A well kept ghost town
It's sunday 26th of March 2006 when the Myanmar state television informs its citizens of a new capital; Nay Pyi Taw. It has been built in secret and will replace all ministries. It's a stirring message for all the government workers in Yangon who suddenly have a new desk 320 kilometers away from their families.
The government states Yangon was getting to congested and offered little room for expansion but many believe that is was built out of fear for attacks by foreign countries and Yangon was sitting duck being close to the coast. Nay Pyi Taw is set up to be the grandest city of all; A huge parliament building, spacious housing, shopping malls, an exact copy of Myanmar's most famous temple (only 1 meter shorter), the biggest airport in the country, a zoo which “borrowed” all the special animals from the Yangon zoo, enormous hotels and even bigger convention centers. The one thing missing are.. people. The only ones there seem to be government officials, road workers and gardeners to maintain the endless stretch of gardens surrounding the widest roads in the country. This makes a visit to Nay Pyi Taw a surreal experience. The strangest must be to stand in the middle of a 20 lane highway that carries no traffic at all. You can hear the wind blowing through the trees 100 meters away without the noise of cars bothering you. Story goes it has been build wide enough to land an airplane on it, which seems a plausible theory since it's the only road in town without a median strip. Being there one can't help wondering what kind of a mind decides on building a completely new city as grand as this one in one of the poorest countries of the world.