Trip to the Land of Golden Pagodas - Part 2 (Orient Express The Governor's Residence)

Mingalabar......  Welcome to Myanmar.

The trip from Yangon Mingaladon airport to city center take around 45 minutes.  I was told by the hotel respresentative that there is a plan to build a new and bigger airport which is located further.

During the ride, you can notice that this town is changing its face.  You see a lot of constructions activities every where.  The road traffic is quite busy also.  Personally, I do not feel like I am in the country that has just been opening up itself to the world.

Actually during the ride, I notice something very wierd.  Too bad, I did not take the pictures, so I need to "borrow" some of the pictures that I can find in the web.

Do you notice what is wrong with those 2 pictures????

I hope you got it.  If you notice on the first picture that they drive on the righ-hand side of the road.  So you are expecting that the car's driver should be on the left side of the car.  However, on the second picture, the driver is actually on the right side of the car.  By right, they should drive on the left-hand side of the road.  I know it is very confusing even it takes sometimes for my friend to get it.

Yes indeed you see both type of car in Yangon road.  Car with driver on the left side and car with driver on the right side, but they all (suppose) to drive in the right-hand side of the road.  I am not sure how they handle it.  May be they used to it already.  Perhaps they also do not care on which side of the road they should drive :).   Well, I was told Yangon driver is quite misbehave, so you need to be careful when you walk in the Yangon street especially when you cross the street.

So after 45 minutes ride, we start entering into the more quieter neighborhood area.  In fact, the hotel we stays, The Governor's Residence is in the Embassy compound of the city.  It is situated just in front of Srilankan's embassy.   Here is the google map location of the hotel.  As you can see many Embassy in the hotel vicinity.

Here is the sign to at the hotel drive way.  The hotel looks more like a residence.  Oh well.  Indeed the hotel used to be the British Governors residence during the colonial time.

When a guest arrive, the hotel staff will hit this gong to welcome the guest into the residence.

There are basically 2 buildings compound.  The first part is the "lobby" area and dinning area.  At the back is where is the room area.  It has a very big and beautiful garden and a very nice pool.

 

Here is the interiror of the room.  We get the room on the second level.  The room is nice but it is not so luxurious like what you expect in this kind of resort.  However, considering this is Myanmar, the country that has just opened up itself, it can be considered very luxury.  I am quite impress with the maintenance that has been done by the hotel. 

The breakfast is served on the restaurant on the ground floor by the pool.  At night they also served a Myanmarese buffet dinner.  I do not really like Myanmar food.  I think the hotel should consider other kind of buffett (may be international buffet with some Myanmar food highlight).  The other odd things also rather than playing Myanmar traditional music, there are few college students playing western music.

They use this modified bicycle as a table to serve the food.  Quite interesting.

I will continue to Part 3, which will mainly cover trip to Shewedagon Pagoda and Golden Pagoda