Returning to Yangon, Myanmar, amid political upheaval, a former resident retraces old paths beneath the Shwedagon Pagoda, confronting the repercussions of the 2021 military coup and reflecting on what–if anything–has changed.
It’s hard to write anything about Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, without mentioning Shwedagon Pagoda, the great glowing moon around which the city orbits. The Buddhist temple sits slightly elevated, dripping in gold and encrusted with gems, like a great lady overseeing the bustle below.
When living in Yangon in 2017, I had always thought Shwedagon most magical in the twilight. So when I returned to the city in 2025, I approached on foot as the sun neared the horizon, past brightly painted Buddhist guesthouses and up the covered steps lined with stalls selling fresh flowers and souvenirs. With shoes off, as is customary, my feet absorbed the day’s residual warmth from the marble tiles. Once inside, I basked in the bright blue dusk, taking in the quietly humming tide of people under the pagoda’s golden glow. Considered theoretically, it had seemed risky, and even selfish, to travel to the conflict-affected country I’d lived in nearly eight years earlier in times of relative peace. But the country had gotten under my skin, and with the sub voce chanting of monks and the shuffle of pilgrims’ feet now washing over me once more, those qualms felt a world away.
The great city of Yangon has received many visitors and known many rulers. Most infamously, the country was subject to British rule until 1948, and has since spent many decades struggling against the tight grip of the Myanmar military. Following a brief period of democratic rule, the military took control again in a 2021 coup, against which much of the country has resisted ever since. Despite the scale and nature of the conflict–and its humanitarian repercussions–it is infrequently reported on in the international media.
Another, more welcome guest, was Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who arrived in Yangon (then known as ‘Rangoon’) in 1927 to take up the role of Chile’s honorary consul. Neither local nor part of the colonial class, Neruda felt himself alienated. When I first read his poem “Rangoon 1927” while living here, I felt his words echo into the present.
Neruda wrote that he “came late to Rangoon” and that everything was already there. This included “[a] white hotel for whites, and a golden pagoda for the golden.” The poem’s criticism of the colonial division of the city’s populace was a reference to two structures emblematic of each culture–the Strand Hotel and Shwedagon Pagoda. Similarly, in the Yangon of 2017, there was a fairly clear delineation between local Yangonites and those in the expat bubble.
Neruda didn’t stay long. He returned, though, thirty years later, to seek out an estranged former lover, whom he failed to locate. But he would have encountered a city much changed, now free from its colonial shackles. And so, like Neruda, this is an outsider’s account of returning uninvited to the golden city, to reconnect with something that could be beyond your grasp. For myself, I came looking for the connection I felt to this slightly crumbling pile of bricks, its people, and its culture, and to practice its language, which I’d been learning for the past year.
I set out early on my first day. In the cool early morning air, Yaw Min Gyi locals shopped for the day’s supplies at street stalls selling fruit, vegetables, fish, and meat. Vendors also fried, stirred, and kneaded easy breakfasts for office workers and women still in their pyjamas. Though tempted, I continued on my way to Aung Mingalar Noodle Shop, a place that stood out in my memory. Sitting at the open-air restaurant, which was surrounded by fruit and flower sellers and the calls of passing vendors, I devoured a bowl of funky, spicy noodles from Shan state, a mountainous region bordering northern Thailand.
When the British took control of Myanmar, they flattened the existing city of Yangon and imposed upon its people a new urban centre in the colonial style. Downtown Yangon was to consist of neat rows of intersecting streets lined with new, modern buildings. As a result, today there are elegant apartment buildings with lofty ceilings, wide windows, and arabesque moulding. Or unutterably cool, clean-lined art-deco blocks, now either with a fresh lick of bright paint, or streaked black-brown with age. Every few blocks appears a heavy neo-classical administrative building designed to remind Yangon’s colonial subjects who held the power. Many of these remain standing, and as a result, Yangon is a crushingly beautiful melange.
The beauty isn’t in the design of the original buildings themselves, but in how they’ve adapted over the intervening centuries to become something different altogether–something uniquely Yangon. It’s the collision of the grand with the everyday within the context of a populace doing their best with the resources at hand. Its citizens face frequent blackouts, political crackdowns, and other significant challenges, while inhabiting gnarled colonial apartment blocks in various stages of decay. Generations of paint peel away from their facades, strung with power lines and their inhabitants’ washing. Add to this the structures reflecting Yangon’s historical and current diversity; the temples and shop houses of Chinese immigrants, Hindu, Jain, and Islamic religious buildings, and even a synagogue.
