Page 72 - The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

70 Yangon and around Midtown Yangon
1 Midtown Yangon
The suburbs of midtown Yangon immediately north of the old colonial centre are home
to some of the city’s leading attractions. Pride of place goes to the stunning Shwedagon
Pagoda, Myanmar’s greatest Buddhist place of worship, while there are further
supersized Buddhas nearby at the Chauk Htat Gyi and Nga Htat Gyi pagodas, as well as
the pick’n’mix attractions at the city’s sporadically entertaining National Museum and
the Aung San Museum, set in the former Burmese leader’s time-warped family home.

National Museum of Myanmar
• Pyay Rd • Tues–Sun 9.30am–4.30pm (last entry 4pm) • K5000 (including free audioguide) •
No photography
Yangon’s National Museum of Myanmar is a bit of a mixed bag. There are some
outstanding artefacts here, although the badly lit rooms and erratic signage don’t help
(the free audioguide fills in some of the gaps), while parts of the five-storey museum’s
huge exhibition space are rather lacking in actual exhibits. Explore selectively, however,
and it’s worth at least an hour or two of your time.
Ground floor
The ground floor focuses on exhibits from Mandalay (Yadanabon). The undoubted
highlight, and the museum’s most celebrated exhibit, is the splendid Lion Throne, in a
room all of its own. Made for King Bodawpaya in 1816, this was originally one of nine
similar thrones, models of which can also be seen here, but it is the only one to survive,
despite being carted off to India in 1902 (it was returned by Lord Mountbatten after
Independence in 1948).
The adjacent Yadanabon gallery showcases the artistry of Mandalay’s court, with
cabinets full of extravagant and finely worked artefacts including toy-sized wooden
models of the Mandalay Royal Palace and assorted clothes and palanquins, although
the randomness of the exhibits and lack of signage make the overall effect feel rather
like browsing a superior handicrafts shop.

First floor
Top of the bill on the first floor is the magnificent, solid-gold Royal Regalia, comprising
the royal helmet, fan, sash and sandals plus assorted betel containers, caskets, goblets,
urns and an entertaining, vaguely Dalí-esque crayfish-shaped pitcher.
The grindingly dull Natural History gallery has the inevitable dishes of prehistoric
bones and Stone Age tools – a clump of fossilized poo is about as exciting as it
gets – while the Bronze Age Axes and Spearheads gallery is as yawn-worthy as you’d
suspect. Fractionally more absorbing is the Burial Urns and Stone Carvings gallery, with
exhibits from Sri Ksetra (Thayekhittaya; see p.193), Hanlin (see p.341) and Beikthano
(see p.196), featuring some delicate metalwork and statuettes.

Second floor
The second floor is the most enjoyable in the museum, displaying a rich selection of
distinctively Burmese craftsmanship at its extravagant best. The Traditional Folk Art
gallery holds a wide range of crafts, from beautiful glass mosaic work and spectacular
lacquerware through to fun and colourful toys and dolls, animal figurines, and wooden
carts, plus a pumpkin-shaped alms bowl and a pair of ingenious chairs with antler
horns for legs.
Equally fine is the Performing Arts Gallery – home to an excellent array of musical
instruments, although it’s frustrating that you can’t hear what any of them actually
sound like. These include several quaint mi-gyaung, a crocodile-shaped, three-string
zither (the strings are plucked with a plectrum), enormous Shan pot drums and

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