Conscience salved, my husband and I were off for 11 days in The Golden Land, the centerpiece of an Asian vacation. Our journey would take us to the capital, Yangon, to traditional villages surrounding the vast and shallow Inle Lake, on to the mythical Mandalay, into the mountains to an old British hill station, and down the muddy Irrawaddy to the archaeological center of Bagan. It wouldn't be nearly enough.

THE CAPITAL

Jeffrey Meyers, author of a biography on writer George Orwell, who spent five years in Burma during the 1920s, recently described Yangon as "a rich widow fallen on hard times . . . a broken-down and depressing city - more like Calcutta than the thriving capitals of Southeast Asia." True, Yangon is far from the catch she might have been in her debutante days. But the crow's-feet and wrinkles are testament to a vigorous life filled with contradictions and conundrums, and she has plenty yet to come.

The long road from airport to town is, surprisingly, a greenway leading past lakes and lush gardens and closer to town, signs advertising MacBurger - an impostor - and a local rip-off of Denny's. A swing past the huge park that is home to Shwedagon temple leads to the town center, a bustle of hawkers and orange-robed monks, bicycle-powered trishaws and belching autos, Colonial architectural delights covered with grime.

For expats and travelers, the nexus of life here has always been the Strand, an outpost of the Raj built in 1901 that, in its day, was considered "the finest hostelry east of Suez." Time and history brought the usual havoc. During World War II, the Japanese used part of the hotel for a stable, and at one point a bomb came careening through the roof and landed unexploded - a local curiosity before it was hauled away. In the mid '90s, The Strand was restored to its former polish, a retreat of ceiling fans and teak inlays in a marble floor, of afternoon tea and traditional Burmese music that lingers, sweet and sad, like a stolen kiss. On Friday nights the bar hops with jazz music.

The hotel faces Strand Road, a ribbon through the Colonial district that edges the park separating city from shipping industry along the Irrawaddy. This is Asia as it has been for centuries. A huge fish tail hangs out of a large basket strapped to the back of a man striding past, dressed in the traditional sarong-like longyi. Another carries a wooden yoke across his shoulders, balancing baskets of oranges and limes. Every sidewalk is a market, books to bananas. A long queue waits to buy bread from the back of a truck.

A trishaw wheels past, flowers sprouting jauntily from a vase strapped to the handlebars. Traffic stops as a line of monks clutching rattan fans crosses the busy road. A child-nun in pink robes hurries past.

It's undoubtedly arrogant to think of some place as poor as Yangon as charming; it's only that way if you're a foreigner for whom the $1 taxi fare or $4 lunch for two is so cheap its laughable. Still, there is something beguiling about it all. Melancholy, too. If you have traveled Asia in recent times, you can guess what this place will become. Already, a few soul-less towers have cropped up like overgrown weeds, like the condos and malls and offices that have replaced once-traditional neighborhoods in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Beijing, Singapore. Billboards advertise English lessons and classes in Microsoft computing, the Cash Box karaoke bar and the international Mr. Universe bodybuilding contest held there last November.

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