[Myanmar Special] Day 2 in Yangon: The National Museum

The walking tour on my first day in Yangon covered more as expected so I had some additional free-time to explore the city. I already had booked a transfer to the highway bus terminal for my bus to Mandalay, but that was at 7pm, so plenty of time to visit the National Museum.

Statue in front of the museum. Taking pictures inside was strictly prohibited.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a single picture from the museum’s inside. Taking pictures was strictly prohibited. There were some free lockers where I stored my camera during the visit. Even if you don’t want to, you really have to.
The museum included a free audio guide, which I highly recommend. It’s huge museum where you could spend many hours. Some exhibits are behind bars, probably to prevent robbery. Using the audio guide it’s possible to learn a lot about Myanmar’s history, but nothing which isn’t covered by the Web. I would recommend to museum if it wasn’t that expensive.

On my way back I discovered a small pagoda. I took a few minutes to look at it, especially because it wasn’t crowded by tourists. In fact I was the only tourist.

Snake in the pagoda

Finding a supermarket was a real challenge, not because there aren’t any, but two were marked in my guidebook that were closed down already. But I finally I found one in a huge shopping mall. This was really surreal because that mall totally doesn’t fit into my imagination of Myanmar and I suddenly felt like being in the wrong place.

Back at the hostel I started my way to Mandalay. If you take a long distance bus there, you need to transfer to the 23km outside located highway bis terminal. This could take quite some time because streets can be crowded. So it’s recommended to plan two hours for this ride.

Don’t Panic!