The Strand Yangon

In 1901 a new hotel opened on Strand Road in Rangoon, facing the river and the busy port of British Burma. It was run by the Sarkies brothers, the Armenian hoteliers who had already opened the Eastern & Oriental in Penang in 1885 and Raffles in Singapore in 1887. The Strand Yangon still occupies that building, with its white colonial facade and its portico on Strand Road, and after restorations in the 1990s and in 2016 it operates as a small, all-suite hotel.

History

Burma was then governed as a province of British India, and Rangoon, its capital, was one of the busiest ports on the Bay of Bengal. The Strand became one of its principal addresses. Officials, merchants and travellers arriving by steamer stayed, dined and met there, and the hotel's register filled with the names of those passing between India and the Straits. The Sarkies family lost their hotels in the early 1930s, when the Depression pushed their business into bankruptcy, but the Strand kept its place in the life of the city. In the second half of the century it lost much of its standing and grew worn. A restoration completed in 1993 returned it to its former rank, and a further renovation, completed in 2016, refreshed the suites and public rooms while keeping the colonial character.

Architecture and design

The building is a straightforward piece of colonial commercial architecture: a symmetrical white facade, tall windows and a columned entrance facing the river. Inside, the lobby keeps its high ceilings, ceiling fans and polished timber, with rattan and teak furniture that recalls the hotel's first decades. The restorations preserved these proportions while bringing the rooms up to date, and the result feels like a period house that is still lived in rather than a museum piece.

Rooms and suites

All accommodation is in suites, with high ceilings, wooden floors and large bathrooms. Some look over Strand Road towards the river, others over the city. The small number of suites keeps the atmosphere quiet and the service personal, and many guests choose the hotel precisely for that scale.

Dining

The Strand Café serves Burmese and international dishes through the day, and afternoon tea in the lobby has long been a Yangon institution. Sarkies Bar, named after the founders, is the hotel's bar and a meeting place for residents and visitors alike. Burmese dishes, from mohinga in the morning to curries and salads later in the day, sit on the menus alongside the colonial classics.

Location

The hotel stands in the old colonial downtown, the grid of streets laid out by the British in the nineteenth century, which holds one of the largest groups of colonial buildings in Asia. Pansodan Street, with its former banks and offices, and the Sule Pagoda are close by, and the Botataung Pagoda stands further east along Strand Road. The Shwedagon Pagoda, the great gilded stupa that dominates the city, is about 15 minutes north by car. Yangon International Airport lies roughly 45 minutes away in normal traffic, and Yangon Central Railway Station is a short taxi ride. The Secretariat, the vast red-brick government complex completed in the early twentieth century, stands a few blocks to the north, and the Pansodan jetty, where ferries cross the river to Dala, is along Strand Road. Among luxury hotels in Yangon, the Strand has the longest history, and its riverside address on Strand Road has not changed since the steamers tied up across the street.