Yangon

A trip to Myanmar (Burma) had been on my bucket list since I travelled other South-East Asian countries in 2009. With a stopover in Bangkok it took me almost 20 hours of travelling before I got my Burmese visa stamp in my passport and was on the taxi to my hotel in Yangon. Yangon (formerly Rangoon) is the largest city and economical hub of Myanmar.

I had based myself in Chinatown, in Downtown Yangon. On my first day I walked to the Shwedagon Pagoda, the single most important religious site in all of Myanmar. Impressed by the size and the devoted Burmese people I left the site and wandered around the nearby park before walking my way back to Downtown.

The next two days I explored some more of the Downtown area; the markets, the street-vendors, and the colonial buildings around the square Mahabandoola Garden. Between the buzzing streets I also found some interesting back alleys. Those back alleys were used by the people as rubbish dumps before the Doh Eain organisation decided to transform them into child-friendly garden alleys.

Since I had only saw four of the back alley gardens and I had a flight to catch to Mandalay, I visited the other four back alley on the last day of my trip before my flight home.