To understand Naypyidaw (interchangeably spelled Naypyitaw or Nay Pyi Taw, and translated from Burmese into “Abode of Kings”), it helps to know a little of the situation in Burma, the country to which it now serves as capital city. The poorest nation in southeast Asia, and home to the world’s longest-running civil war (infighting has been ripping state lines to shreds since independence from Britain was granted in 1948), the universally-abhorred military government is fighting a difficult war with the very people it should be protecting. A progressive democratic party was elected in 1990 but prevented from taking power, its Nobel Prize-winning leader put under a house arrest that lasts to this day. The GDP has become stagnant. Cities are in shambles while in the countryside thousands die every year from starvation. And in a greenfield site miles from anywhere sits a surreal suburban fantasyland where tap water is drinkable and electricity runs freely.
On November 6, 2005 the Tatmadaw military government surprised the world when it announced it had moved the capital to an empty tract of farmland 230km north of colonial capital Rangoon. No one knows exactly why: the consensus among news agencies and political pundits attributed it to geography, shifting the command centre north to avoid any potential seaborne invasion by US-led forces, while the military government maintained it was because Rangoon was simply “too crowded”. Even Burma’s main ally, China, criticised the move, wondering why a nation too poor to even feed its own people would spend so much money moving its capital city.
The city took shape as 2006 ran its course, boulevards and buildings popping up across the plain, and by our visit in June 2007 Naypyidaw was beginning to look like the squeaky-clean showcase city its creators had in mind, albeit without perhaps answering first the all-important “why”. We went in without knowing what we’d find or where we’d find it: there was nary a mention of the city in the travellers’ bible Lonely Planet and we were told by the manager at the hotel that we were the first uninvited non-delegate foreigners to stay overnight (in effect, the first two tourists).
The official line remains that Naypyidaw is off-limits to foreigners, although if that’s true it seems no one told the local officials. Apart from suspected tailings (a possible paranoid hallucination) and one unpleasant chitchat with a cop who had designs on our none-too-subtle Nikons, our overnight stay was remarkably hassle-free.
To our knowledge this is the first thorough online photo journal of life in the new capital; a companion set can be found on Will’s blog.
Constructing a Capital
Much of the infrastructure in Burma — a nation perennially on the UN’s list of the worst human rights abusers — was constructed with forced labour. While it’s difficult to tell for certain whether much or any of Naypyidaw was built by slaves and drones — locals have their suspicions but can’t substantiate them — we observed that most worker gangs had a uniformed officer supervising them very closely.
Framed by a watchtower on one side and an unfurled flag on the other, this dozer on a dune could very well be the poster image for a propaganda campaign.
Walking through the entrance to even the most finished-looking mall reveals another layer of construction.
Although the “official” population figure of one million looks to be some ways off yet, the number of new housing developments in Naypyidaw is staggering. Note the absence of cranes.
Architecture and Civic Planning
A flapping Myanmar flag points out the valley to bric-a-brac housing blocks.
A shantytown, home to displaced construction workers and poorer families, “clogs” the view of a palatial government building.
Perhaps the tallest building in Naypyidaw, and viewable from almost anywhere in the city centre, is a hilltop firehall.
The design and build quality of the housing looks about on par with American suburbia, which is to say it’s a little shoddy but they’ve done a convincing mimicry.
A bustling traditional Burmese hawker market on one side and a near-empty shopping mall on the other.
The Naypyidaw “city centre”, an inauspicious-looking traffic circle with five spoked boulevards leading to far-flung apartment blocks.
The first to move to the new capital back in 2005, the military still has a strong presence in Naypyidaw.
Life in Naypyidaw
Floor staff and kitchen boys look over the city from out the back doors of the restaurant strip. Naypyidaw enjoys a constant supply of electricity while the larger population hubs Rangoon and Mandalay sit in the dark for as many as twelve of every twenty-four hours.
The mall after dark.
A shop stall in the main shopping mall. This one sells bags of rice; another was empty save for one shelf with a boxed keyboard, a copy of Windows ME and sundry other computer parts. I felt bad for the shopkeeper and bought a blank DVD.
Reminders of Big Brother are never far away.
Mostly-empty trishaws ply the deserted boulevards of Naypyidaw.
From dinky toys to bathroom fixtures, most consumer goods in Burma are hand-me-downs from nations developing at a faster clip than they are. Even the slick new capital wasn’t spared: one paint job ago this city bus served the Narita (Tokyo) Airport.
A mother and daughter walk hand-in-hand through a fairytale land.
