On either side of the street, a seemingly endless series of giant detached buildings, villa-style hotels and shopping malls look like they have fallen from the sky, all painted in soft pastel colours: light pink, baby blue, beige. The roads are newly paved and lined with flowers and carefully pruned shrubbery. Meticulously landscaped roundabouts boast large sculptures of flowers.

The scale of this surreal city is difficult to describe: it extends an estimated 4,800 square kilometres, six times the size of New York City. Everything looks super-sized. The streets – clearly designed for cars and motorcades, not pedestrians nor leisurely strolls – have up to 20 lanes and stretch as far as the eye can see (the rumour is these grandiose boulevards were built to enable aircraft to land on them in the event of anti-government protests or other “disturbances”). There is a safari park, a zoo complete with air-conditioned penguin habitat, and at least four golf courses. Unlike in much of the country, there is reliable electricity here. 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 and there is a stillness to the air. Nothing moves. Officially, the city’s population is 1 million, but many doubt this is anywhere close to the true figure. On a bright Sunday afternoon, the streets are silent, restaurants and hotel lobbies empty. It looks like an eerie picture of post-apocalypse suburban America; like a David Lynch film on location in North Korea.

Welcome to one of the world’s most peculiar capital cities. Built from scratch in the middle of rice paddies and sugar-cane fields, Naypyidaw (often translated as “Seat of the King”) was unveiled as Burma’s new capital in November 2005, by the then military regime. It is rumoured to have cost up to $4bn to construct, in a country that spends just 0.4% of its GDP on healthcare for its people – by far the lowest in the world.

The scale of the plans certainly defy historical norms. If completed, the currently nameless city would span 700 sq km (a space almost as big as Singapore), house a park double the size of New York’s Central Park, and a theme park four times as big as Disneyland – all to be completed within five to seven years.

According to the brochure, there will be exactly 21 residential districts, 25 “dedicated districts”, 663 hospitals and clinics, 1,250 mosques and churches, and 1.1m homes housing at least five million residents.

In terms of population, that would make it the biggest purpose-built capital in human history – nearly as large as Islamabad (population: an estimated 1.8 million), Brasilia (2.8 million), and Canberra (380,000) put together.

Naypyidaw - Burma's super-size post-apolyptic capital city

Samouth wrote:Sorry for my ignorant about Burma. I have never read about this Southeast Asia country.

I just wonder that why Naypidaw seems to be really quite? Furthermore, what was the point of creating a new capital city instead of improving the existing one?

Samouth wrote:Sorry for my ignorant about Burma. I have never read about this Southeast Asia country.

I just wonder that why Naypidaw seems to be really quite? Furthermore, what was the point of creating a new capital city instead of improving the existing one?