Burmese Days….High Tea at the Strand Hotel, Yangon

The Strand hotel has seen many illustrious guests over the years…. George Orwell, Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maugham to name but a few. So we felt we needed to visit……

English High Tea sounded great…..

We didn't need the calories, and were happy that the waiter suggested we could share one high tea between two…..but we needed a little rest  from sightseeing and Burmese food…..

Tea was good…..and the hotel seems very nice…..

However we were actually quite happy not to be staying there. This part of Yangon was heavily bombed during WW2 but the hotel escaped. However close by it are really ugly buildings in a very sad state of repair.

Some now undergoing re-development….

We  went to visit the harbor area which is also very close to the Strand hotel…….
It was somewhat busy inside the main entry gate…

I had not realized this was a police station before taking the photo!

Then essentially no action…...

…then some action…….

We wondered what was in these drums…..oil or chemicals?

 
 Basically moving stuff onto the boats was by hand, or shoulders!

We drove past Sule Pagoda several times, which is over 2500 years old…..

but decided we did not need to visit…. it is basically in the middle of a roundabout and it looks as though one take's one's life in ones's hands in the chaotic traffic to get to it!

We also drove through the Chinese area, which had celebrated the New Year the evening before….

…. and an area where there were quite a few older colonial buildings in various states of repair……

Then back to the hotel….
Going over a new overpass, opened in the last few months, our guide pointed out a building, which was relatively new, which had had an electrical fire the prior weekend… we were happy not to be staying in a high rise hotel!

…making a left hand turn at the end of the flyover was interesting… we sat on the outside, opposite, right hand side lane for quite a while before being able to make a U turn to get onto the road we needed…….

We were happy to return to the Savoy hotel…..

where our ground floor room overlooked the pool….

...

and happy to stay in the hotel for dinner……not wanting to face more traffic!
We ate around the pool at a very reasonable cost…..

Fish and chips Burmese style…hot and spicy!!

Indeed the breakfast we had the following morning was very pleasant…

Newspapers to read……..

Nice corner table…..

and one of the nicest presentations of food for breakfast that we had while in Myanmar.