Yangon: Now and Then

Audley client Diana B. returns to see how a city has changed over 45 years

By Audley Travel

December 28^th, 2015

revisiting myanmar

I visited Yangon in Myanmar in 1971 with my daughter — almost 45 years ago. We decided to return to explore more of the country this past year and see how the cities and people have changed since our last visit.

The first time we visited Yangon, there were no tourists allowed. We were only able to enter the country because we had acquired a visa while in Tokyo. There were only the Burmese people living in the city at the time, so it was so interesting to see it again with all the tourists. It had expanded in some ways of course and much of the city had been modernized. However, a lot of the old British buildings were still in the same exact places and crumbling just the same as they had been 45 years ago.

*all photos taken by Diana B.

My daughter has naturally blonde hair, and in the 1970’s in Myanmar, the people were amazed to see any Americans, let alone a blonde American child. They would gather around her because blonde hair was just not common around there. During our most recent visit it was standard to see American tourists, except for in the remote areas. The local children would still come up to us in these more off-the-beaten-track areas and want to hold our hand.

The first time we visited Yangon, we had gone to a fanstastic night market that we wanted to be sure to revisit. we asked our guide about it, and after some research she found that the particular market no longer existed!

shwedagon pagoda

We had also visited the many pagodas of Yangon on our first trip in the 70’s, including the magnificent Shwedagon Pagoda. The area has definitely changed since then; it’s much more of a modern city now. The surrounding streets have been added on to quite a bit, but the Shwedagon Pagoda is still just as beautiful as we remembered.

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the renovated strand hotel

Upon our first visit to Yangon, we stayed at a the grand hotel called the Strand Hotel. We returned to stay in the same hotel this time around, and found that a lot of it had changed. We saw the changes right when we walked in; apparently there were many renovations in the 1990’s that changed a lot of the main rooms of the hotel. It’s still a fantastic place to stay, and we tried to take some of the same photos we had the first time around for comparison.

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