Burmese Days 5: Historic British Houses in Rangoon

Rangoon must have once been an amazingly wealthy city, as evidenced by some of the remaining mansions of industrialists and government officials.  At 291 Shwedagon Pagoda Road, there are a couple of old mansions semi-hidden behind walls. My taxi driver was perplexed that I was interested in old houses, but he knew exactly where to take me for some good examples.

This amazing old mansion was once quite a showplace. Look at the Victorian trim (still existent, thanks to the durability of teak), gables, and overhanging soffits. It was designed to cope with a climate that dumped major rain during the summer monsoon and exposed its occupants to stifling heat.

Carriages or Rolls Royces once brought visitors through the breezeway.

The interior must have once been gorgeous. Look at how the same Corinthian column motif from the breezeway was repeated next to the stairwell.

Next door is another old mansion, this one with wide awnings and almost an alpine look. Assuming it was empty, I was about to barge inside and wander around when I saw some recent-vintage cars in the side driveway. Oops, it is occupied. Discretion took over and I headed back to the abandoned house next door.

From the van, we were stopped in traffic for a few minutes right outside another mansion at 105 Kabaaye Pagoda Road. Notice that the gatehouse was modern construction with a rather wild checked pattern.

Recent apartments are rather uninspired architecture and are typically poorly-maintained. The mildew eventually creeps over every surface, and, from what I could tell, the building owners seldom pressure-wash or bleach. The bottles in the lower right are for drinking water.

For another historic Rangoon house, please see my earlier article on the Lin Chin Tsong Mansion.

Photographs taken with a Panasonic G3 camera with Olympus 9-18mm lens or a FujiFilm X-E1 camera. RAW files converted with PhotoNinja software.

Burmese Days 4: the Rangoon Circle Train

The Rangoon Circle Train is a commuter line that takes a leisurely and bumpy route from the Rangoon Central Station to the northern suburbs and back in about three hours. The Circle is not on the normal tourist inventory but is popular with independent travelers because it is such an interesting cultural excursion.

To take the ride, go to the imposing Rangoon Central Station. Guards or station employees will direct you to the crossover to Tracks 3 and 4. The crossover also gives access to Pansodan Street, which crosses the rail yards on a highway bridge. At the ticket office on the platform, we bought the 600 kyat (tɕaʔ) (= $1.00!) ticket for the "luxury" air-conditioned train. At the last minute, we took the non-air-conditioned train with open windows instead, which should have cost only 100 kyats (15 cents).

Here is the ticket, neatly filled out by hand on multiple copies and officially stamped.

The rails and rolling stock look well-used. The locomotives were imported, but I saw a newspaper article that said locomotives would soon be built in Burma. Ask someone which train to take. Possibly it does not matter. Take some water with you, although vendors in stations sell bottled water. Do not drink too much because toilets might be a bit dicey.

The train trundles along at a leisurely 15 miles per hour, stopping every few minutes at one of the stations. The track is so rough, the stops are a good time to take photographs.

Some of the stations are left from the British era, while others are simple concrete platforms with steel rain covers and a ticket office.

This is one of the family photographs from the 1950s, showing a Hindu procession (possibly funeral) somewhere along the tracks. The wood English-looking building in the background may be a station. (This was an Anscochrome color slide taken with a Leica camera.)

What is so interesting about the Circle train is the window into the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. You see them eating, waiting, working, selling, talking, and tending to their children.

Odd sights await you: I think these people were drying sardines out in the sun. Yummy.

Best of all might be your fellow passengers. They must see enough tourists now such that we are not curiosities any more. The lady above had some sort of sweets, like doughnuts. She bought them somewhere and used the train to reach her selling area.

This gent also had some sort of sweets in his tubs. Notice his outfit. He is wearing a cotton longyi, used almost universally by gents and ladies in Burma, and flip flop shoes. On his head is a bamboo leaf pith helmet. In northern Burma, these bamboo hats are are often coated with crude oil to protect the fiber (and add some aromas?).

If you do not want to take the full 3+-hour circle, one option is to get off at Insein Station in the northern suburbs. Near the river in Insein is a British-era prison, infamously used by the military government for political prisoners. Insein is about a half-hour taxi ride to downtown Rangoon.

A steel bridge crosses the tracks, and several shops are clustered around the station. A fellow who crossed on the bridge helped us flag down a taxi and negotiate the price. That is an example of the Burmese people: friendly and gracious.

The Circle Train is great fun! Take it.

