Yangon Myanmar Yangon Flights

Hotels Pagoda...

-Yangon is the biggest city in the country with over 4 million 

inhabitants at the last estimate. Located in the Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy delta, surrounded by water on three sides and hard hit by a Cyclone Nagis some time ago.

Flights to Yangon are plenty this days and your Yangon flight will probably be from Bangkok or Singapore to Yangon. There are also other flights to Yangon from Kuala Lumpur, several cities in China and from the Indian subcontinent. Yangon airport has got a new international arrival and departure terminal which looks good and works good. The domestic terminal is still the same. From the domestic terminal the state owned Myanma Airlines and privately owned Yangon Air, Air Mandalay and Bagan Air are operating.

From Yangon Airport you can easily reach the city center using the taxis waiting outside the new airport building, for another Yangon flight to elsewhere in Myanmar check with a travel agent. You need to negotiate the price, there are also limousine counters inside the building, their cars are substantial more expensive to go to down town Yangon or elsewhere. Traveling downtown in a good taxi or limousines, is around $ 10,-. A cheaper taxi ride to Yangon down town is about $ 5,- for the trip, but this cheap taxies usually are really rotten, just moving junk and no air-condition. Amazingly all this is much better organized as in many other Asian countries, all together the new Yangon airport functions quite ok, a flights Yangon usually come in from Singapore and Bangkok. In the last 2 years flights to Yangon are also available from several Chinese, Indian and Korean cities.

Hotels in Yangon are plenty and easy to find in the city and relatively

Yangon faces the Indian Ocean or rather the Andaman Sea which is a part of and ships come in by the Yangon River, a part of the Irrawaddy in the delta and was visualized through the golden dome of the Shwedagon pagoda, at colonial times a mystic object of the golden East.

The Yangon river and further up the Irrawaddy was navigable for about 1300 km during British colonial times, now maybe 100 km, because nobody takes care about the shifting sandbanks. The Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady is the main artery through which the life-blood of Myanmar pulses.

Yangon could be a great city but actually there are mega problems like the daily electricity power cuts etc. at downtown Yangon most of the day there is no power at all.

There was a time when the sea ran into the coast of Myanmar or Burma much farther than it does to-day ; when ships anchored 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.

There was a time also when the sea brought less to Myanmar - Burma and took more than it is does today ; Moreover, there was another city across the Yangon River, a city which is now forgotten, whose golden Myanmar is the true golden Myanmar of the beginnings of Yangon or Rangoon.

It was at Syriam that Yangon first came onto the international and colonial map. Colonialists form Portugal and England started to move in through the mouth of the river to Yangon.

Syriam, according to the Myanmar or Burmese legend, began its career as a king's city 887 years before the birth of Christ. But cities depending on kings are prone to lapse into insignificance, and there is practically nothing known of Syriam till Vasco da Gama virtually opened the gates of the East to the West.

- Yangon city, even in constant decline, still show some imperial architecture.

Present day Yangon city was built by the English colonialists, the result was wide, straight, streets, with solid architecture of Victorian style. Even today several buildings in Yangon show the architecture London had about 200 years ago, the custom house at the river front is such a building and there are several more in the city center. But they are in decay, nobody does any renovation to this sometimes beautiful nostalgic architecture. The old railway building just opposite the Trader Hotel and other Yangon hotels close by is a prototype of neglect.

First came the Portuguese and after the British, they had the same target, loot the country and oppress the people of Myanmar or Burma. Most of the colonial activities of this 2 countries were centered around Yangon or Rangoon and Mandalay.

Actually the British introduced the word Rangoon, Myanmar people say Yangon. The British also had a second center at Mandalay the capital at that time in the center of Myanmar. The British came into Myanmar and Yangon or Rangoon in the 19.th Century.

The Portuguese started their activities in the first half of the 16.th Century around Syriam very close to Yangon, Bago -Pegu- and all the way down around the Gulf of Martaban. The Portuguese also had another stronghold at Arakan, today Rakhine, the province on the Myanmar west coast near today Bangladesh.

Yangon British Soldier Attack Stockades