Yangon - Kandawgyi

I decided to stay at the Kandawgyi Palace hotel. It's right near the Shwedagon Pagoda and close to the centre of town. The hotel sits on a rather large lake called Kandawgyi, which translates to the Royal Lake. My room has a lovely view over the lake, so I decided to go out and have a look.


The government has poured a lot of money into making the lake and the surrounding area a pleasure centre for the local Yangon population or tourists. Probably both. Most notable, is the huge teak walkway they have built along one side of the lake. I could see this from my hotel room, so I went to investigate. I thought it would be walkway with lots of entrances all the way along the shore. Nope. There's one entrance and you have to pay US$1 to get onto it! I guess that's how they're paying for it. At first, I thought the lady selling the ticket was running a scam on me, but she had an official looking badge and an official looking ticket book. Oh well, for a dollar, who cares.

The walkway is rather wide and very long. It snakes down the entire south side of the lake. It gives views of, well, the lake, as well as occassional glimpses of the Shwedagon Pagoda. It also gives great views of my hotel and my hotel room window, so I must remember to keep the curtains closed!

It was a pleasant walk and all the people walking past said hello to me, then giggled. I think in Myanmar, I must be a comedian or something, because everyone giggles when they see me. It could be my luminous red croc shoes that I've wearing, but I think they're just very surprised to see a white guy.


Towards the end of the walkway is a rather pretty little Buddhist temple. It's apparently a Shin Upagot shrine, which is designed to protect human beings in moments of mortal danger. To me, it looked like a whole bunch of little Buddhas, with a big Buddha in the middle. Apparnetly this is a feature of Burmese Buddhism. They like to have one central temple, with a whole bunch of little temples festooned around the edges. For this small temple, the effect was to make the temple look a bit like a cluttered old woman's house. Little Buddhas where ever you look stuck into every nook and cranny.


There was also an amusing sign that warned people to take out their shoes when they walked onto the central temple area, or as the sign said "No Foot Wearing". There were two guys sitting on the steps perusing a book titled "Speaking Better English". I hope they get around to fixing the sign!


At the end of the walkway, is another government built pleasure complex - the Kandawgyi gardens. The dominant feature is the Karaweik. It's meant to be a stone version of an ancient Burmese Royal barge. I still can't work out what's with all these stone boats in Asia - the big mosque in Brunei had one as well! Anyway, this one is in the shape of two huge killer ducks, all painted a very garish shade of gold. To get into the garden cost USD$1, then another USD$1 to get inside the giant killer ducks. I even had a guide, but he was mainly spruicking the advantages of the nightly buffet dinner with dance show. Yawn.

I walked all around the outside and got up close with the giant killer ducks. Turns out, they have gold disco balls hanging off their beaks. I'm they have some cultural signifigance as being pearls or something, but they looked like disco balls to me. Giant killer duck boats eating disco balls. Man, Yangon has got it all!

The one good thing about the park, is that there's a clear, uninterrupted view down the lake to the Shwedagon Pagoda. That's deinfitely worth the price of admission. There was also a small zoo, with a cassowary in it, which was pretty random.


I was a bit buggered by this stage, so I jumped in a taxi. I'd asked the nice people at the help desk how much I should pay and the taxi driver only tried to charge me twice the going rate. I got in the taxi and it started to absolutely bucket down with rain. This was a real problem for the taxi, as the taxi had 4 windows, but only 2 window handles. After the driver had wound up his window, he had to detach the window handle, lean over and attach it on the back window to wind that up. To get my window closed, I had to push on the glass. Classy stuff!

As there's not a great deal to do in Yangon, I think anyone coming here will end up at Kandawgyi. It's worth a visit, especially for the views.