Our first day in Yangon started with a bland breakfast, then we met our tour guide (talking to me in front of the white car in the picture below). She was a very nice, very earnest woman whose husband had left her long ago, who's putting her daughter through medical school.



Yangon's only medium-sized for Asia, about four million people, but quite spread out, so you'll need a car. We started near the hotel, in Chinatown, which as usual is the main trading center where all the markets congregate. There's a very large indoor covered market with hundreds of stalls, but the whole area is one giant market, selling gold, clothes and electrical goods, none of which made compelling purchases. One weird thing we noticed is the outdoor dining areas, which you can see in the photo below. These are ubiquitious throughout Asia, but for some reason, the plastic stools that customers sat on as they ate their meals at roadside were tiny, only a few inches off the ground. It looked uncomfortable and made eating awkward, and I couldn't see any advantage to it.

This is Chinatown, an agreeably rundown assortment of shophouses with a lot more character than the modern city. But you can see this in any city in Asia, so it's not really worth coming to KL for.

Another reason not worth coming to KL for is the Marriott Hotel, where we stayed. That was my first and last time there. The lobby is reasonably grand, and the gym is pretty good, but the rooms are very pedestrian. Also, we suffered through probably the worst buffet breakfast I've ever had. Honestly, I have pretty low expectations of breakfast buffets, mostly rock hard waffles being perpetually heated in serving trays, etc. But this was really gross, and the fact that I remember this ten years later should tell you something. All the luxury hotels cost about the same as a Holiday Inn back in the US, so there's no reason to count your pennies when visiting. By far the best hotel in KL is the Mandarin Oriental. It's located next to the Petronas Towers (which also has the best mall in town if you're into that), the food at their cafe is quite good, and their attempt at high end fusion food (which I think is called Circles?) is usually buzzing and a nice place to spend an evening, although the food misses as often as it hits. Don't be tempted by the Ritz Carlton; although the chain is usually reliable, this one is really pokey and has no redeeming features (other than it's probably the cheapest Ritz on the planet). The Shangri La is also pretty good, a gargantuan hotel that was pretty run down when it was the only game in town. But all the new arrivals made it revamp the place, and it's usually a fun place to stay.

As for Valentine's Day, we ended up with no reservation, forgetting that Asians are just as into this holiday as Westerners are so all the big restaurants were long booked. So we ate at Dome, a chain restaurant in, you guessed it, a mall. Well, the good news is I set low expectations for future Valentine's Days.