The Myanmar Times has an article on upgrading the Circle Line. The Irrawaddy describes the Japanese-built air-conditioned train (the one we did not try).

I took these photographs with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera and processed the RAW files with PhotoNinja.

Burmese Days 3: The Rangoon Central Railroad Station

This is the third article on our tour of Rangoon, which is full of amazing architecture. The Central Railroad Station, off Kun Chan Road, is one of the oddest stations you are likely to ever see. The original on this site was bombed by Japanese planes early in World War II, and the building was destroyed by the retreating British troops in 1942. The present building was built (or rebuilt) between 1947 and 1954 based on a design by an engineer Hla Thwin, who used traditional Burmese architectural styles. The four pagoda-like towers are unusual and striking. The grounds north of the station (to the left in the top photograph) once consisted of extensive lawns, but now they are a concrete parking lot.

The size of the Central Station gives you an idea of the importance of the rail network in the immediate post-colonial era. The builders must have assumed that Burma would again be one of Asia's economic powers, as it had been before World War II. Recall that following occupation and wartime destruction, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos were impoverished and close to starvation (the Green Revolution had not yet greatly increased rice yields). According to Wikipedia, the Central Station is among 190 buildings on the Yangon City Development Committee’s list of heritage structures worthy of preservation.

Walk in the central entrance, and you enter an elegant ticket hall. This is where you buy long-distance train tickets. The ticket boots are from a previous era - no computers, no terminals, just some agents selling tickets. The signs are mechanical, meaning paper.

The next ticket hall to the east looks similar (and I am not sure why there were two halls), but this one has a modern feature: there is an ATM machine, a recent innovation in Burma (post-2013?). I tried to go upstairs, but all doors were locked. I do not know if offices in the upper floors are occupied.

The shed next to the tracks is quiet, but there are plenty of chairs awaiting their occupants.

If you plan to take the Circle train, you cross over to tracks 3 and 4. A guard directs you. An agent in the square ticket house way in the distance will write out a ticket for you and collect your 600 Kyats (= $1 US). From the overpass, you can also ascend to the Pansodan Street street overpass.

The locomotives, rolling stock, and tracks are a bit rough. Older locomotives were imported, but a newspaper article stated that the Burmese were beginning to make locomotives domestically.

From the Pansodan Street overpass, you can see that a large section of the rail yard is semi-deserted, the tracks slowly growing over with brush. It was likely much busier in the British era. The rusty water tower was probably for steam locomotives, and I read about a plan to introduce steam trains for tourists.

Another remnant of the British era is this handsome brick church across the street from the station. I think it is St. Anthony's Catholic Church, but may have written the wrong name. Once, Rangoon was a city of graceful church steeples, with every possible Protestant and Catholic denomination. It was a melting pot of religions, and you still see churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues only blocks from each other.

For previous articles, please click the links:
The deserted Pegu Club.
The odd Lim Chin Tsong mansion/palace.

These digital images are from my Panasonic G3 camera with 9-18mm Olympus lens or a Fuji X-E1 camera with Fuji 18-55mm lens. I processed the RAW files with Photo Ninja software. I also used Kodak Tri-X film in a Leica camera here, but have not yet scanned the negatives.

Burmese Days 2: Decay at the Pegu Club, Rangoon

Dear Readers, this is the second in a series of posts on Rangoon, Burma. As I mentioned in the previous post, the title, "Burmese Days," comes from the book of the same name by George Orwell, who was a police officer in the Indian Imperial Police force in Burma from 1922 to 1927. His novel is a scathing indictment of the corruption and incompetence of the colonial system (Orwell 1934). From Wikipedia:

Burmese Days is a novel by British writer George Orwell. It was first published in the UK in 1934. It is a tale from the waning days of British colonialism, when Burma was ruled from Delhi as a part of British India – "a portrait of the dark side of the British Raj." At its centre is John Flory, "the lone and lacking individual trapped within a bigger system that is undermining the better side of human nature." Orwell's first novel, it describes "corruption and imperial bigotry in a society where, "after all, natives were natives – interesting, no doubt, but finally...an inferior people."

This leads us into the famous Pegu Club, the club for English officers, merchants, and soldiers of fortune. As written in another blog, "It was where linen-suited empire builders could relax and run a colony over cocktails." Built off Pyay Road in the early 1880s on what was then the outskirts of Rangoon, the club was a long teak building with shaded porches and deep overhangs to help fight the blazing summer heat.

