Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Bago
While
BAGO
is a quiet provincial town today, its outskirts retain hints of a magnificent
and turbulent past. Formerly known as Pegu, the town was the capital of several Mon and
Burmese kingdoms, and flourished as a bastion of Theravada Buddhism in the fifteenth cen-
tury,andasaregionaltradeentrepôtinthesixteenth.Eachperiodofdominionbroughtwithit
a new layer of gilded
pagodas
and languorous
recliningBuddhas
, and today the small town
makes a fine place to spend a day or two cycling between its gold-coated sights.
Some80kmfromYangon,BagositsastridetheYangon-Mandalayrailwayandtheoldhigh-
way, making it a convenient stopoff between the two cities. Having been chosen as the loc-
ation for Yangon's new
Hanthawaddy International Airport
, the town will become even
more easily accessible, should the project - which broke ground in 1994 - ever reach com-
pletion.