Wonderful but sad photos. As a Gnostic, with simular ideals to Buddhism, I feel for the
Burmese at this time of grave danger. My prayers and inner thoughts go out to the brave young Monks and followers. 1948 was my year of birth, the same year that Burma gained independence from my country, UK. The independence that Burma had was just a dream. Now it is that time again, when the ordinary Souls of the Burma Nation go for freedom once more. Love And Blessings to all whom stand for The Freedom Of The Soul (AEON).
Amazing pictures. If the Americans ever have meant anything serious about freedom and democracy and even go to war for it, they should seriously consider some bombs for Naypyidaw. Since it’s not many sivilians there and mostly generals and soldiers, the target seems quite “naked”. Just let the few civilans get the chance to flee before the drop…
Naypidaw, is not that bad , nice city
nice pics
[...] Via BoingBoing, fascinating photos of Burma’s new capital from, literally, the first tourists there. It seems to me from these pictures that the government wanted a new city that was more like Singapore or southern California and less like, well, Burma. [...]
Thanks for the brilliant photos. No wonder my friends don’t want to move there.Empty, unattractive, barren landscape and ( some said) full of snakes.
By the way, even the generals don’t actually live there- they are almost always on the golf courses in May Myo (Pyin Oo Lwin) a helicopter ride away… where the weather is cool (temperate) and full of lush-green hills, carefully landscaped with man-made lakes and sandy beaches … for the “hard-working” generals.
I lived and taught English in Burma for 11 years, and never got a chance to see this new “capital” that nobody wanted (or wants). Well done.
One thing I was told is that the name of the location, Kyat Pyae, means something like “Ghost Run”. Maybe our Burmese friends can confirm that? If it’s true, I think it’s a highly appropriate name!
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
I would like to see a continuation of the topic
Thanks for posting some quite detailed photos of Naypyidaw. Even I wasn’t able to get such shots while I visited there (cos I was too scared that my camera will be seized!) I am a Burmese living in Burma, and I just wanted to add to the fact that the uniformed men you mentioned (wearing a dark blue suit ) might be the construction engineer responsible for that project (probably from Ministry of Construction).
nice work man 10x
Will be visiting Rangoon next week, and hoping for a chance to see the new capital.
Sayargyi Nay Aung,
The pictures are very interesting, Kyat Pyay has another meaning. Kyat; difficult to stay, difficult to stand, survive, alive, difficult to show their face in public, and anyway impossible to stay continuously with people and then run away from people mean Pyay.
Other meaning of Kyat is too tide . I understanded why they move to Kyat Pyay is
1. They wanted to make Rangoon Killimg field to Yangon people. They actually wanted all Embassies move to Kyat Pyay and Rangoon would be hidden place from world watchers. It began 2007 revolution.
2. Never can be happen like Vietnum or Phillipine revolution, at there people took over the government palaces. Although people are mad they can’t do like to Marcos in Phillipine, as madess of people after Cyclone.
3. No coup deta can occur. No coup can approach to Kyat Pyay except their guards.
From Kyat Pyay, they neglect any worry about people, but struggle to maintein their power. Look cyclone Nagis, they are struggling for refrendum , they use media for refrundum not for Weather warning to people. They took over all good power generators from ESB Rangoon to Kyat Pyay. No power made people have no information of Cyclone warning from TV, even they do warning from TV. After Tsunami all neighborhood countries prepared weather warning systems but they neglected but struggled for the refrundum.
Although people have been facing more deadly situation like diseases, fevers, hunger and so on, they prohibited or delay the rescue team from the world. They ………Elex.
This reminds me of the situation in Cuba back in the late 40’s early 50’s when the Cuban government was in bed with the Mafia. Other than the fat military dictators of Burma, who else is gaining financially…..following the money will lead to those who support and encourage such merdous thugs.
I just came back from Burma october 2008 Almost 90 per cent of the money I spent went to local people in rangoon and Bagan. Taxis, Horsecart drivers, hotel workers, shop owners. 1 in 3 of the hotels I stayed in was govt owned. If you talk to a normal person on the street or in the tourist business they say visting will help. Punishing the people will not hurt the rich elite who already dont need money. Unless the power in Hotels is self generated I never had one instance of electric failure in 7 days. This could be only in the hotels though. It seems to me Burma is where Thailand was 20 years ago.
Pretty cool. I despise this government but its funny that you say “Big brother is never far away”.
Oh what I would give for policemen to walk the streets again instead of artificial cameras recording my every move. Ahh well…Don’t worry, we’ll have our own police state here in Europe and America quite soon.
