if she was worried about the negative impacts it can have on the mouth and teeth, not least dyeing them bright red. She seemed genuinely happy as did Bilone whose grand children came in and out of the house as we spoke, one of them stopping for a quick cuddle with his grandma.

I enjoyed my time in the village and learned a lot not just about the lives and customs of the Kayan women but once again about how similar our ambitions are despite the differences between us. All of the women I spoke to wanted whatever was best for their children and grandchildren even if it meant abandoning some of their cherished traditions. I liked their curiosity about the outside world and their willingness to be open with outsiders. As I left I realised that they may well be the last generation of Kayan women to wear the coils and that many of their traditions will end with them.

A cuddle with grandma

Please note I refer to the women throughout as Kayan rather than the other term sometimes used - Padaung. I am advised that this is considered to be pejorative despite being used throughout Pascal Khoo Thwe's 2002 book From The Land Of Green Ghosts. I also met two women in the main market at Loikaw who used the term to describe themselves although they did not wear the coils.

You can see more pictures from Myanmar here

Myanmar Journey Part One - Yangon

I grew up in a small town in the north-east of England. My world was small but my ambitions large and I entertained dreams of travel from an early age, becoming fascinated with maps, globes and where one place was in relation to another. There were few books in our house but I have a clear memory of my dad having a book entitled "Burma" which had a pencil drawing on its cover of what I now know to be the Shwedagon Pagoda. Many years were to pass, and the country changed its name to Myanmar before I was finally able to visit early this year, arriving in Yangon on a hot January morning.

Yangon is a city of change. When I was admiring the pencil drawing it was still known as Rangoon, the name used by the British during the colonial times and it is no longer the capital of the country - a new administrative city has been built further north.  The city has lost some of its heritage buildings and others are at risk but it is still possible to see old Yangon in the streets and alleys of this bustling, colourful, amazingly warm-hearted city that quickly became one of my favourite places.

Volunteers at the Shwedagon Pagoda

Strolling the streets is the best way to get to know a city and to uncover some of the secrets not encountered by sticking to the major sites and attractions. At first glance, Yangon may not seem the ideal place to stroll. The city is very busy. The traffic can be horrendous and the temperature is frequently in the mid 30's. However, there are many shady side streets and lots of places to stop for a cold drink and a rest in the air conditioning. Also, the downtown area has numbered streets arranged more or less on a grid system making them easy to navigate. As well as visiting some of the big ticket attractions, I spent the best part of two days on foot, delighted by the amazing colours of the buildings; sights, sounds and smells of the markets and most of all, the friendliness and small, unsolicited acts of kindness of the people.

Cafe Gallery Pansuriya

My favourite street in downtown Yangon is one of just a few carrying a name rather than a number - Bogalyzay Street. There are several interesting apartment blocks in the street including H. A Soorty Mansions built in 1928 close to the junction with Mahandboola Road,  once the location of the Chilean consulate and home to poet and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda who worked there as minor official in 1929. The street's literary tradition is maintained by the Pansuriya Cafe Gallery on the opposite side of the road at number 102. As well as serving rather good coffee, Pansuriya sells books about Yangon and Myanmar, many of them in English and has regular exhibitions of local contemporary art. I visited the cafe twice during my short time in the city and enjoyed looking at the permanent display of old photographs and the small but wonderful collection of old metal shop signs bearing the circular Myanmar script.

The Good Will Taylor

There are hundreds of tailors shops in Yangon including the Good Will Tailor, just next door to Pansuriya. The Good Will Tailor sits behind a dual language sign working at a sewing machine and receiving customer orders. I didn't use his services, but I did go to the Diamond Shine Beauty Salon. Before regular readers mock, I should point out that the English language sign specifically says the salon is for "gents and ladies" and includes haircutting. I like having my little bit of hair cut when I travel. It can be an interesting experience. This one was. A very serious looking lady was in charge. She spoke little English and I know just two words of Myanmar - "mingalaba" - a generic greeting and "coffee" which helpfully means coffee. Somehow we managed. She asked me if I wanted my hair (in my case head) washing after the cut and did I want a head massage. It was going to cost 6000 kyat - about £3.50. A bargain. Why not I thought, And very good it was too.

