Right now Yangon and Myanmar are going through very fast growth period once few countries such as United States eased or completely withdraw the trade embargo after successful open election earlier this year. Foreign companies are trying to establish themselves to the country and the hotel availability haven’t kept up. And this shows on the prices.
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There are only two or three Western quality hotels in Yangon; Governor’s Residence (where I stayed earlier this year), Traders and Strand. All these three were very expensive for the date in early December I was looking at. The Governor’s Residence had their daily rate exceeding $600.
So, I had to search for an alternate hotel for a night. To make things more complicated, most of the hotels in Yangon are not available through the western hotel booking sites.
So, I was able to book M.G.M. Hotel that had quite dire reviews on TripAdvisor through AsiaTravel.com for a night. I thought that I would be able to survive for 10 hours at this hotel and paid $50 for the privilege of staying there.
Location
The hotel is located just western part of the Yangon’s downtown. If you don’t mind walking a bit, you can easily walk to the main areas.
Check In
The lady working at the front desk couldn’t find the reservation that I had made. I had a look at three reservations that they had printed out that she was holding in your hands and I was able to spot mine.
Room 903
There really isn’t too much to add what you can see on the video and the few photos I took. It was just in an absolutely horrible shape. The paint was coming off all over the place, the bathroom had open and exposed wires and tiles were missing, the windows were like prison ones etc.
The rate included a breakfast that I decided to skip.
Conclusion
If you decide to stay at this hotel for a night, you are likely to survive unless you happen to be electrocuted by the open wire inside the bathroom. In all fairness, they were doing some work inside the hotel and some of the rooms didn’t look as dire as mine. The free wireless internet they had was working at times albeit at really slow speed.
