TOP 21 best attractions in Myanmar

Unlike neigh­bor­ing states, Myan­mar can­not boast of a large tourist flow. This is a def­i­nite plus for those who want to enjoy nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al attrac­tions with­out crowds of onlook­ers.

Things to do in Myanmar

Reli­gious build­ings of the coun­try will impress lovers of antiq­ui­ty and archi­tec­ture:

• The Bagan Archae­o­log­i­cal Park is a whole scat­ter­ing of tem­ples and pago­das on a vast ter­ri­to­ry.
• Damayan­ji is shroud­ed in leg­ends. The stones of its 78-meter walls are so close to each oth­er that it is impos­si­ble to stick a knife blade between them.
• Anan­da com­bines sev­er­al archi­tec­tur­al tra­di­tions, and its inte­ri­or gal­leries are dec­o­rat­ed with intri­cate stone carv­ings.
• Sule plays a huge spir­i­tu­al role in the life of every Bud­dhist in Myan­mar.
• The spire of the Shwedagon is adorned with real gems — a mag­nif­i­cent sight!

Muse­ums of the coun­try keep the most valu­able col­lec­tions that will be of inter­est to all inquis­i­tive per­sons. Arti­facts from tem­ples, paint­ings, house­hold items and much more are exhib­it­ed at the Nation­al Muse­um. The Gem Muse­um is a real trea­sure trove. Some of his exhibits cost hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars.

Religious sites

Bagan

Bagan is an archae­o­log­i­cal park with an area of ​​about 40 square meters. km. On its ter­ri­to­ry there are more than 2 thou­sand reli­gious build­ings of vary­ing degrees of preser­va­tion. Togeth­er they form a unique archi­tec­tur­al ensem­ble that reflects the orig­i­nal cul­ture of the Burmese. It will take sev­er­al days to see the entire tem­ple com­plex.

In the peri­od from the 9th to the 13th cen­tu­ry, the city of Bagan was the cap­i­tal of an ancient king­dom, from where the uni­fi­ca­tion of the dis­parate ter­ri­to­ries of Myan­mar began. It was here that the cul­tur­al and reli­gious tra­di­tions of mod­ern Bur­ma were laid. In those days, more than 10 thou­sand tem­ples and pago­das were built along the banks of the Ayeyarwad­dy.

Damayandji

This is one of the largest tem­ples in Bagan. The build­ing looks like a stepped pyra­mid, the height of each side is about 78 m. Damayan­ji looks espe­cial­ly majes­tic at sun­rise and sun­set, when the pink sun “burns” on the walls. The main dec­o­ra­tion of the facade is arch­es with carved decor and ele­gant win­dow open­ings. Today, only a small part of the sanc­tu­ary is avail­able for inspec­tion, 2 cor­ri­dors with a length of about 25 m, as well as bal­conies from where panoram­ic views of Bagan and its pago­das open.

The tem­ple was built from 1167 to 1170 by order of the ruler Naratu, who killed his father and broth­er to take the throne. The con­struc­tion of a grandiose reli­gious build­ing was sup­posed to atone for ter­ri­ble sins before the Bud­dha. The tyrant per­son­al­ly super­vised the progress of the work. If it was pos­si­ble to stick a knife blade between the stones, then the builders were exe­cut­ed with this very knife right in the court­yard of Damayan­ji. Naratu did not rage for too long — he was killed with­in these same walls. After the death of the king, con­struc­tion was stopped, and some of the already fin­ished gal­leries fell asleep.

Gavdavpalin Temple

The con­struc­tion of the majes­tic 55-meter tem­ple was com­plet­ed in 1227. Gav­davpalin is the sec­ond largest reli­gious build­ing in Bagan. He man­aged to sur­vive a strong earth­quake in 1975. The square sanc­tu­ary con­sists of two floors, which house 7 ter­races. Inside there are 4 entrances on each side of the build­ing. The main gate, guard­ed by lions, is locat­ed on the east porch.

• On the first lev­el there is a spa­cious main hall for prayers and a cor­ri­dor with stat­ues of a seat­ed Bud­dha.
• The hall on the sec­ond lev­el is much small­er — the main image of the Bud­dha is kept there.
• The con­struc­tion is crowned with a sihara tow­er. Unlike oth­er tem­ples of ancient Bagan, it is not gild­ed.

Taung Kalat Monastery

This is one of the most impor­tant monas­ter­ies in Myan­mar, locat­ed on the sacred moun­tain of Popa (1518 m) about 50 km from Bagan. The moun­tain of vol­canic ori­gin, like a fab­u­lous giant, ris­es above the desert plateau, and the pic­turesque monastery on its top can be seen from a dis­tance of 60 km in good weath­er.

