Day 251 Ghost (Main) City Naypyidaw

In the bus from Hsipaw to Naypyidaw, there was only one other tourist and so we joined forces. He had the exact same problem as me. He also wanted to go to Hpa An, but the accommodations were too expensive for him too. We discussed our options and decided to visit Naypyidaw and then go straight to Yangon.

After a 9-hour bus ride, we arrived in Naypyidaw at half past 6 in the morning. After fighting our way through the horde of taxi drivers, we tried to book a bus ticket to Yangon. But as we quickly realized, no one here really spoke English. But we managed to get a ticket for this afternoon. We now had 6 hours to explore Naypyidaw. We hired a taxi driver to take us around the city.

And it was just as I had read everywhere. It was an empty city. On the 8-lane highway (per direction), we had to stop. I had never seen something like this before. It was 7 o'clock in the morning and according to the taxi driver, it was rush hour. But the highway was empty. We could take selfies and walk right in the middle of the highway. In 5 minutes, maybe 3 cars passed by. Just crazy. Even when we continued driving, we couldn't really see any other cars.

Our first stop was at the reproduction of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon. This pagoda here is 3 cm smaller than the one in Yangon. Here too, there were only a handful of people. They had never seen a tourist before and were eager to take a photo with us.

While the Shwedagon Pagoda is full of visitors, we had this pagoda all to ourselves.

We made our second stop in the residential area, even though there were only villas. We visited a café that was decorated for Christmas and had Christmas songs playing in the background.

We treated ourselves to a, admittedly, very good coffee and mainly used the toilet, which was very clean.

There wasn't really much to see here, so we looked at what there is to see in Myanmar everywhere. Temples and pagodas. But these temples and pagodas had all been newly built, like the whole city.

Most of the temples were reproductions of other temples in the country. Even ruins were reproduced, although ruins with new bricks don't really look authentic.

For the locals, we were the attraction. I don't think many tourists end up here, so the people here are not used to us. But they don't meet us with annoyance, they smile at us and want to take a photo.

On the way back to the bus station, we drove through the government district where all the ministries are located. But we never saw the different ministries, only the huge signs and a road that led behind a hill or into a small forest. But it seemed that there was a ministry for everything here.

We also passed a bicycle race. The funny thing is, the roads don't need to be closed for it, they're always empty. Seriously. But the field of participants consisted of only 4 riders. Granted, a small race.

After 6 hours, we had seen the impressive emptiness of Naypyidaw. According to official information, there are supposed to be 1 million inhabitants here. It's a mystery to me where they all hid during our stay. It was definitely exciting.

We then continued to Yangon by bus, where I will plan the rest of my trip.