Officially, ie according to the military, Naypyidaw's population is around 1 million. Having traversed the whole place in a taxi, I can say with certainty that the official figures are nonsense. This is a ghost town. The photos you see below were taken on a Saturday afternoon. The freeway in the first photo has literally 20 lanes - I've never seen anything like it, not even in the USA.
Naypyidaw must be the only capital city in the world where TripAdvisor's 'Top 10 Things To Do' list has been abridged to a Top 5. Also, it's surely the only capital city in the world where one can arrive at the central railway station at 5.30pm on a Friday (as I did) and find not only no public transport, but no taxis either, and no wi-fi...
I was the only tourist in town and I quickly became a celebrity among the locals, all of them hanging around at the railway station presumably because there was nowhere else to go. They knew no English beyond 'hello', which they all repeated gaily while following me around like a little troop of disciples. Going outside, I sat down on a step to get my laptop out. My followers gathered in rows behind me, some sitting, some squatting, some standing, some tiptoe-ing; all of them peering over my shoulder, an intermittent chorus of 'hello's still chirruping out into the dusk. Finally I found my hotel's phone number. One of my disciples had a car, so I got him to phone my hotel on his mobile and then I took the phone off him and told the hotel concierge - who spoke English, thank Buddha - to give my guy some directions. Thus I finally got to my posh hotel, a huge palace of eerie and haunting luxury, almost totally devoid of guests. My improvised taxi driver was paid generously.
The next day I commandeered a (real) taxi and driver for a couple of hours to take me to all the sights. While I was walking around taking photos, the driver insisted on trotting along after me, holding a parasol over my head to shield me from the sun. I wanted to tell him I was happy for him to wait in his car and relax, but he didn't speak English and I didn't feel I could just shoo him away. Anyway, one quickly gets used to these little colonial privileges, does one not? Apart from a handful of business delegations within the hotel itself, I didn't see any other foreigners anywhere in Naypyidaw, and I was definitely the only tourist.
After I was done taking photos, my driver took me back to the hotel. (Outside the gate, a guard used a mirror on a stick to check under the car for bombs. That was a first for me.) I spent the rest of the day lounging on my bed, eating room service food and watching football on TV. The next day I was back on the train, heading away to the north. This is one place to which I don't ever want to come back.
Lovely hotel though.
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| "You say you'll give me A highway with no-one on it..." 'All I Want Is You', U2 |
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| Burma's national parliament. This is as close as you can get. Photo taken through locked gates. Similar gates at the Supreme Court, but photos weren't allowed there at all. |
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| Another big empty road... |
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| Uppatasanti Pagoda. Built 2006-2009 as a near-replica of the Shwedagon (see last blog). It's like us building a replica of Durham Cathedral in Milton Keynes. |
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| Looking south from the pagoda |
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| Reverse angle of the above photo |
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| Sadly this T-shirt wasn't available in adult sizes, otherwise I'd have bought it. |
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| Edd vs Food #38 Room service. Tuna sarnies. In the world's biggest ghost town, I'm not leaving my posh hotel room after dark. Especially not on a Saturday, when all the football is on the telly. |
