Driving through Naypyidaw, the purpose-built capital of Myanmar, it could be easy to forget that you’re in the middle of one of south-east Asia’s poorest countries. On either side of the street, a seemingly endless series of giant(large) detached buildings, villa-style hotels and shopping malls look like they have fallen from the sky, all painted in soft pastel colours. The roads are newly paved(made) and lined with flowers and shrubbery(bush).
This surreal(unreal) city extends an estimated 4,800 sq. km, six times the size of New York City. Everything looks supersized. The streets have up to 20 lanes, there is a safari park, a zoo, and at least four golf courses. There is reliable electricity and many of the restaurants have free, fast wi-fi.
The only thing Naypyidaw doesn’t have, it seems, is people. The vast highways are completely empty. Nothing moves. Officially, the city’s population is 1 million, but many doubt this figure. On a bright Sunday afternoon, the streets are silent and hotel lobbies empty. It looks like an eerie(supernatural) picture of post-apocalypse suburban America.
Unveiled(revealed) as Burma’s new capital in November 2005, by the then military regime(ruled government), the city is rumoured to have cost up to $4bn to construct. In recent years, the city’s bizarre(unusual) urban plan and strange emptiness has become something of an international curiosity.
Local residents are wary of speaking to us. “It’s not safe,” says one 26-year-old man who moved to Naypyidaw two years ago. “This city is mainly for government staff, government buildings,” says the man. “Most people are not that happy; they are living here because they can earn money.”
Sitting under cafe umbrellas, outside one of Naypyidaw’s giant shopping malls, a pair of UN consultants are chatting with their laptops out on the table. “It’s super-deserted, like a ghost town. I just feel so awkward here,” says one of them.
Naypyidaw is laid out in large unwieldy ‘zones’ — hotels; government buildings; official residences; — making it very hard to work out where the centre of the city actually lies. One Indian journalist described it as “dictatorship by cartography.”
Down one street stands a mammoth(large) gems and jewellery showroom, where an expansive hall is packed with 40 gleaming high-end jewellery stalls. Dozens of people work here, but no customers. It’s completely silent.
In recent years, Naypyidaw has joined the global summit circuit. Barack Obama was in town last year; David Cameron came in 2012. That same year, Aung San Suu Kyi also made her home in Naypyidaw. Officials of her NLD party say she rented a house in the suburbs.
With its sparkling new international airport, Naypyidaw feels like an extreme test of the “if you build it, they will come” theory. But so far, with the government already having moved at least one of its investment agencies back to Yangon, it’s looking like a spectacular failure.
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