The 28 days granted to foreign visitors by the standard tourist visa are nowhere near enough to see the whole of Myanmar. By catching planes rather than trains and buses, however, you can sample its chief highlights in a couple of weeks, gaining along the way a vivid sense of what makes this such a unique country.
Point of arrival for virtually all international flights, Yangon (Rangoon) serves, as it has since colonial times, as Myanmar’s principal gateway. Though no longer the capital (an honour now conferred on the recently erected city of Naypyidaw, 320km/200miles north), it remains a pulsating, charismatic metropolis whose crowning glory, the gilded Shwedagon Pagoda, ranks among the world’s most enthralling religious monuments.
Ananda festival gathering in Bagan.
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From Yangon, an hour’s flight north takes you to Bagan where, between the 11th and 13th centuries, the Bamar kings embellished an arid plain on the banks of the Ayeyarwady River with lavish temples, palaces and monasteries. Bagan can also be reached by cruise boat from Myanmar’s second city and cultural hub, Mandalay, whose lacklustre modern architecture is more than offset by a profusion of Buddhist shrines, crafts workshops and music and dance venues, and by the evocative vestiges of former royal capitals crumbling on its outskirts.
A typical street in Downtown Yangon.
Corrie Wingate/Apa Publications
East of Mandalay rises the mighty Shan plateau, a tract of deep river valleys, rocky gorges and denuded hills rippling to the Chinese border. Boat trips to markets, floating gardens and stilt settlements of the local Intha people are the main incentive to make the detour to this region’s tourist centre, Inle Lake, along with the famously serene sunsets, and the chance to trek to the neighbouring hill villages.
With its waterside boutique hotels and souvenir markets, Inle has blossomed into a fully fledged international resort in recent years. The same is true of Ngapali beach, in northwest Rakhine State, where you can relax in luxurious beach hideaways under the palms and tuck into succulent seafood straight off the boats.
Inscribed marble slabs at Kuthodaw Paya, Mandalay.
Corrie Wingate/Apa Publications
The rest of the country’s great sights, however, require more patience to reach – notably the atmospheric ghost city of Mrauk-U further north in Rakhine State, whose weed-infested stupas and monasteries soar above a bucolic landscape of jungle and rice fields, and the relatively little-visited southeast of the country, where the famous “Golden Rock” temple of Kyaiktiyo gleams on top of a forested mountain.
Myanmar certainly has its fair share of astounding landscapes and monuments. For the majority of visitors to the country, however, the warmth and traditional culture of the Burmese themselves, miraculously intact despite the events of the past fifty years or so, are what tend to make a journey here so memorable.