Rudyard Kipling stayed there a few days in 1889 during his long journey home. In his collection of travel letters "From Sea to Sea," he wrote: "The Pegu Club seemed to be full of men on their way up or down, and the conversation was but an echo of the murmur of conquest far away to the north." (Kipling 1923).

The Pegu is easy to find. Ask your taxi driver to take you to the Russian embassy, and the Pegu is across the street behind a fence. An abandoned gatehouse provides access to the grounds. The monochrome view above is the back of the complex; the front, as shown in the colour postcard, is obscured by newer buildings and trees.

This may have once been the main entrance. Carriages brought officers, soldiers of fortune, and merchants to these elegant doors (but only if they were white, of course). A dog greeted us.

The Pegu Club mirrored Burma's troubled 20th century history. When the Japanese invaded in 1942, they used the buildings as a brothel. "Postwar, locals were allowed to enter the Pegu Club at last, but few did, perhaps because so little else about the place had changed. “Its long verandahs provided cool and silent shade,” wrote a Shan visitor in the 1950s, “while its polished teak bars never ran out of ice cold beer, Singapore slings, pink gins, or whisky. In the shadows were the Boys [Indian staff], still Boys even if they were 50 or 60 years old, who stood quietly in the background, always ready to anticipate a need and to refill an empty glass.” (Guyitt 2013).

Military dictatorship and socialism followed, and the buildings were commandeered as an army officers' mess. Paul Theroux tried to visit in 1974, but was turned away because a senior officer was having his dinner (Theroux 1975).

I was surprised that most of the glass panes in the windows were intact.

The formerly-elegant entry hall, parquet flooring peeling off, fans silent, no servant to offer you a whiskey with ice. Some children's toys were scattered about. The dog took off.

I can't tell how these wide open rooms were used. Were they ballrooms, billiards rooms, or sitting-rooms?

I assume the fans were added long after original construction. Electric ceiling fans were invented in 1882 in the United States and spread around the world through the 1920s, especially to countries that did not have the infrastructure and electric supply sufficient for air-conditioning.

The electrical equipment was rather marginal. At least as late as the 1950s, many Burmese buildings had exposed wiring, running along the walls and attached with porcelain clips.

Ah, ha, the toilets - these are more interesting. Some of the best minds of the Empire were out in force here.

Further back in the building, this might have been the kitchen.

The carport to one side is turning into jungle.

 The central courtyard is also reverting to jungle and has been used as a trash heap.

One of the stairwells was collapsing, but we found another stair that was safe. The second floor also had wide open rooms of unknown original purpose. Were these used as barracks rooms for club members?

Be careful wandering around because some of the porch floors are collapsing. But what surprised me is that for the most part, the buildings were swept and intact. There was little graffiti, and the kind of vandalism and malicious destruction that you would see in the United States was absent. The buildings molder on, awaiting eventual restoration. The Yangon Heritage Trust has vowed to lobby to place these buildings on a protected list. Despite their troubled past, they are an intimate part of Burma's history.

The main club buildings are deserted, but various out buildings have occupants. I think they may be Indians or Bangladeshis. Are they squatters? Possibly they unofficially watch over the site, preventing looting. They paid us little attention, but a few with whom we spoke were very interested when we showed them some copies of web articles describing the Pegu. An occasional dog, chicken, or duck wandered by. A taxi pulled into the grounds to await a customer, and the driver fell asleep.

A young lady from Hong Kong wandered in alone with a film camera. When she saw my Leica, she asked how long I had been "into" film. I responded since the 1960s. Some Tri-X film photographs of the Pegu club are at this link.

These photographs were taken with a Panasonic G3 camera with 9-18mm Olympus lens or a Fuji X-E1 camera with Fuji 27mm lens, RAW files converted to black and white using PhotoNinja software. Of the various RAW processing software packages I have tried, I think PhotoNinja extracts more details - it's amazing.

For another view of the Pegu Club, here is a blog by a visitor from Glasgow.

References

Guyitt, Wade (8 July 2013). "A toast to the past". Myanmar Times. (accessed 27 Nov 2014).

Kipling, R., and Balestier, C.W., 1923. The New World Edition of the Works of Rudyard Kipling: From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches. Letters of Travel. 2 V. in 1. (Nabu Press ed., 2014), 812 p.

Orwell, G., 1934. Burmese Days. New York: Harper & brothers, 300 p.

Theroux, P. 1975. The Great Railway Bazaar. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 342 p.