Wow – I can’t believe you took all these photos. Very gutsy… were you aware at the time that you were taking a huge risk? I’m an Australian who also visited Naypyidaw in June 2007 (under the pretext of visiting friends in Pyinmana) but wasn’t game enough to take photos because I’d heard about locals being arrested and thrown in gaol for doing so.
Just out of curiosity, whereabouts did you sleep that night? Were you given a bed in one of the Naypyidaw hotels?
ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ ျပည္သူလူထုေတြ ဒုနဲ.ေဒးဆင္းရဲငတ္ျပတ္ေနႀကပီ န.အ.ဖ စစ္ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေတြကလဲ အရမ္းကိုခ်မ္းသာႀကြယ္၀ေနႀကပါပီ တဘ၀စာအတြက္ေတာ.စားထားႀကေပါ.ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ႀကီးေတြရယ္ မင္းတို.ေတြကို တမလြန္မွာ ေစာင္.ႀကိဳေနႀကတဲ. မင္းတို.ေတြသတ္ျဖတ္ထားတဲ.အပစ္မဲ.ျပည္သူေတြက ေစာင္.ႀကိဳေနက်ပါလိမ္.မယ္။ေကာင္းေသာဘ၀ကူးခ်င္းမ်ိဳးမင္းတို.ဘယ္ေတာ.မွ ကူးႏိုင္မွာမဟုတ္ပါဘူး ငါရင္နာလိုက္တာ ငါ.တို.ေတြမင္းတို.လက္ထက္မွာ ျမန္မာျပည္မွာလူလာျဖစ္တာ ရင္နာလို.မဆံုးဘူး အခုဆိုရင္ အရင္က ငါ.တို.လူမ်ိဳးေတြဟာ ဗမာေဟ.ဆိုပီးရင္ေကာ.ေနႏိုင္ခဲ.က်တဲ. ေရႊႏိုင္ငံက ေရႊျမန္မာေတြေလ မင္းတို.ပေထြး ေန၀င္း လက္ထက္ကေန အမ်ိဳးယုတ္သန္းေရႊလက္ထက္အထိ ငါ.တို.ျမန္မာျပည္ႀကီး ဟာမြဲေတပီး ဖာႏိုင္ငံႀကီးျဖစ္ႀကရေတာ.မွာပါလား။ငါ.ညတိုင္းလိုလို မင္းတို.ေတြအေႀကာင္းကိုေတြးမိတယ္ ဘာေႀကာင္.မ်ားကိုယ္.လူမ်ိဳးကို ႏွိပ္စက္ပီးေတာ. ရလာတဲ.စည္းစိမ္ခ်မ္းသာမႈကို လိုခ်င္တာလဲဆိုတာေလ။ထိုင္းကိုသြားအလုပ္လုပ္က်ရတဲ.ျမန္မာ မေလးေတြလဲ ထိုင္းကေကာင္ေတြကမဒိန္းက်င္တယ္ ထိုင္းမွာေရာက္ေနတဲ.ျမန္မာျပည္ေပါက္ မြတ္စလင္ေတြကလဲ ျမန္မာမေလးေတြကိုမဒိန္းက်င္တယ္ ေရာင္းစားတယ္ ေအးဒီလို.ဘဲမေလးရွားမွာလဲ အႏိုင္က်င္.ေဆာ္ကားဖ်က္စီးခံေနက်ရတဲ. ငါ.တို.ရဲ.မ်ိဳးစက္ျမန္မာမေလးေတြအတြက္လဲငါ၀မ္းနည္းတယ္ ကမၻာမွာ ျမန္မာေဟ.လို.မင္းတို.အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေနတဲ.ေခတ္ႀကီးမွာ ေယာင္လို.ေတာင္.ငါတို.မေအာ္ရဲ.ေတာ.ပါဘူးကြာ ငါတို.လူမ်ိဳးေတြ မင္းတို.ရဲ.အမဲစက္ေႀကာင္. ကမၻာမွာမ်က္ႏွာငယ္ေနက်ရပါပီ။ဒါကိုေတာ. ငါရင္ထဲကအေတြးေတြကိုေရးေနတာမဟုတ္ပါဘူး တကယ္ျဖစ္ပ်က္ေနတာေတြကိုမင္းတို.ေတြသိသင္ပီထင္လို. လက္ေတြ.ခံစားေနက်ရတဲ. ငါ.တို.ျမန္မာလူမ်ိဳးေတြကိုယ္စား ငါေရးလိုက္ရတာပါ…..။မိုးစက္ ဒိန္းမက္မွာေနတယ္
winners and losers… thats life…