Mandalay
On a map, the location looks promising. However, it overlooks a riverside shanty town and fairly seedy street where drugs are sold at night. It's a large, professional operation with tasteful decor and simply furnished rooms sporting parquet floors. The best rooms have superb views, either across the river or overlooking the city.
The rooftop bar is known for its daily happy hour and stages marionette shows in high season.
3.49 MILES
To get a sense of Mandalay’s pancake-flat sprawl, climb the 760ft hill that breaks it. The walk up covered stairways on the hill's southern slope is a…
2.77 MILES
Every day, thousands of colourfully dressed faithful venerate Mahamuni's 13ft-tall seated buddha, a nationally celebrated image that’s popularly believed…
26.3 MILES
Founded in 1915 and carved out by Turkish prisoners captured by the British during WWI, this lovingly maintained 435-acre botanical garden features more…
7.02 MILES
Staring distantly towards Mandalay Palace, temple-topped Yankin Hill is worth climbing for views of greater Mandalay's rice-field setting and of the Shan…
6.72 MILES
The world’s longest teak footbridge gently curves 1300yd across shallow Taungthaman Lake, creating one of Myanmar’s most photographed sites. In dry season…
11.39 MILES
This lovely 1834 teak monastery is Inwa’s most memorable individual attraction. It's supported on 267 teak posts, the largest 60ft high and 9ft in…
1.61 MILES
A meditative departure from the usual Burmese 'douse-it-all-in-gold-and-pastels' aesthetic, this gorgeously carved teak monastery is beloved by tourists…
7.45 MILES
This ‘early offering shrine’ is the most important of the temples on Sagaing Hill’s southern crown and the first you’ll come to on climbing the One Lion…
0.23 MILES
If you can stomach the smell, this atmospheric scene of fish mongering close to the Ayeyarwady River is worth an afternoon look (it gets most active from…
0.29 MILES
This small market takes up a few blocks, which by midday become littered with multicoloured clouds of blossoms and piles of cut stems and leaves.
0.7 MILES
This pagoda's claim to fame – besides its gold stupa – is a Buddha image that supposedly dates to the reign of Indian emperor Ashoka.
0.86 MILES
Ranged around a sizeable stupa glowing with gold leaf, Eindawa was founded in 1847 by King Pagan Min, whose princely palace once stood here. The complex…
1.14 MILES
This appealingly lived-in monastery has some photogenically dilapidated teak buildings. Tucked behind the tagondain (pillar topped with a golden duck) is…
1.2 MILES
Mostly hidden behind shopfronts, this large elevated pagoda complex includes a ‘golden rock’ lookalike and an enormous sacred bodhi tree planted by U Nu,…
1.25 MILES
Founded in 1167 by Prince Minshinzaw, exiled son of King Alaungsithu, Shwekyimyint considerably predates Mandalay itself. Minshinzaw consecrated the…