The Times - The lavish jungle retreat that is a world away from Burma’s poor
The Times has a rare glimpse inside the new capital that the military dictatorship is building for itself

Even before you arrive in Naypyidaw, it is obvious that the world’s newest capital is a place like no other in Burma. It is not just the isolation, in a jungle 200 miles from the sea; it’s not just the active discouragement of foreigners, which is circumvented easily enough. It is the road leading into it.

Ten lanes wide, cut flat and straight through hills and forests, it is the grandest and fastest stretch of road in a country where potholed tracks qualify as major highways. …

In structure, Naypyidaw is hardly a city at all but rather a series of distantly spaced zones, carefully dispersed to isolate the different parts of the city from one another. The hotel zone is where foreigners stay, in places with names such as the Royal Kumudra, the Golden Myanmar and the Aureum Palace. For $70 (£35) a night I enjoyed foreign cable TV and airconditioning in a self-contained bungalow. I saw not a single other guest.

The civilian heart is a town of white, blue and pink four-storey flats. Red engines stand beneath the tower of the fire station. Police stations bear a friendly English motto: “May I help you?” A shopping complex contains scores of commercial premises, all unfinished or unoccupied. …

The telephone directory is 12 pages long, compared with 470 for Rangoon, but according to the Government almost a million people live here.

Members of Burma’s Muslim minority are excluded, and despite several shiny new Buddhist pagodas there are almost none of the monks who turned against the Government last month.

The most surprising thing is the absence of the armed forces. The generals live in yet another zone, where soldiers parade before titanic statues of Burma’s ancient kings.

The obvious question is: why? There are several theories, none more than informed speculation. The most plausible is that the generals are escaping from the increasingly clamorous people. Rangoon, after all, is a city of protest. By removing the Civil Service, it can at least avoid a repeat of the 1988 uprising, when government workers took to the streets alongside students.

Well, not exactly Louis XIV, nor even feudal Japan, but I guess they’re after the same things.

Date: Oct 16th, 2007 · Comments RSS · Tags: Geography and Foreign Affairs