Travelling in time

As modern influences come to Myanmar, the past is always near, writes Neda Vanovac

In 1927, Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda feared he had come to Rangoon too late. “Everything was already there — a city of blood, dreams and gold, a river that flowed from the savage jungle into the stifling city,” he wrote. Almost a century later, a traveller might be tempted to feel the same sense of coming late to the party, but as Myanmar begins to open up to tourists once more and greater parts of the country become accessible, that fear should dissipate.

For several years now, Myanmar has been a country on the cusp, as the military begins to release its choke-hold and democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi steps in to turn the country back towards the rest of the world.

But even as Myanmar seeks to modernise — with high-rise developments, new freeways and Wi-Fi hot spots popping up with incredible speed — it is still possible to see the romantic crossroads of Asia that so captivated the literary heavyweights of Neruda, Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell.

Rangoon, now renamed Yangon, is still a dreamy city of gold.

Walking through the bustling downtown area, it’s impossible not to feel surrounded by the ghosts of a mythologised old world.

The crumbling buildings of colonial England still line stately avenues, but trees grow out of their uncovered top floors and mosses creep along the walls.

Downstairs, people go about their daily life, washing laundry in huge buckets, cooking on fires on the footpaths, pecking away at GETTING THERE malaysiaairlines.com