The capital city is usually one of the main places you want to see in every country, right? Well, that’s not the case in Myanmar. Naypyidaw (also spelt Nay Pyi Taw) is Myanmar’s new capital city, built completely artificially. And it’s a ghost town. We were intrigued by the mystical place no one visits and where almost no one lives… so we decided to come to Naypyidaw. Here’s my experience with one of the most bizarre places I have ever been to.

What makes Naypyidaw different from other capital cities?

Let me explain. For a very long time, Yangon was the capital of Myanmar. To this day, Yangon remains the largest and most populated city in Myanmar.

However, in 2005 the military junta (government) built a completely new city in the middle of nowhere and made it the new capital.

No one really knows why. The official reason was that Yangon was too crowded and congested (hint: it is STILL crowded and congested) but there are even sci-fi theories like moving the capital inland in order to be better protected from potential military invasions since Yangon lies by the sea (what is this, 1940?).

Naypyidaw is a city planned from scratch and it has a very organised structure. The city was designed to have a number of zones – a ministry zone, a military zone, a residential zone, a shopping zone, a hotel zone and so on. The residents are even separated into apartment buildings according to their jobs!

All the government buildings have been relocated here, including the parliament. The junta probably thought part of the Yangon population would soon follow – and some people were, in fact, forced to move here – but it didn’t really happen. Naypyidaw officially has a population of about one million, but that’s nothing for such a big city and from what I’ve seen, Naypyidaw is kind of… empty. (Who knows what the real number is.)

Naypyidaw is ridiculously huge for, like, no reason. I am going to describe my own experience with Naypyidaw, but I really recommend watching this short video of the capital, taken with a drone. It’s really freaky to see the ghost town from this perspective.

Why did we visit Naypyidaw?

It wasn’t really my plan to come to the capital during my time in Myanmar. (Then again, most of my Myanmar trip was very unplanned – that’s how I ended up trekking to Inle Lake for three days.) “No one goes to Naypyidaw” is what I had been told.

And it’s true, tourists usually skip Naypyidaw because there is nothing to see or do. However, while travelling in Myanmar we started hearing some rumours from other travellers about what a bizarre experience it is to actually visit this mystical city.

Then my friend Mathilde – who I travelled a majority of the country with – also found out about the National Landmark Garden in Naypyidaw. That’s basically a big park with miniature versions of all the important sights in Myanmar. Sounds pretty cool, right?

And because Naypyidaw is almost halfway between Bagan and Yangon, we somehow thought… why not stop here for a day and see the rarity for ourselves.

Getting to Naypyidaw

Getting to Naypyidaw isn’t difficult, it just isn’t… common. There are buses going to Naypyidaw from most cities, they just aren’t advertised like transportation to the major tourist destinations such as Bagan, Mandalay, Yangon, Inle, etc.

So while the reception desk of our hotel in Bagan had information about buses to the said places, we didn’t see anything about the capital. However, we just asked the receptionist and he picked up the phone and booked the bus tickets to Naypyidaw for us. Not a problem.

 

The journey from Bagan to Naypyidaw only took 5 hours (including a break) but it felt much longer on our bus without air conditioning. It was the only time in Myanmar we weren’t travelling on a comfortable “VIP” bus. (You can read more about buses in Myanmar in this article.)

Getting to Naypyidaw might be easy but getting around the city itself is a completely different story.

The Taxi Nightmare

Imagine this: you arrive in Naypyidaw at midnight and your hotel is on the other side of the city. There is no public bus going there – at midnight or any other hour of the day. Of course, a taxi was our only option.

Unsurprisingly, all taxi drivers at the bus station were asking for too much money to take us to our hotel. We sleepily haggled with them but couldn’t get the price lower than 12,000 MMK – which is only about $8, but quite expensive in Myanmar’s terms. Still, we obviously didn’t have any other option than to take this taxi.

Naypyidaw’s long and empty roads are highly fascinating during the day, but at night it was really spooky. If I didn’t have offline maps on my phone, we would have no idea where this taxi was taking us. We were quite literally in the middle of nowhere, it was completely dark and we were two girls alone in a car with a driver and (for some reason) his slightly intoxicated friend. Yeah. Not a great feeling.

This taxi ride was the only time during my nine months in Asia I was low-key freaking out. However, we arrived at our hotel safely so there was actually no need to worry.

And just to give you an idea: our hotel was 13 km away from the bus station. Nothing is close in Naypyidaw.