Wooden figures for sale, Bogyoke Market

Mooney Moon Coffee Shop, Bogyoke Market

Markets are an important part of everyday life in Myanmar, both as places to earn a living and places to buy food, clothes, household goods, religious items and just about anything else you can think of. Yangon has many markets, ranging from informal street sellers with fruit and vegetables spread out on the floor to enormous indoor affairs selling a wide range of goods.

The  largest market here is Bogyoke on the street of the same name and located in a colonial style building, completed in 1926 and originally called the Scott Market. Renamed Bogyoke (meaning General) in 1948 after General Aung San, it is the city's largest bazaar and sells almost everything including electrical goods, clothes, jewelry, handicrafts and antiques (real and fake) to both locals and tourists. The alleyways surrounding the main building house more shops and a number of eating places serving huge lunchtime crowds of workers, shoppers, stall holders and the occasional tourist. I enjoyed wandering through the main market admiring the textiles, browsing the antique shops and watching tourists try to talk down prices whilst pairs of Buddhist nuns dressed in pink toured the stalls collecting donations.  

Fruit sellers, Theingyi Zei Market

Waiting for customers, market near Shwedagon Pagoda

Star fruit seller, Theingyi Zei Market

Much as I liked Bogyoke I must admit my favourite market in Yangon is an older institution called Theingyi Zei. This is smaller than Bogyoke and many of the stall holders are of Indian origin. Here, you can buy herbs and spices including bright yellow turmeric, sparkling orange paprika, the blackest pepper, cinnamon sticks and deep red, blue and green powders for use during the Hindu festival of Holi. You can also find meat and fish, traditional and modern medicine, choose textiles and have an outfit run-up by one of the tailors or seamstresses working on raised platforms in full view of the customers. Alternatively, you might prefer to rifle through the mounds of second hand clothes piled up on the floor in the adjoining street.

Although Theingyi Zei receives far fewer tourists as visitors than Bogyoke, stallholders are happy to explain their wares if you appear interested and to ask you where you come from or what you think of Myanmar. This is not the precursor to some high pressure sales pitch but genuine friendliness. In Theingyi there was a complete absence of pressure to make purchases, and generally speaking this was my experience right across Myanmar.

Theingyi Zei's stalls also sport some rather lovely shop signs. I especially liked the sign for the dairy produce stall that made some rather grand claims including "We are the best one to all those from workers to diplomatic circles who preper (sic) the best quality of nutritional milk foods...grantee (sic) it has not contained any other dangerous animals. Fats". So there you are. I also liked the cardboard sheets used by the fish and shrimp sellers to display their goods - all of which featured a picture of a cat licking its lips!

Back to the strolling and one of my favorite finds in Yangon. The Bagan Book House at 100 37th Street was founded in 1976 and is a treasure trove of English language books about Myanmar. Open into the evenings, I visited twice during my stay and was seduced by the owner's collection of old postcards advertising Myanmar movies of the 1950's and 60's. The shop keeper was very happy to tell me about each of the films, why they were famous and what he liked about them. I bought two of the cards but, funds allowing, I could have quite happily bought the lot! Reason enough alone to come back to Yangon!

Friends and regular readers know that I am addicted to strong coffee. Imagine my excitement when I came upon the Hanuman Coffee Store at the junction of 51st Street and Anawrahta Road, just beside one of the city's many Hindu temples. Not a place to sit and drink, but to buy either beans or already ground coffee. This small and delightful shop displays the grinding and weighing equipment on the counter but the real charm is supplied by the two lovely ladies who work there. Inviting me to sit down, they checked my preference for coffee mixed with chicory or pure coffee as well as the strength of taste and were happy to indulge me in a little conversation about where I was from, where I had been in Myanmar and to encourage me to return. The strapline on the packaging says Perfect and delicious. The coffee is both of those things and so was the service. It is the little experiences like this that are the most memorable. 