To climb to Taung Kalat, you will have to over­come 777 steps. There are small pago­das and shrines along the way. The ascent will be tir­ing but inter­est­ing. At the top there are sev­er­al view­ing plat­forms and tra­di­tion­al Bud­dhist tem­ples.

Anand Temple

The unique­ness of the tem­ple, built in 1105, lies in its unusu­al archi­tec­ture. The exte­ri­or com­bines Indi­an tra­di­tions of reli­gious build­ing and dec­o­ra­tive details typ­i­cal of the build­ings of the ancient Mon civ­i­liza­tion. The build­ing has the shape of a cross with four entrances ori­ent­ed to the car­di­nal points. Believ­ers are greet­ed by Bud­dha stat­ues, but only two of them are orig­i­nal, the rest are copies of mas­ter­pieces that died in a fire in the 18th cen­tu­ry.

At the top of the build­ing is a pago­da with a shikhara cov­ered with gild­ing. The main dec­o­ra­tion of the tem­ple hall is 1500 nich­es with skill­ful stone bas-reliefs. They depict scenes from the life of the Bud­dha. It is also worth stop­ping by the pan­els paint­ed based on ancient leg­ends.

Sule Pagoda

The gild­ed stu­pa is of great impor­tance for almost every inhab­i­tant of the coun­try. First­ly, Bud­dha’s hair is kept here — leg­end says that Gau­ta­ma per­son­al­ly hand­ed it over to Burmese mer­chants. It was they who decid­ed to build a pago­da for the shrine on the foun­da­tion of an ancient reli­gious build­ing that appeared on this site more than 2500 years ago. The age of Sule is usu­al­ly count­ed from this time point, so it is con­sid­ered the old­est in the coun­try.

Locals call the pago­da “Su-wei”, which can be trans­lat­ed as “meet­ing place”. For sev­er­al cen­turies, Burmese have been gath­er­ing here to dis­cuss press­ing issues. It was from here that the pop­u­lar unrest of 1988 and sub­se­quent anti-gov­ern­ment protests began.

The height of the build­ing is about 50 m. At the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry, prayer halls appeared around the pago­da, then sou­venir shops and offices of sooth­say­ers work­ing for a small fee. Here, the locals per­form a rit­u­al to attract good luck. Next to the stu­pa there are 7 stat­ues of Bud­dha — accord­ing to the num­ber of days of the week. It is nec­es­sary to pour water over the fig­ure that cor­re­sponds to the birth­day of the seek­er of hap­pi­ness.

Shwedagon Pagoda

Shwedagon is the main reli­gious shrine of Bur­ma, which hous­es the relics of the four Bud­dhas: part of the robe of Kas­s­apa, the Kon­aga­mana water fil­ter, the staff of Kaku­sand­ha and 8 hairs of Gau­ta­ma. The height of the build­ing is 98 m, the walls are cov­ered with gold leaf, and the spire is dec­o­rat­ed with pre­cious stones (about 4 thou­sand pieces): dia­monds, rubies, sap­phires, emer­alds, includ­ing a 76-carat dia­mond. Every inhab­i­tant of the coun­try is oblig­ed at least once in his life to pray in the pago­da and give alms for the renew­al of gild­ing.

The main stu­pa is sur­round­ed by pompous tem­ples, stat­ues of ani­mals and myth­i­cal crea­tures, Bud­dha sculp­tures in var­i­ous pos­es, as well as bur­ial pago­das of monks who have reached the high­est enlight­en­ment. The pago­da stands on a high hill, so beau­ti­ful views of Yan­gon open up from its court­yard. The roof of the build­ing is dec­o­rat­ed with bells that keep ring­ing in the wind. The main bells are placed in the tem­ple and each has a name. The heav­i­est is called Maha Tis­sa­da (42 tons), fol­lowed by Singu­min (23 tons).

Phou Woon Daung Caves

The under­ground tem­ple com­plex con­sists of 947 caves con­nect­ed by cor­ri­dors rang­ing in length from 3 to 8 m. Each cave is a man-made tem­ple carved into the rock. The walls of the shrines are dec­o­rat­ed with bright paint­ings based on the past lives of the Bud­dha. The dimen­sions of the cham­bers vary from 2 to 5 m.

The entrances are guard­ed by sculp­tures of lions and fab­u­lous crea­tures. True, most of them are destroyed — in con­trast to the numer­ous stat­ues of Bud­dha, which have sur­vived in good con­di­tion to our time. The under­ground tem­ple was built in the 14th-18th cen­turies, but the old­est draw­ings and stat­ues date back to the 4th cen­tu­ry.

