Yangon

Yangon is a city in southern Myanmar, on the Yangon River near the Gulf of Martaban in the delta of the Irrawaddy. The Shwedagon Pagoda, a gilded stupa that rises over the city on Singuttara Hill, is the holiest Buddhist site in the country.

A fishing village called Dagon grew around the pagoda over many centuries. King Alaungpaya took the town in 1755 and renamed it Yangon, and under British rule from the 1850s it was rebuilt on a grid as Rangoon, the capital of British Burma. Banks, offices and churches in colonial styles were built along the river, and the port shipped rice and teak to India and Europe. Yangon remained the capital after independence until the government moved to Naypyidaw in 2006.

The port on the Yangon River and the Thilawa terminal downstream ship rice, beans and garments from Myanmar. Jade and rubies from the mines of the north are sold in the shops of Bogyoke Aung San Market, a covered market built in the 1920s with arcades under a tiled roof.

Sule Pagoda, more than 2,000 years old according to tradition, stands in the middle of a roundabout at the center of the colonial grid. Mohinga, a soup of rice noodles and fish broth, is eaten for breakfast at street stalls across the city. The Strand Hotel, opened by the Sarkies brothers at the start of the 20th century, faces the river in a white colonial building that was restored in the 1990s. The Yangon Circular Railway runs in a loop through the city and its villages, carrying traders with baskets of vegetables to the markets.