Page 67 - The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

Downtown Yangon Yangon and around 65
during the 1920s operated the world’s largest fleet of river boats, with over six hundred 1
vessels carrying some nine million passengers a year.
Next door, the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation was originally home to Grindlay’s
Bank, one of the largest in British India (and also housed the National Museum from
1970 to 1996). The building’s banking origins can be seen in the very solid-looking
vaulted doors which protect the entrance, while a quirky facade of green semicircles,
topped with lion heads, rises above.
Diagonally opposite the Ministry of Agriculture is the fortress-like Myanmar
Economic Bank, with its rather severe Art Deco styling and distinctive hexagonal corner
tower. One of the last architectural hurrahs of Rangoon under British rule, the building
was constructed in 1939–41 as the Burma HQ of the Chartered Bank of India,
Australia and China (later Standard Chartered) and considered one of the most
modern buildings in Asia of its time, complete with steel-framed, reinforced-concrete
construction, underground parking and a huge banking hall.
Further south, at the end of the street, stands the imposing Myanma Port Authority
building with its landmark tower and huge arched windows, with roundels decorated
with ships and anchors between.

Strand Road
At the bottom end of Pansodan Street, a left turn along Strand Road leads to the
Strand Hotel (see below). Alternatively, heading right brings you to the neat
red-brick Custom House, complete with clock and cupola. Past here is the huge
Yangon Divisional Court, originally the office of the British Accountant General and
the place where all government taxes were collected on products ranging from salt
through to teak and opium. The building is now slowly emerging from a massive
restoration project, its facade decorated with freshly cleaned six-pointed stars and
fleurs-de-lys.
The Strand Hotel
• 92 Strand Rd • T01 243377, Whotelthestrand.com
Downtown Yangon’s address of choice for the rich and famous is the Strand Hotel,
looking like a staid elderly duchess amid the disreputable hubbub of Yangon’s historic,
but run-down, waterfront Strand Road. Opened in 1901, the Strand was the brainchild
of Aviet and Tigran Sarkies, two of the four entrepreneurial, Armenian-descended
Sarkies brothers, who established a string of luxury hotels throughout Southeast Asia
including the Raffles in Singapore and the Eastern & Oriental in Penang. The whites-
only hotel (Burmese were not admitted until 1945) was described as “the finest hostelry
east of the Suez” by John Murray in his Handbook for Travellers, and guests included
Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham and Lord Mountbatten. It fell into disrepair
following independence but reopened in 1993 after extensive renovations, and is today
one of the city’s most exclusive places to stay (see p.90).

The Secretariat
• Between Mahabandoola, Anawrahta, Bo Aung Kyaw and Theinbyu roads • Closed to the public except once a year on
Martyrs’ Day (July 19)
The most impressive of all Yangon’s colonial monuments is the gargantuan
Secretariat (also known as the Ministers’ Building), a vast red-brick Neoclassical
structure occupying an entire city block, sprawling over sixteen acres and with
37,000 square metres of floor space – roughly two-thirds the size of the Paris
Louvre. Completed in 1902 (with the east and west wings added three years later),
this is the most famous and historically significant colonial building in Yangon: the
former seat of British administrative power in Burma; the spot where Aung San and

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