Accommodation in Naypyidaw

If you’re a backpacker like us and would like to stay in a hostel in Naypyidaw – there are none. Why have hostels if you don’t have tourists?

There are only hotels in the capital. All are situated around one area, which is pretty far from the city centre. Then again, I’m still not sure Naypyidaw actually has any “city centre”.

On the flip side, we got an awesome room with two huge double beds – they were so comfortable we almost missed breakfast – and we also had a hotel pool. This luxury only cost us $11 each for one night. That’s more expensive than anywhere else in Myanmar (for obvious reasons) but still totally doable on a backpacker’s budget.

Transport in Naypyidaw

We had one day to spend in Naypyidaw and our plan was to see the National Landmark Garden. We had to figure out a way to get there because our destination was about 50 km away from our hotel. Not even surprised at this point.

Public transport is pretty much non-existent in Naypyidaw and our hotel was offering us a taxi for the day – I don’t remember the price but it was super expensive. The only feasible option for us was renting a scooter.

Our hotel had scooters for rent but they were all manual. That wasn’t good news for us because Mathilde could only drive automatic scooters (and I don’t drive). Luckily, you’re in Myanmar where the kindness of locals has no limits, and so we ended up using an automatic scooter that belonged to one of the hotel employees.

Experiencing the city

We spent 1 hour 15 mins driving across the city and I must say the ride was equally, if not more, fascinating as the landmark garden itself. It didn’t feel like we were in a capital city at all. More like driving in the countryside.

There were long stretches of driving on an empty road without seeing any other scooters or cars. There were massive roundabouts and they always looked the same. There were roads with 8 lanes, all empty. (I’ve read there are even roads with 10 lanes in ONE direction in Naypyidaw – I wish we had seen that!)

The place was surreal.

I only took a few pictures because I didn’t want to move on the back of the scooter too much, but I hope they can still give you an idea of what Naypyidaw is like.

I can’t say the place was completely deserted; we did see some other people and cars. There was even one part of the journey which was a little busier and there were shops and people – so I can confirm that some people do indeed live in this strange capital city 🙂 But most of Naypyidaw was unbelievably empty.

National Landmark Garden

We eventually made it to the National Landmark Garden. It’s a huge park that’s shaped exactly like Myanmar on the map – if that makes sense. Then you have the miniatures of all interesting places in Myanmar located throughout the park, exactly where they are located in real-life Myanmar.

Of course you can also find a mini Naypyidaw in this garden… located in the actual Naypyidaw. In fact, they have a whole model of Naypyidaw here where you can also spot the National Landmark Garden. Mind blown.

We paid the entry fee of 15,000 MMK and were driven around all the states of this mini Myanmar in a golf cart. We made our driver stop everywhere, obviously.

It was pretty cool to see miniatures of all the places we had been to in Myanmar – and of those we didn’t get to see.

Here are some pictures of the mini landmarks (I’m also including real-life versions of the locations I’ve been to for comparison 😉 .)

In the end we didn’t get to explore every landmark because we were running out of time before we had to bring the scooter back.

Without Gas in the Middle of Nowhere

What’s the one thing you don’t want to happen when you’re in a virtually empty city? Run out of gas maybe?

On our way back to the hotel our scooter was signalling low gas but because the hotel staff had told us the tank was full, we weren’t really worried and thought the gas indicator was just broken. 

Well, it wasn’t. We did run out of gas.

After what I have told you about this city, it might sound like a terrifying situation to be in but in the end it wasn’t that bad. Luckily we weren’t completely alone on this road and before we even had a chance to panic, two girls on a scooter pulled over when they saw us. They immediately picked up an empty plastic bottle that was lying on the ground, told us they would bring us some gas and left.

While we were waiting by the side of the road, two men just appeared out of nowhere. OK, maybe not out of nowhere; they emerged from the building next to us. They must have seen us and evaluated the situation quickly because they were carrying a plastic bottle with gasoline. Just as they started re-filling our tank, the girls came back.

And just like that, without asking for any help, we had four people helping us. Of course they all refused to take any money for the gas they gave us. That’s Myanmar for you.

And that was our Naypyidaw adventure. If you like exploring off the beaten path, I can’t recommend the capital of Myanmar enough! Even though there are no tourist attractions as such, Naypyidaw was one of my most memorable travel experiences.

Need some tips for visiting Myanmar? Read my useful guide here!

And if you’re unsure whether it’s ethical to travel to Myanmar, this post might help you decide. 😉

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