‘The finest hostelry East of Suez’ wrote early 20th century travellers about this 1901-built three story Victorian considered one of Southeast Asia’s grand colonial hotels and still one of its most awe inspiring. Once patronized exclusively by ‘royalty, nobility and distinguished personages’ according to Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in India, Burma and Ceylon, 1911, today this National Landmark in the heart of downtown Yangon confers a sense of its rich history to all who pass through its colonnaded exterior and enter the marble floor lobby, following in the footsteps of past guests, Somerset Maugham, George Orwell, Sir Noel Coward and Rudyard Kipling among them.