I strolled around the city for seven days, retracing many a step from my earlier time living there. Despite the heat, the haze, and the thrum of generators, on foot was the only way I wanted to take in downtown Yangon. I gladly accepted a week of black snot in exchange for a near constant state of agog.
One morning, I set myself up at Lucky Seven tea house for a breakfast of aloo puri and far too sweet Burmese tea. I watched as Yangonites breakfasted and chatted effusively, while they made donations to the many passing Buddhist nuns, ranging in age from pre-school to grand old. Before Burmese class, I set off from the eastern end of Merchant Road, heading westward. I moved slowly, stopping frequently to bask in the beauty of a two-hundred-year-old building, now painted turquoise, with neatly-dressed schoolgirls making their way inside for classes, or the Armenian church, crowned in bougainvillea, with a gilt Buddhist tree shrine outside its gates. So as not to overheat, I ducked into more than one cafe for a cold drink, and paused at Bogalay Zey market to munch on crunchy fried chickpea snacks. I eventually crossed over Sule Pagoda Road, and my path intersected with 29th Street. In an earlier version of my life, on weekend afternoons when I had nothing else to do, I’d walk from my apartment in Yankin to Myanmar Plaza, and jump on a passing bus headed downtown. Disembarking at Sule Pagoda, I’d find myself standing in that very location, perched at the precipice of 29th Street.
I swam through the cool waters of the lower block of 29th Street with the same wide-eyed awe as before. The Bombay-Burma Press building, a curlded blue facade strung with washing, looked ready to crumble at any moment. When I could tear myself away, I headed further up the block, dodging cars reversing into impossibly small spaces, and young men with wiry arms carrying heavy sacks of grain or gallons of water. The apartments in this block were painted in faded blues and greens, with plants growing from pots on balconies and cracks in walls. On the street level, many buildings housed goldsmiths and jewelry shops. Their dark interiors flashed with the glint of flame and gold, and men in longyis sold necklaces and rings set with Myanmar’s precious gems.
From an outsider’s perspective, Yangon felt curiously unchanged. My fears about the effects of coup and conflict were not realised, and strangely, the outward changes seemed fairly minor. Most perceptibly to me, many once-popular restaurants and cafes had closed down, there were far fewer foreign faces on the streets, and fewer cultural events than this cosmopolitan city once offered. Digging deeper though, I sensed a shift in the city’s spirit; with the promise of democracy now snatched away, and the realities of military rule returned yet again, people seemed (naturally and understandably), a little more serious, a little less likely to want to chat to you on the street.
“Everyone is very sad,” a taxi driver put to me bluntly.
My Burmese teacher, Mo Mo, explained that people don’t see a future in Myanmar. “Everybody wants to get out,” she told me. Also an English teacher, she said that her business was booming because every parent with sufficient means wanted their child to learn perfect English, so they could emigrate to the US or UK before they turned 18, saving their children from compulsory military service and giving them a chance at a successful future.
Later on, emerging at the top of 29th Street and enjoying a dinner of crunchy Burmese salads, I took a turn back down night-hushed Sule Pagoda Road. Strolling languidly by the golden dome that lit up the night, I marvelled at the culture that had created such a scrum of elegant beauty in the face of a long history of oppression.
Another day, I stood in the late-morning sun outside Yangon’s Secretariat building. I found it interesting that the stern red-and-brown brick building that was once the seat of the colonial government had recently been painstakingly restored. There was also a certain irony about going to such lengths to now house bubble tea shops, a pancake cafe, and made-for-social-media sculptures in the former halls of power. Unable to withstand the heat any longer, I sought relief in an open-air but shady cafe across the road, and a cold lime juice. The cafe was on the corner of Maha Bandula Road and Bogalay Zay Street, the intersection of which was the location of Neruda’s apartment. I could easily imagine his life there with his erstwhile lover, and the blunt reminder he would have received every time he looked out of his broad, teak-shuttered window.
Before leaving the city, I visited the suburb of Yankin, where I lived during my time here. Some things had changed, like the name of my local tea shop, and a new block of flats. Others were the same, like the ubiquitous caw of crows, the feel of my old street when people were buying snacks and vegetables in the early dusk, and men playing chinlone in an empty lot.
I ended up at the tea shop formerly known as Skyline for dinner. Sitting there, engulfed in a nearby table’s beedi smoke, eating a comforting plate of tealeaf rice topped with a fried egg, I made the waitresses giggle with shock at my (not very good) Burmese language skills.
Unlike Neruda, I didn’t feel that I came late to Yangon. If anything, despite its brimming history, this time I was early, before she was ready for visitors. But also unlike Neruda, in being reacquainted with Yangon, I did find what I was seeking, and I looked forward to a time when we could meet again in better circumstances.