The ladies of the Hanuman Coffee Store

The friendliness shown by the ladies of the Hanuman Coffee Store was something I experienced throughout my time in Myanmar. When waiting to cross the very busy Sule Pagoda Road, I felt a hand on my arm and looking to my right saw it was an elderly man who said "not yet, too much traffic, very dangerous" before escorting me safely to the other side of the road before saying goodbye with a smile. I was also approached two or three times by people who wanted just to shake hands and say hello whilst many others nodded, smiled and said "mingalaba" as they passed. 

Further evidence of this Myanmar kindness came on the day that the city changed all of its buses and launched completely new bus routes leaving thousands of people in the street unsure of how to get to and from work. There were hundreds of volunteers in the streets handing out information leaflets and helping people to get to the right place. And more than this, local companies had provided free mini-buses for the first few days of transition to ease the pressure on the new system. All of the drivers were volunteers as were the people handing out free water and snacks at the crowded bus stops. I was to see this generosity of spirit throughout my time in the country.

Faded grandeur, downtown Yangon

1922 apartment block, downtown Yangon

Art deco apartment block, downtown Yangon

Architecture is another passion of mine and Yangon has examples of many different styles ranging from ancient to contemporary. This includes many buildings from my favorite architectural period, 1900-1950. Some of these are in very poor condition whilst others have benefitted from restoration. The Yangon Heritage Trust is doing excellent work to persuade the authorities and building owners of the need to preserve the city's built heritage, despite the cost of doing so and the many other social and economic priorities in Myanmar.

The Balthazar building

The downtown area has a cluster of colonial style buildings, some of which house government offices, others have become (or remain) banks and yet others provide a mix of commercial and residential space. In some cases ownership of buildings is unclear or the owners left the country for a variety of reasons and at different times since the Japanese occupation during the Second World War. A prime example of this is the once beautiful Balthazar's building on Bank Street. This was once one of the city's most desirable addresses with an electric lift, imported Italian tiles and a decorative canopy above the entrance. The building was commissioned by Samuel Balthazar, an Armenian merchant born in Isfahan, Iran who came to the then Rangoon in 1866 to expand his family's business interests. Extremely successful, he was also to serve on the Municipal Council and the Chamber of Commerce. The family fled in 1942 before the advancing Japanese. Balthazar's is in a very sorry state today. The lift has not worked for many years, vegetation grows in the abandoned rooms and in the inner courtyard and some of the businesses that occupy space there have installed metal or plastic sheeting to prevent ceiling plaster from falling or water ingress. Despite all of this, the exterior red brickwork remains beautiful and catches the eye of passers-by. The future of the building is uncertain but it would be a terrible loss if it were not to survive.

The Strand Hotel Cafe

The Strand Hotel is just a few minutes away from Balthazar's but a world away in terms of its condition. Like Balthazar's it was set up by an Armenian family - the Sarkies who were also responsible for Raffles in Singapore and the Eastern and Oriental Hotel in Penang. Occupying a once desirable spot on Strand Road overlooking the river, it has been the haunt of many famous literary figures including Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, Peter Ustinov and possibly George Orwell during his time in the Police Force in Burma. Occasional cultural shows took place during the hotel's prewar heyday, including an appearance by Diaghilev's ballet company. After the War the hotel deteriorated until a full restoration took place in  1993, restoring it to its former glory. The hotel has a reputation for excellent service which I can attest too having spent the last few days of my trip there.

The Sofaer building 

Still in the downtown area, the Sofaer building is in much better shape than the Balthazar but a long way short of the Strand. Established by Isaac and Meier Sofaer, Jewish merchants from Baghdad and completed in 1906, this large rambling building on Pansodan Street was once home to some very prestigious tenants including the Bank of Burma, The China Mutual Life Assurance Company and Reuters News Agency. After many years of decline there is again some life in the Sofaer building. Gekko - a very successful Japanese restaurant occupies space on the ground floor as does a branch of the KBZ Bank and some tourist souvenir shops. The Lokanat Gallery has been exhibiting contemporary art on the first floor since 1971 providing a cultural anchor for the building. This is all good news but it does not mean that the building's future is secure. Some works are currently being undertaken on the first floor but parts of it remain in very poor shape. The scale of this is perhaps illustrated by Gekko's owners having had to have a 1.5 metre deep  pile of sewage removed from their space before work could begin on the restaurant - a task that took a full month to accomplish.