Museums and antiquities

Archaeological Museum of Bagan

The muse­um was found­ed in 1902 on the ini­tia­tive of To Seong Ho, cura­tor of the Depart­ment of Arche­ol­o­gy of the Nation­al Muse­um. The col­lec­tions moved sev­er­al times until final­ly set­tled in a beau­ti­ful mod­ern build­ing in 1995.

The muse­um has 10 themed rooms. Each con­tains price­less arti­facts: objects from the roy­al palace of Bagan, frag­ments of tem­ple wall paint­ings, Bud­dha sculp­tures, stones with inscrip­tions in the lan­guage of bygone civ­i­liza­tions. There is also a mod­el of the Bagan tem­ple com­plex, pho­tographs and doc­u­ments.

Gem Museum

The muse­um is locat­ed on the third floor of the jew­el­ry mar­ket. Amaz­ing exhibits are col­lect­ed in a small room. Most of them are rough stones found in Myan­mar, includ­ing the world’s largest sap­phire and ruby.

It is worth stop­ping by the map of Bur­ma, lined with valu­able min­er­als and gems. When the but­ton is pressed, the mine is high­light­ed, where a cer­tain type of min­er­al is mined. The exhi­bi­tion also presents jew­el­ry made of pre­cious and semi-pre­cious stones.

National Museum of Yangon

The muse­um ded­i­cat­ed to the cul­ture, art, life and his­to­ry of Myan­mar was found­ed in 1952. Now it occu­pies a large 5‑storey build­ing. Exten­sive col­lec­tions are exhib­it­ed in 14 spa­cious rooms, which should take sev­er­al hours to explore.

Here you can find ancient tools, rit­u­al attrib­ut­es, nation­al clothes. Of great­est inter­est are objects of fine art from dif­fer­ent eras — from pre­his­toric times to the present: sam­ples of rock art, fres­coes from tem­ples, paint­ings, engrav­ings and more.

A whole hall is ded­i­cat­ed to all kinds of musi­cal instru­ments and pup­pets that par­tic­i­pat­ed in the­atri­cal per­for­mances in ancient times. The hall with the trea­sures of the Burmese rulers impress­es with lux­u­ry — cer­e­mo­ni­al clothes, repli­cas of thrones and jew­el­ry are exhib­it­ed in it.

Myau‑U Ancient City

The for­mer cap­i­tal of the state of Arakan was found­ed in 1431. The hey­day of Myau‑U came in the 16th cen­tu­ry — then about 120 thou­sand peo­ple lived in the city, trade was car­ried out with Por­tu­gal, the Nether­lands, India and Per­sia. The inhab­i­tants of the Arakan king­dom had their own lan­guage, script and their own mint­ed coins.

Grad­u­al­ly, the city fell into decay, and it was swal­lowed up by the jun­gle, but the bizarre archi­tec­ture was per­fect­ly pre­served. Reli­gious build­ings attract many tourists. Tem­ples of Vic­to­ry, Dukhantein and Koutaun are espe­cial­ly pop­u­lar.

Architecture

Royal Mandalay Palace

The huge palace com­plex, built in the 19th cen­tu­ry, was not only the res­i­dence of the Burmese rulers, but also a “for­bid­den city” where only the elite could enter. When the British occu­pied Myan­mar, they placed sol­diers in the for­mer roy­al cham­bers, who did not stand on cer­e­mo­ny with the inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion. And in 1945, the palace was bombed by Japan­ese planes.

From the orig­i­nal build­ing, only frag­ments of the fortress wall and a few pago­das have sur­vived. What is now pre­sent­ed to the eyes of tourists is a remake. But you should def­i­nite­ly vis­it here to feel the spir­it of a bygone era. Sev­er­al halls of the palace have been con­vert­ed into muse­ums. The most inter­est­ing exhibits: the king’s giant bed, engrav­ings and pho­tographs.

Be sure to climb one of the fortress walls. There is a 300-meter obser­va­tion deck from where you can see the sur­round­ings. They say that 600 human bod­ies are immured in these walls. Such a sac­ri­fice was ordered to be made by the king dur­ing con­struc­tion in order to pro­tect the palace from ene­my encroach­ments.

Ubein Wooden Bridge

It is the longest and old­est wood­en bridge in the world, con­nect­ing the city of Ama­ra­pu­ra with the adja­cent vil­lage. The struc­ture, approx­i­mate­ly 1.2 km long, stands on 1,068 teak logs left over from the con­struc­tion of the roy­al palace in Ava. The bridge con­sists of two seg­ments locat­ed at an angle to each oth­er. In 9 places there are pas­sages for large ves­sels.

