Page 188 - The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

186 Central MyanMar Yangon to MandalaY
Defence Services Museum (11km), Zoological Gardens (30km) & Meiktila (156km) Uppatasanti Pagoda (7km) & Railway Station (13km)
Myoma Herbal
Market Garden naYPYItaW
Myoma Bus T A U N G N Y O R O A D
Station THABYEGONE Fountain
ROUNDABOUT Garden
City Hall
Yangon–Mandalay Expressway Z A B U K Y E T T H AYA Y R O A D W AZIYA SH W EPYI ST REET Maniradanar Gems thabyegone GOLDEN T A W W I N YA D A N A R R O A D
Hospital
Museum
Jade Hall
Market
T A U N G N Y O R OA D
HILL
royal Myanmar
M YAT PA N THAZIN ST R EET
Golf Course Pyinmana (8km)
S H W E K YA R P I N S T R E E T
YA Z A T H I N G A H A R O A D
Z ABU KYETTHAYAY ROAD
Junction
Centre T A W W I N YA D A N A R R O A D
Capital
Hypermarket
Centre
4 YA Z A T H I N G A H A R O A D

aCCOMMODatIOn
The Hotel Amara 2
Aureum Palace 1 N
Golden Lake 5
Kempeniski 4
Tungapuri Hotel 3
EatInG YA Z A T H I N G A H A R O A D
L’Opera 3
Maw Kong Nong 1
Santino 1 0 1
Tai Kitchen 2
Yangon Kitchen Restaurant 4 S H W E P Y I T A W I N R D kilometre
Airport (16km)
Uppatasanti Pagoda
• Yaza Htarni Rd, around 9km from Thabyegone Roundabout • Daily 6am–9pm • Free; the $5 foreigners’
entrance fee was not being asked for at the time of writing • A taxi/motorbike taxi from the Yaza Thingaha Rd hotels will cost around
K15,000/K8000 return, and there’s usually an hour wait
Naypyitaw’s most prominent monument, the Uppatasanti Pagoda (although local
pronunciation makes it sound more like “Uppatadaani”) looms above the city’s largely
flat and featureless hinterlands, and is visible for many kilometres in every direction.
Completed in 2009, the pagoda was offered as a merit-making act by the man
responsible for the city, Senior General Than Shwe, and his wife (displaying a distinct
parallel with Burmese kings). The name, roughly translating as “protection against
calamity”, derives from a sixteenth-century Buddhist sutra designed to be recited
at times of crisis, and particularly when confronted with the threat of foreign invasion
– a telling allusion to Naypyitaw’s founding raison d’être and the prevailing paranoid
fear of invasion.

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