The most bizarre capital city

I think it’s fair to say that the adjectives “deserted” and “barren” generally are not appropriate words to describe a capital city.  But they are totally appropriate for Nay Pyi Taw (NPT), the capital of Myanmar.

Yangon was the capital, until the military decided to erect a massive city on some rice paddies in the center of the country in 2005.  However, it seems that they forgot to build anything other than a convention center and massive roads.

The roads are huge, apparently built to march tanks down.  Forget tanks, you could land a damn jumbo jet on these streets.  We felt like we were on a highway in LA, but it was just a regular road in NPT, with EIGHT lanes on each side of the road.

Somewhere like Washington D.C. or Taipei would have cars packed on the streets, but the roads here are deserted.  It’s super eerie.

We mainly came here because we had a free hotel stay, and we needed decent wifi to watch the Patriots AFC championship game 🙁  We were outliers.  Tourists do not come to NPT.

It felt like a ghost town, yet it’s the capital city.  There’s just nothing there.  It was how I imagine it would feel walking in a town that had been wiped out by a bomb or a zombie apocalypse.  There were empty police checkpoint stations (also deserted) every 200m.   The whole time, we felt like we shouldn’t be there.

That’s it.  There’s nothing more to write, as there is nothing there.