Yangon Excelsior

Rooms and decor

Picture a 1920s British teak-trading building called the Steel Brothers Building, standing in the Pansodan Heritage Zone in downtown Yangon, then imagine the design team at Hirsch Bedner Associates from Bangkok stripping back the old brick, reinforcing the structure, and adding Art Deco and Burmese teak with real care — that is the appeal of Yangon Excelsior. All 74 rooms sit in the one building, with ceilings around four metres, polished teak floors, and exposed old brick in some rooms, paired with handmade Burmese colonial furniture, brass Art Deco lamps and printed fabrics in emerald green and golden brown. Some rooms have a small wrought-iron balcony jutting out over Bo Aung Kyaw road, good for a morning coffee looking at the heritage building across the street. Many reviews say the same thing — it feels like sleeping in a living museum, with every corner staged to tell the story of Yangon back when it was Rangoon. If you like a hotel with a soul and a story rather than a glass box, you will probably fall for it from the first step.

Food and amenities

If this hotel has a heart, it is The Newsroom, the bar on the lobby level set up to feel like a 1930s newsroom — dark teak panelling, deep brown leather chairs, racks of old newspapers and a vintage typewriter, with low lamps throwing warm light on a marble counter. It opens from late afternoon until late and serves classic colonial cocktails the bartenders can tell you the history of. Reviews call it the best-atmosphere hotel bar in Yangon. Next to it, the restaurant serves contemporary Burmese food — a prettied-up mohinga, fresh lahpet (fermented tea-leaf) salad, and fusion plates that bring Burmese spice to international dishes. Breakfast is a la carte in the same room, with bread baked each morning and eggs made to order; reviews say it is a short menu but everything is done well. Up top there is a small rooftop plunge pool with seating to watch the old-town skyline in the evening — not a full pool, but enough to cool off after a day of walking. There is also a small in-house spa for old-style Burmese massage and a small gym, all scaled like a boutique rather than a resort.

Location and getting there

Location is the other selling point that sets this apart from the usual Yangon hotel. Yangon Excelsior sits on Bo Aung Kyaw road in the Pansodan Heritage Zone, the heart of the old town and one of the densest stretches of British colonial buildings in Southeast Asia. Walk 5 minutes from the lobby and you reach the Pansodan jetty, where the ferry crosses to Dala for a look at local life; another 6 minutes and you are at Sule Pagoda, the golden stupa in the traffic circle everyone uses as a reference point. The Secretariat, the big British-era government building that is now a popular photo landmark, is about an 8-minute walk. Bogyoke Aung San Market (the former Scott Market), good for souvenirs and gemstones, is about 8 minutes by car, while the famous golden Shwedagon Pagoda is roughly a 15-minute taxi ride. From Yangon Airport (RGN) it is about 45 minutes by car, depending on traffic. If your trip is about walking the old town and photographing colonial architecture, this location is the best in the city.

Things to know before booking

To help you decide, the first thing to know is that there is no full-size pool here, just a small rooftop plunge for cooling off. If you are escaping the heat in the monsoon months and want a long soak, or kids in the water, this may not be your first pick. The second is downtown traffic noise — Yangon is busy from about 5:30am until late, especially on Bo Aung Kyaw road out front, and street-facing rooms clearly catch the cars, horns and vendors; if you sleep lightly, ask at booking for a 3rd or 4th floor room facing inward. The third is the single smallish elevator in the old building, which can mean a short wait during tour check-ins or early checkouts, and some heritage bathrooms have a shower over the tub rather than a modern walk-in; anyone wedded to fully modern fittings may find it odd the first morning, though most adjust fast because the original detail is so good. Last, Wi-Fi is solid in the lobby and rooms, but Myanmar's internet overall is less stable than Thailand's, so bring a backup roaming SIM if you have an important meeting.

Our take

After reading the real reviews and looking through hundreds of room photos, our team sees Yangon Excelsior as a hotel that sells story, design and a central heritage location with full confidence — the 1920s Steel Brothers Building restored by the Thai team at Hirsch Bedner, the best-atmosphere bar in Yangon in The Newsroom, warm staff who are good in English, and rates from about $80 a night that are strong value for a 5-star of this kind. If your trip in your head is waking early to photograph the colonial buildings around Pansodan, stopping at a young Burmese coffee shop, coming back to the rooftop plunge, then closing with a cocktail in a film-set colonial bar, this is the most fitting choice in the city. But if your trip is kids in the pool all day or a resort with everything on site, it may not deliver. Overall we give it 9.1/10, best for couples, design lovers and solo travelers who want colonial-era Yangon up close.