The Secretariat staircase

One of the highlights of my time in Yangon was a visit to the Minsters' Building, widely known as the Secretariat. Occupying a huge site at 300 Thein Phyu Road, it was completed in 1905 and designed by architect Henry Hoyne-Fox and was the administrative centre during the period of British colonial rule and the workplace of hundreds of officials and clerks. It was also the place in which General Aung San, leader of the independence movement and father of Aung San Suu Kyi was assassinated in 1947 together with the rest of his cabinet. A small shrine to Aung San was set up in the building but at the time of my visit it  was not open due to renovation work being undertaken. These works are part of a wider programme to bring the building back into use as a cultural centre with museums and galleries. During my time in Yangon a temporary art exhibition was being staged in one part of the Secretariat and thanks to my excellent guide - Sai, I was able to go inside and see the iconic staircase photographed above. Perhaps next time more of the building will be in use.

St. Mary's Cathedral

St. Mary's Cathedral on Bo Aung Kyaw Road is Yangon's largest and most impressive Catholic Church. Completed in 1911 in neo-gothic style it is a work of great beauty with its well maintained red brick exterior and imposing facade. Designed by Dutch architect Jos Cuypers who was also responsible for Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, the interior is highly decorative with blue and red tiles complementing the clean white surfaces as well as striking, high-level stained glass windows. The windows had to be replaced following damage from aerial bombing during the Second World War and again following Cyclone Nargis in 2008. Unfortunately photography is not permitted inside the church.

More than 80% of Myanmar's people are adherents of Theravada Buddhism. There are more than 500,000 Buddhist monks in the country, highly visible in their saffron robes and together with the many many pagodas, temples and stupas they are perhaps the most recognisable symbol of this beautiful country. It is quite moving to witness the monks as they walk the streets of every city, town and village, early every morning collecting rice from their co-religionists who earn merit from donating.

Sule Pagoda

Shwedagon Pagoda in the morning

Yangon has many important pagodas but two are particularly important and well known. The Sule Pagoda on the junction of Sule Pagoda Road and Mahabandoola Road at the heart of the downtown area. Built in the 5th Century BCE, its central golden stupa still dominates the centre of the city despite now being surrounded by traffic clogged roads and several taller, much less attractive buildings.

Sule is undoubtedly beautiful but the Shwedagon Pagoda on Ar Zar Ni Street is Yangon and Myanmar's most majestic monument and, going back to my dad's book, the place that sparked my interest in the country all those years ago. The image of the central golden stupa surrounded by several smaller versions and a complex of temples is known but the whole complex occupies almost 50 hectares and includes smaller prayer halls, dormitories, shops catering to the religious needs of visitors as well as to tourists. I visited twice during my time in Myanmar. The first visit was in the early morning with my guide and friend Sai who explained the history, layout and functions of the complex, showing me some parts that tourists rarely visit. Of course, the highlight was circling the main stupa, mesmerised by the contrast of its bright gold surface against the deep blue of the sky.

Spectacular as this was, it did not prepare me for my second visit on my final night in Myanmar when I returned to watch the sunset over the pagoda. Despite the presence of hundreds of people, the atmosphere was calm and quiet. Devotees visited to pay homage to the Buddha including at the series of shrines devoted to people born on each day of the week. As the sky began to darken, the colour of the stupa gradually changed, glowing more and more as the light fell. There was a moment when two diagonal lines of white-pink cloud or perhaps vapor trail appeared behind the stupa and despite one thousand cameras being pointed at them it was still possible to be moved by the beauty of it all.  A wonderful conclusion to a greta few days in the city and one which has left me login to return. 

Sunset at Shwedagon

The Yangon Heritage Trust has published an excellent book about the city's heritage buildings - Yangon Echoes. You can buy it at the Trust's office at 22-24 Pansodan Road or online here.

You can see more pictures of Myanmar here.

Thanks to Undiscovered Destinations and Khiri Travel for making practical arrangements.