Happy New Year!

Arrive back into Yangon on the eve of Chinese New Year, and once we've checked back into the hotel, hop into a taxi and ride the traffic-clogged streets downtown to Chinatown, where things are warming up nicely - Hong Kong on speed transplanted right into the middle of the Burmese capital. Squeeze ourselves onto a table at a street-front restaurant and do our best to make sense of an ordering system whereby all the eateries and their staff seem to blend into one big blur. Get and eat (most of) the food we (think we) ordered, all helpfully washed down with free-flowing mugs of beer.
Next day - our last - back to the centre of downtown to explore a couple of seemingly endless markets and tour the last relics of Old Empire (Britannia waved the rules here for around a hundred years from the mid-19th century until just after the end of the Second World war. Not many of the old colonial buildings still survive, and many of those that do are not in great shape, though plans are afloat for some restoration.
Not much to see, either,  of the house on Lake Inya where Aung San Suu Kyi (referred to throughout our stay here as "our Lady") was held under house arrest until her release in 2010. A slow-crawl taxi ride to the north of the city drops us off outside an austere sheet metal fence and military barrier, and that is as far as the visitor can go or see. A walk around the lake itself similarly reveals little of interest; clearly not a location intended to become any sort of tourist hot-spot...
A second lake (Kan Daw Gyi) closer to our hotel proves a slightly more pleasant spot to spend time, featuring botanic gardens and a couple of somewhat cavernous restaurant / bars. But its still a bit of a missed opportunity in terms of unmet potential; almost as though civic planners over here see things only as they are, not as they could be.
As we end the day its really, really hot. But not for much for longer!