The bridge was built in 1850. This is a sol­id peri­od for a nat­ur­al mate­r­i­al that is con­stant­ly exposed to mois­ture. Many teak frag­ments have been replaced with con­crete. Through­out the prom­e­nade there are bench­es and gaze­bos for relax­ation, there is a brisk trade in sou­venirs.

natural attractions

Lake Inya

Also known as Lake Vic­to­ria, Inya is the largest body of water in Yan­gon. The reser­voir was cre­at­ed by the British in 1883 to col­lect excess rain­wa­ter dur­ing the wet sea­son and also to pro­vide the city with drink­ing water.

With the excep­tion of a pub­lic park on the south­west shore, the entire area around the lake is pri­vate­ly owned by expen­sive real estate. Free access to water is pos­si­ble from the Inya and Pyi embank­ments, locat­ed next to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Yan­gon.

Hlavaga National Park

The park, found­ed in 1982, is locat­ed in the sub­urbs of Min­gal­adon. The ter­ri­to­ry with an area of ​​over 623 hectares is divid­ed into 3 zones:

• relax­ation,
• Adven­ture,
• edu­ca­tion.

In the first one there are cozy bun­ga­lows com­bined into a hotel, a spa, a restau­rant and boat rental. The sec­ond zone is aimed at out­door enthu­si­asts: they offer car safaris and hik­ing, there are arti­fi­cial rocks for ama­teur climbers. The third is a but­ter­fly gar­den, a mini-zoo with rep­tiles and a green­house.

Lake Kandavgi

Kan­dav­gi or Roy­al Lake is an arti­fi­cial reser­voir cre­at­ed to pro­vide cit­i­zens with drink­ing water. To imple­ment the project in the 1870s, the British drained the swamps and built a dam. Thus, Lake Kan­dav­gi was formed, which was then con­nect­ed with Inya by pipes. As planned, water from the com­bined reser­voirs was sup­posed to flow through a sys­tem of canals deep into the city, but this did not hap­pen.

Today, the sur­round­ings of Kan­davga are a favorite place for tourists and local res­i­dents to walk. The length of the coast­line is approx­i­mate­ly 8 km. Near­by is a land­scape park and a zoo. On the east side of the lake is the Karawijk Hall restau­rant.

Entertainment

Fountain Garden

The attrac­tion is locat­ed near the city of Naypyi­daw. The entrance to the park with an area of ​​67 hectares is marked by three huge arch­es — imme­di­ate­ly after them, the ter­ri­to­ry of enter­tain­ment for chil­dren and adults begins. These are sports and play­grounds, cafes, restau­rants and, of course, foun­tains. There are more than 20 of them here, they are equipped in arti­fi­cial ponds, and on the shores of the largest reser­voirs there is a rental of cata­ma­rans.

For young vis­i­tors, two ponds were con­vert­ed into a small water park with slides of var­i­ous sizes. Oth­er enter­tain­ments include view­ing old boats in the open-air muse­um and admir­ing the beau­ties from obser­va­tion tow­ers. In the evening, the back­light turns on in the gar­den, and the jets of foun­tains shim­mer in dif­fer­ent col­ors.

Zoo

The old­est zoo in Myan­mar is locat­ed in Yan­gon and cov­ers an area of ​​about 28 hectares. More than 200 species of ani­mals live here — in total over a thou­sand rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the fau­na. These are ele­phants, tigers, lions, croc­o­diles, pri­mates, birds and many oth­ers. There are espe­cial­ly many vis­i­tors in the aquar­i­um, where col­or­ful fish caught off the coast of South­east Asia live.

The zoo also hous­es an amuse­ment park and a nat­ur­al his­to­ry muse­um. When the cap­i­tal was moved from Yan­gon to Naypyi­daw, a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of ani­mals went there, for which a new zoo was built.

Tinjan festival

One of the main pub­lic hol­i­days pre­cedes the Bud­dhist New Year, which is cel­e­brat­ed in April. With­in 3 days the coun­try turns into a water bat­tle­field. Munic­i­pal offices, shops and schools are closed. Peo­ple of all ages, regard­less of sta­tus and wealth, pour water over each oth­er from all kinds of con­tain­ers. Wet action is accom­pa­nied by pro­ces­sions and dances.

Bojuque Market

The bazaar, opened dur­ing the British pres­ence, occu­pies a pic­turesque build­ing with arch­es, gal­leries and pas­sages. The mar­ket was orig­i­nal­ly called Scott Mar­ket, after Com­mis­sion­er Gavin Scott. After Bur­ma gained inde­pen­dence, the mall was renamed Bogyuk Aung San to per­pet­u­ate the mem­o­ry of a promi­nent mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal fig­ure.

Antiques, jew­el­ry, sou­venirs, art, clothes, shoes and hab­er­dash­ery are sold in the mar­ket build­ing and on the adja­cent streets. There are also phar­ma­cies, heal­ers’ offices and shops with med­i­c­i­nal herbs.